MACHINE GUN

The modern machine gun is a small-calibre firearm fitted with a mechanical automatic contrivance for continuous reloading and firing so as to secure a rapid fire, the cartridges being supplied from a belt or magazine. To distinguish the machine gun from the repeating rifle, it should be added that it is usually fired from a tripod or carriage, so as to keep it laid upon its target and secure continuously effective fire. From the earliest days of firearms attempts were made to produce machine guns, and the oldest types, known as guns’) were groups of six to ten musket barrels, mounted on a frame, and fired either with separate locks or with a single lock firing a quick match that ignited the charges in succe ion. These guns were used, mostly in fortre warfare, in the 15th and 16th centuries. Modern inventors produced improved forms of the organ gun. Another variety, of this type, known as the ‘Requa bate tery,’ was used in the defense of Charleston in the Civil War. The first really effective weapon was invented by Dr. Gatling of Chicago in 1862. It was a group of six barrels fixed on a central axis, and revolved by a small winch or crank handle. This actuated the reloading and firing gear, and the cartridges were fed from 2 magazine on top of the gun. Some of these guns were used in the American Civil War. In 1870 the French brought into the field an adaptation of the Belgian Montigny mitrailleuse (originally designed by Faschamps in 1851). It was an a emblage of twenty-five barrels, grouped in a cylindrical case and mounted like a field gun. It was loaded by dropping into a large slot at the breech a block perforated to hold twenty= five cartridges, each placed so as to lie in line with a corresponding barrel. On depre ing a lever these could be fired either as a salvo or in rapid succe ion. The French used the gun mostly as if it were a field-piece, and the machine-gun batteries were easily knocked out by shell fire. Their failure led to military opinion being long after opposed to machine guns in any form. But the Gatling came into use for savage warfare, against the easy targets supplied by the rushes of ill-armed opponents. It was also introduced into many navies as a boat gun and a weapon for landing parties, and the Ru ian army took it up for fortre defense and Central Asian campaigns. It soon had a competitor in the Nordenfeldt gun, which in its various forms had either a single barrel or from two to four mounted on a frame, and with the mechanism actuated by a handle. All machine guns had so far been hand= worked, but in 1883 Hiram Maxim tool out patents for an automatic or self acting gun. It utilized the recoil to actuate the breech mechanism, and could fire 600 rounds in one minute. Its e ential points were use of the recoil, not only to actuate the mechanism, but also to store up in a spring the force for bringing it back to normal position; feed of cartridges by a moving belt; ejection of used cartridge and loading up of the next cartridge by a flanged rising and falling block, known as the ‘ejector,’ but also acting as the loader; use of a water-jacket round the barrel to delay overheating. Various modifications of the Maxim system were afterwards introduced (e.g., the Austrian ‘Schwarzlose,’ and the Ital. ‘Perini’). Another automatic principle was subsequently introduced by other inventors—(t.c,,) _ the use of a valve to liberate some of the explosive gas from the barrel, before the bullet leaves the muzzle, this gas ' pa ing into a small cylinder and forcing back a piston linked by a rod with the breech action. This is the basis of the design in the Fr. Hotch ki machine gun or mitrailleuse, the Colt gun, and the Lewis gun. The Lewis gun is supplied with cartridges from a flat revolving drum or magazine above the breech action, and has an ingenious air-cooling device. The light-pattern Hotch ki and the Lewis can also be fired from the shoulder, and thus fall into the cla of heavy repeating rifles. _ The most efficient and simple machine gun perfected during the World War was the Browning. The American army “was equipped with these, bu too late Guy.