Machine Gun: Automatic weapon of small caliber that is capable of rapid, sustained fire. The machine gun was developed in the late 19th century and has profoudly altered the character of modern warfare. -ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA
Types of Machine Guns
First of all, there a three types of machine guns. There is the light machine gun, which is equipped with a bipod, and it is operated by only one soldier. Next, there is the medium machine gun. It is mounted on a bipod or tripod, it's belt-fed, and it fires full power rifle ammunition. There is also the heavy machine gun which was used in WWII, which is belt-fed, handled by a special squad of soldiers who know how to use the weapon, and it is also mounted on a tripod.
History of Machine Guns
The first firearms were created in Europe in the late Middle Ages. After that discovery, man had been looking for a weapon design that could fire more than one shot without reloading. Many tried to create such a device, and many failed. However, in 1718, James Puckle in London patented the first machine gun.This model is currently on display at the Tower of London. The main feature of this invention was a revolving cylinder that fed the ammunition into the chamber of the weapon. This was ultimately the first step towards developing an automatic weapon, however, the flintlock ignition prevented the discovery for many years after. The invention of the percussion cap in the 19th century led to many machine gun inventions in the American Civil War. All of these models contained a cylinder or cluster that was hand cranked. The most impressive and succesful weapon was the Gatling gun. In the 1880s, smokeless powder was introdused allowing automatic weapons to be created. This worked mainly because the smokeless powder's even combustion made it able to harness the recoil, so it worked like a bolt-action. It was then able to expel the cartridge and reload. The first inventor of this concept involved in a design was American Hiram Stevens Maxim in around 1884. His design was quickly followed by others such as Hotchkiss, Lewis, Browning, Madsen, Mauser, and others. Another idea that was used was the property of even burning of smokeless powder. The way this worked was small amounts of the combustion gas were diverted through a port to drive a lever to open the breech as each round was fired. Then, the next round was admitted. The machine gun also requires no outside energy, becuase it uses the energy released by the burning propellant in a cartridge to feed, load, lock, fire each round, and extract and eject the empty cartridge case. This led to the belt-fed, watr-cooled, caliber of a rifle weaopn that was used in World War I.
Machine Guns in World War I
The machine guns in World War I made the war the blood soaked battlefield that it was. There is no other way to explain it. It changed the way the war was won and lost. Tactics had to be changed to adapt to the rapid-fire action of the machine gun. The machine guns were set up in special posts, called pillboxes by the Germans, and they were given to many soldiers to quickly eliminate the opposition. Because of the machine guns, trench warfare became a neccesity for the offensive and deffensive side of the war. Men were mowed down on the battlefield by the bullets by the hundreds. By 1914 the number of the main German machine guns was 12,500, opposed to the several hundred by the British. The machine guns were the kings of the battlefield and the gateways to hell for all those who opposed them.
When you kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
Pictures of WWI Machine Guns
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