The weapon most characteristic of modem warfare is the machine gun. This is because the machine gun represents the acme of concentrated fire power, and hence is the ideal toward which all other arms trend. The shoulder rifle of the individual soldier will at some not too distant date be supplanted by an arm of machine-gun type—the Garand marks the first stage of this development, and the newly adopted light “carbine” is an even greater advance. And the increasing importance of the “pom-pom” in anti-aircraft and tank work shows how the machine gun is beginning to encroach upon the domain of artillery.
Weapons which were intended to do the work now done by machine guns were introduced very early in the history of fire arms. At the time America was discovered European soldiers were making considerable use of the “organ gun” and “ribaudequin.” These were merely packets of arquebus barrels mounted on wheeled carriages and arranged to be discharged in rapid succession by a small gun crew.
A gun of this sort, which could be carefully laid in advance to cover some threatened point, was very useful in repelling sudden attacks. Its defect was that once it was fired it took a long time to reload, and while each of the barrels was being recharged it was exposed to being taken in a rush. Partially to offset this, the “ribaudequin” was provided with a number of pikes projecting from the carriage with the object of keeping hostile knights at a distance. Multiple guns of the same general type were used in small numbers all through the ensuing centuries but exerted no influence on offensive or defensive tactics. The type reached its highest development in the Billinghurst and Requa “battery” used to some extent by the Federal Army in the latter part of the Civil War.
The Billinghurst and Requa gun had 24 rifle barrels mounted side by side on top of the axle of an ordinary field gun carriage. The barrels were open at the rear. The cartridges were carried in clips, and a single operation loaded all the barrels simultaneously. When the clip had been wedged into place by the breechblock the gun was fired by an ordinary percussion cap, the flash being communicated to the cartridges by means of a powder train in the block. The Billinghurst and Requa came out at the very close of the cap-and- ball era. Had it been invented a few years sooner it would no doubt have become tactically important, but it was quickly made obsolete by the true machine-operated, rapid-fire guns which the new metallic cartridges made possible.
The earliest patent on a machine gun was granted in 1718 to James Puckle, “Gent,” of London. Our “Gent” called his weapon a “Defense,” a most appropriate name in that the potentialities of the machine gun in offense were not fully realized until well into the present century. On his patent application the inventor piously inscribed:
"Defending KING GEORGE your COUNTRY and LAWES
Is Defending YOURSELVES and PROTESTANT CAUSE.”
The “Defense” was a surprisingly modem looking arm. It had a single slim barrel and was mounted on an adjustable tripod. It had an elevating arc and all-around traverse. A number of rounds of ammunition were put up in a drum which could be attached to the breech of the “Defense.” The turning of a crank in some way revolved each round successively into line with the barrel and fired it. Puckle pointed out that his gun could shoot “square bullets against Turks and round bullets against Christians.” This is interesting in view of the fact that during the latter part of the nineteenth century many soldiers thought it wrong to use machine guns against civilized troops.
The “Defense” evidently was never used in war. The first machine gun to be so used was the Gatling, invented in 1862 by Dr. Richard J. Gatling, of Chicago, and used in the Civil War. No Gatlings were bought by the U. S. Army but many were sold to state troops. Salesmen demonstrated on the actual fields of battle! The gun’s speed of fire became a byword, and remains so to this day in the “gat” of the underworld.
Dr. Gatling is said to have invented the gun from humanitarian motives, to “make war impossible.” He thus is in a class with the charitable Dr. Guillotin, whose classic beheading machine was conceived for the purpose of putting incurables painlessly out of their misery.
The Gatling gun had at first six and later ten revolving barrels which were moved successively into firing position by means of a crank. The crank was geared to mechanism which loaded, fired, and extracted the cartridge in each barrel as it came up. Ammunition was fed into the gun by gravity, various types of feeding devices being in use at different times. A maximum rate of 1,200 rounds per minute was claimed.
A rather similar gun was Montigny’s “Mitrailleuse,” upon which the French Army placed vast reliance in the Franco-Prussian War. In the Montigny the 25 barrels were fixed and the firing mechanism revolved. Ammunition was en bloc in detachable false breeches or clips, number of which were carried loaded in the limbers. Napoleon III rearmed one third of his field artillery batteries with the Montigny, which .proved to be a fatal blunder. The gun used the same 11-mm. ammunition as the Chassepot needle-rifle, with the result that the Mitrailleuse batteries were invariably outranged by the Prussian field guns opposed to them. Had the guns been properly employed—as infantry weapons—the story would have been much different. As it was, the poor showing of the Montigny in the field resulted in its immediate fall from military esteem.
Despite the disfavor into which the misused Montigny brought all machine guns, the Gatling continued to increase in popularity. By navies it was eagerly taken up as a possible antidote to the new fear of torpedo-boat attack. By the British Army it was widely used against “natives” in various outposts of empire. Used with the old handmade Boxer ammunition intended for the Snider and the earlier Martini- Henry rifles the British Gatling was dreadfully subject to jamming. The introduction of solid-drawn cartridges largely overcame this defect, but to the end of its days the hand-operated gun was likely to jam if a nervous operator cranked it too strenuously. The highest development of the Gatling was the U. S. Navy model, which fired the 6-mm. cartridge and had the barrels enclosed in a trim brass cover. It used the Accles drum-type magazine.
Other machine guns of the same general type were the Gardner, the Lowell, and the forerunner of the modem “pom-pom,” the Hotchkiss revolving cannon. The Nordenfelt gun had its barrels in a flat block instead of a cylindrical bundle. This was a highly successful gun embodying numerous refinements. All pieces of this type were very heavy, and on land required high-wheeled carriages. They were conspicuous targets in action, except when concealed by their own smoke. A smart gun crew could, after firing a burst, trundle the gun to a new firing position before the black-powder smoke cleared from the old one. On the whole, however, the hand- operated machine gun was of only limited usefulness in land warfare and its tactics were extremely crude. At sea, where weight did not matter and where shields or breastworks could be fitted, Gatling-type guns were used in great numbers. These naval machine guns had an offensive as well as a defensive role, as they were for use against exposed enemy personnel in pitched battle as well as for beating off torpedo craft. In the Battle of Santiago heavy ships fired on each other with machine guns as well as with main batteries.
The fully automatic machine gun was invented in 1884 by Sir Hiram Maxim. The Maxim gun was operated by recoil, had a water jacket to cool the barrel, and fed from a belt. It was an immediate success and was adopted as standard by most of the leading powers. In German and Russian “maxime” is the common noun for “machine gun.” The Vickers gun of the British forces is but a slight modification of the original Maxim.
About five years after the Maxim appeared, guns of the gas-operated type were independently invented in Europe and in America. Baron von Odkolek of the Austrian Army originated the weapon which was perfected by the expatriate American B. B. Hotchkiss. The Hotchkiss is worked by a piston actuated by powder gas tapped from the barrel. It is fed by a metal clip holding 30 rounds. There is no water jacket, the barrel being made very thick and heavy to resist heat and provided with wide radiating flanges.
The gun invented by John M. Browning in 1889 was somewhat different in principle. In it the gas did not act directly on the piston but instead impinged on a downward-swinging lever. The motion imparted to the piston by this lever was not the sudden, abrupt blow of the direct-acting guns but was accelerating. This greatly eased the strain on the working parts, maximum power being exerted only where most needed—extracting the fired case and seating the next round. Browning’s method allowed the use of a comparatively light piston and obviated the need for special arrangements for exhausting the operating gas and for cleaning the piston of accumulated fouling. His patents were taken up by the Colt Company and the gun was made under the name of the Colt Machine Gun. It was used to some extent by American troops in Cuba in 1898 but was considered inferior to the Gatlings also used. Like the Hotchkiss the Colt relied for cooling on a heavy, ringed barrel. The swinging lever was not a success in practice, and in 1917 the Marlin factory modified the Colt so as to eliminate it. The redesigned Colt was known as the Marlin gun; it was never successful nor much used.
In 1916 Browning invented his recoil- operated gun, which was immediately recognized as the best machine gun brought out up to that time. Adopted as standard for U. S. forces, it could not be produced in sufficient numbers to supplant the British Vickers and French Hotchkiss guns furnished to our troops in France in 1917-18. It is now made in a variety of sizes and models to fit different tactical requirements, has replaced the Vickers in the R.A.F., and is being furnished in large quantities to British ground forces.
Water-cooled, recoil-operated machine guns and air-cooled, gas-operated types have remained in use side by side for a great many years. The latter type now seems to be winning the race.
Prior to the First World War only Germany had realized the importance of the machine gun and had provided it in large numbers and worked out its tactics. This was an important factor in the early successes of the Kaiser’s forces. British weakness in machine guns was offset to some extent, however, by the rapid-firing, Lee- Enfield rifles in the expert hands of the professional “Old Contemptibles.”
So important did the machine gun become in the First World War that it directly brought about the stalemate of trench warfare which characterized the struggle. No troops could cross ground swept by machine-gun fire, and so both armies were driven underground. The stalemate could have been broken first by the Germans with their gas and again by the Allies with the tank, but neither side had prepared to take more than local advantage of these surprise weapons.
The machine gun in the First World War was very highly developed as an offensive arm for barrage and indirect fire. This was made possible by the steady mounts that had been evolved, these being provided with means for the indirect laying of the guns. The tripod was generally used, but the Germans at that period favored a four-legged mount. This could readily be opened into a stretcher by means of which two men could carry the Maxim. By throwing a blanket over the gun, it was often moved freely about the field as a “wounded man.” By folding up the legs of the mount it was converted into a sledge which one man could drag. The four-legged affair was difficult to set up quickly on uneven ground, however, and it severely limited the traverse of the gun, for which reasons it was subsequently discarded.
Besides the heavy machine guns both sides in the First World War developed a lighter type of automatic weapon which could be carried and fired by one man. Such light weapons could advance with the riflemen, and in addition to their value as defensive arms they could be used offensively to lay down marching fire from the hip as the gunner charged. The United States was the first to adopt such a light gun, the Benet-Mercie of 1909. However, the Benet-Mercie was taken up as a substitute for the heavy Colts and Maxims formerly standard and it was not designed for such a purpose. It was discarded as a failure. Shortly after its demise Major I. N. Lewis, C.A.C., U. S. Army, invented a light machine gun which was eagerly taken up by the British although scorned by the United States. Although now made obsolete by such guns as the famous Bren (corruption of the name of the Czech factory at Brno where it originated), the Lewis’ long and honorable career is by no means ended.
In a class between the hand-operated or semiautomatic shoulder rifle comes the automatic rifle, of which the Browning gas-operated model is typical. Finally there is the so-called submachine gun. Of this last group the Thompson is best known and it has become so famous in recent years—via the gangster movies— that the submachine gun is coming to be known even in official terminology as the “tommy.”
In the new type of warfare, in which men fight from motor vehicles to an ever increasing extent, the old tripod machine gun of rifle caliber has ceased to dominate the battlefield. Armored vehicles1 despise it, and they themselves can mount guns which are both more powerful and more mobile. It has therefore reverted to a role of minor tactical importance. Its place is being taken on the one hand by very much heavier automatic weapons mounted on self-propelled carriers and on the other hand by very much lighter ones as the personal arms of the individual soldiers. As tanks and armored troop carriers are continually improved, this trend will become increasingly evident. There will be a need for more and more powerful and rapidly firing, armor-piercing weapons, while the soldier himself will have less and less use for the heavy long-range rifle and more and more for a short-range tommy with which to spray the enemy at whose feet he tumbles from the shelter of his plated motor carrier.
The eventual result will be that field and anti-aircraft artillery will take on the present characteristics of the machine gun. They will be belt-fed or clip-fed, and consequently will require some special means for keeping barrel temperatures down; this might be accomplished by reviving the Gatling principle, perhaps utilizing an electric or gasoline motor to operate the mechanism. In the infantry the rifle will be retained only by snipers and certain special troops operating without mechanized support (for example, marines carrying out their normal peace-time duties). In place of it there will be a compromise arm partaking of the compactness of the pistol and the range and accuracy of the rifle. Such an arm has already appeared in the .30-caliber “carbine” which is to replace the pistol in our Army and the rifle in all branches except the infantry. The Japanese are reported to have approached the problem in a different manner, by issuing sub-caliber rifles and machine guns to special forces for whom the supply problem is acute. The “carbine” type, derived from the tommy and differing from it only in improved ballistics and in the elimination of the full-automatic feature, is more nearly a machine gun than it is a rifle.
1. Aircraft, in the last analysis, are merely a special sort of vehicle, and are so considered in this treatise.