MACHINE GUNS
In the 1800s gun companies made a score of guns to fix the problems of limited firing ability. Most of the early machine guns combined many barrels and firing hammers into one gun. One of the most popular machine-guns was named after its inventor, Richard Jordan Gatling. A Gatling gun has about ten barrels. Some people consider it a machine gun because it fires a large amount of bullets in a short amount of time. But unlike newer machine guns, it is not automatic. You have to crank it if you want to keep shooting. Hiram Maxim made the first fully automatic machine gun. It shot more than 100 rounds per minute and had the power of more than 500 rifles. More modern machine guns have only advanced in technology and power.
RECOIL BASED SYSTEMS
Most of the first modern day machine guns used a recoil-based system. The force of the bullet propelling down the barrel has an opposing force that makes the gun shoot backwards. In a revolver it just pushes back at the shooter. In a recoil machine gun, mechanisms inside the gun absorb most of the force. When you pull the trigger, it lets go of the bolt and that pushes the bullet from the breech to the chamber. When the bolt hits the cartridge it ignites the primer, which makes the propellant explode, pushing the bullet out of the barrel into someone’s chest. The bolt is connected to an extractor, which takes the shell out of the gun. When the shell is gone a new bullet can be pushed into the breech from the feeding system, then the whole process starts again. This process only takes half of a second.
MOUNTED MACHINE GUNS
Heavy belt-fed machine guns are usually mounted in a car or on a tripod, and sometimes needs more than one operator. These are the machine guns more commonly used in the army. Troops usually carry light weapons with tripods or bipods for more stability. Smaller automatic machine guns that use cartridge magazines are called automatic rifles, assault rifles, or sub machine guns. The word “machine guns” refer to these smaller weapons, but it is also describing heavy belt-fed guns specifically.
Until next time,
Gunner
