The Story of the Machine Gun 



Peace-loving Americans invented 

 the deadliest of modern weapons 



By Edward C. Grossman 



WATER JACKET 



The water -jacketed Maxim. The cartridges are fired by means of webbing belts. They 

 fire at the rate of from 300 to 600 shots per minute. No machine gun is fired very long 



THE machine gun is purely an American 

 weapon, from the Gatling of black 

 powder days to the latest feather- 

 weight Lewis and Hotchkiss and Maxim. It 

 is frankly and brutally a man-killing weapon. 

 In Civil War days Dr. Gatling of Chicago 

 evolved a seven-barrel gun to fire the army 

 .45 caliber cartridge at the rate of four 

 hundred or five hundred shots a minute. 

 By the grinding of a crank, the seven 

 barrels and the mechanism were revolved 

 around their long axis. A barrel was 

 loaded as it left the top position, the loading 

 and closing of the breech being done on the 

 half revolution from top to bottom position. 

 At the bottom position the cartridge was 

 fired, and on the upward turn the breech 

 was opened, the cartridge extracted and the 

 barrel left ready for the fresh cartridge by 

 the time it came to the top. The operation 

 was the same for each barrel, and the seven 

 spun furiously around and around, spitting 

 fire and death at a rate unheard of in those 

 days. The cartridges were fed from a drum 

 or a hopper above the gun, dropping down 

 for each barrel by the force of gravity into 

 the grip of the loading mechanism. Later 

 an improved feed was designed, the Acles, 

 which fed in cartridges by positive motion, 

 even though the magazine was olaced at 

 the side of the gun. 



The gun was used at different times in our 

 Civil War but always manned by employees 

 of the Gatling Company. Because of the 

 poor ammunition of those days, the gun 

 was often jammed, but it was extremely 

 successful and formidable with good ammu- 

 nition, and was the first machine gun of 

 history. Even as late as the fight at 

 San Juan in 1898 the Gatling was used, its 

 fire helping to take the blockhouse on the 

 hill. But our army was always suspicious of 

 the gun, not knowing just how to use it. It 

 was too heavy to accompany infantry, and 

 its range was not long enough to be used 

 with artillery. 



The French in 1870 had the same trouble 

 learning what to do with their first machine 

 gun, the mitrailleuse. That frightful 



weapon was as heavy as a field gun, and 

 looked like one, so the French used it with 

 their batteries in spite of its short range. 

 Then the Prussian long range field guns 

 would knock the mitrailleuse clear over into 

 the next county without having to fear a 

 reply from the faulty infantry cartridges 

 which were its food. 



The mitrailleuse — which means merely 

 a "grape-shooter" from the fancied re- 

 semblance of the strike of its bullets to the 

 impact of a charge of grape-shot — had 

 thirtv-seven barrels mounted in an iron 



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