Machine gun torment of the US Army. How America went to war without machine guns
Like all military men at the turn of the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries in general, the American military turned its eyes to a new weapon - machine gun. Like many before and after them, they opted for the system of their compatriot Maxim. But then something went wrong.
The first attempt was made in 1904. The Americans worked directly with the Vickers plant, and there, according to American specifications, they developed a version of the machine gun, which the US Army adopted in 1904. With the establishment of mass production in the United States itself, problems arose, and the American military (which is logical) wanted a machine gun of precisely domestic production.
As a result, the first 90 machine guns were fired by the British, and under the British rifle cartridge, and only in 1908 did the Colt factory begin to produce a localized version for American ammunition.
The receiver of a machine gun of the 1904 model, top view.
And everything seemed to be fine. The army received more than a modern machine gun, which was just a work of art, but there was a downside.
The machine gun came out heavy and expensive even by the standards of the Maxim system. It was one of the heaviest, if not the heaviest machine gun of the Maxim system, put into service. Even the rejection of the huge wheeled carriage and the transition to a tripod machine did not improve the situation. The machine gun weighed about 64 kilograms without water in the casing.
For comparison: the domestic machine gun of the Maxim system of the 1910 model weighed about 67 kilograms, but with water in the water cooling casing and with an armor shield, which was not even provided for on the American machine gun.
Model 1904 machine gun for US Army exercises in Texas, 1911.
Not only did the system turn out to be very heavy and expensive, but also the machines were not produced at the Colt plant, but in England, and it is not known when the Colt plant could launch the production of machine tools. A little less than 300 machine guns were adopted (90 of which were produced in England, later they were re-fired under an American rifle cartridge) machine guns, after which production was stopped.
Machine gun model 1904 in all its glory. Just look at the amount of bronze details. It is not surprising that it turned out to be expensive and heavy.
In 1909, the Americans adopted a manual version of the Hotchkiss machine gun, which they called M1909 Bene and Mercier, and they seemed to calm down on this for a while.
Practice shooting from a Benet and Mercier M1909 machine gun of the US Army, a single M1904 machine gun is visible in the background.
The fact that the Hotchkiss machine gun would not solve the problem became clear pretty quickly. The system turned out to be so capricious that it was nicknamed the "day machine gun" in the army. A hint of the complexity of the design and the impossibility of eliminating breakdowns and delays in the absence of daylight. Ironically, the first combat use of these machine guns took place at night, when repelling an attack by Pancho Villa's detachment on the American border town of Columbus.
Model 1904 machine guns of the 8th Cavalry Regiment firing, border with Mexico, 1916.
And then the Great War began, and it became clear to the American military that something had to be done. This time they did not reinvent the wheel and simply bought a license from the British for the production of the Vickers machine gun (a variant of the Maxim system), which had already successfully fought in Europe.
Machine gun model 1915.
In 1915, the machine gun was adopted ... And nothing has changed for the US Army. There were no more machine guns. The situation was so dire that in 1916, 300 Lewis machine guns had to be requisitioned in favor of the army at the Savage company, where they were produced for Great Britain.
A shot from a newsreel dismantling practice firing from Lewis machine guns in units leaving for Mexico, 1916.
The troops that went to Mexico to pacify the local revolutionaries were sorely lacking in automatic small arms. But in pursuit of Pancho Villa, only one consolidated division with reinforcement units went. The thing is that the establishment of mass production of machine guns of the 1915 model of the year at the Colt factory was very slow.
At the time of the US entry into the First World War, the Colt company did not produce a single machine gun of the 1915 model of the year, although mass production had been established for two years already. The US Army found itself in the situation of a shoemaker without boots, thousands of machine guns were produced in the country, and they were sorely lacking in the army.
Staged photo with a 1915 model machine gun at Fort Lee, USA, 1917.
The first American divisions that arrived in Europe found themselves without machine guns at all. They simply did not exist in the United States, and each infantry division of the US Army in 1917 needed about 260 heavy machine guns. As a result, the first 12 American infantry divisions that arrived in Europe had to be armed with French Hotchkiss machine guns.
Machine gunners of the machine gun battalion of the 2nd brigade of the 1st infantry division of the US Army, France, May 1918. The French machine gun in the American infantry was virtually standard in 1917 and the first half of 1918.
Colt began to give the first machine guns of the 1915 model only towards the end of 1917, when the US Army was already fighting in Europe. Until November 11, 1918, a little more than 12 thousand Colt-Vickers M1915 machine guns were produced. A little over two thousand were converted for installation on aircraft.
In 1918, machine guns finally began to equip divisions heading to Europe, and from the second half of 1918 they gradually began to replace French materiel in divisions that had already fought with the Germans. In 1917, the torment of the US Army with an easel machine gun stopped for many years, as the Browning M1917 machine gun was adopted. True, a little more than a thousand of these machine guns managed to make war in Europe, and the peak of its combat use fell on other conflicts.
Soldiers of the 83rd Infantry Division of the US Army with an M1917 machine gun. France, 1918 The machine gun is mounted on a machine from the British Vickers.
The most interesting thing is that all the time that the US Army was tormented with the production of an easel machine gun, a very successful easel machine gun of a completely original American design was mass-produced in the USA - the Colt Browning machine gun of the 1895 model. This machine gun even fought in parts of the US Army, however, it was never officially adopted. But this is completely different story.
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