Machine of Fire: How the Maxim machine gun closed the era of the rifle volley
Hiram Maxim demonstrating his famous invention, the machine gun.
September 2, 1898, near Omdurman. Kitchener's Anglo-Egyptian forces had only a few dozen Maxim machine guns deployed on Nile gunboats, in infantry units, and in cavalry cover. According to various accounts, about six of them were in action in the square where the Mahdist army was making its main attack. The battle lasted several hours. The Sudanese suffered losses of approximately ten thousand killed, while the Anglo-Egyptian forces suffered approximately fifty killed and approximately four hundred wounded. These figures are known from reports from both sides, and they are neither exaggerated nor pathetic. Behind them lies an engineering plan, assembled fourteen years before Omdurman in a London workshop.
Before Maxim: Mitrailleuse and Gatling
By the mid-19th century, several countries were working independently on continuous mechanized fire, using different principles and with varying degrees of seriousness. A unitary cartridge with a metal case solved the main problem: sealing the breech and ensuring rapid extraction. All that remained was to figure out how to mechanize the cycle.
The use of mitrailleuses (early multi-barreled machine guns) by French troops during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871
The French mitrailleuse model 1866, developed under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Reffy, had 25 barrels in a single block. The gunner turned the handle, and the mechanism fired the barrels sequentially; in combat, the crew fired approximately 100–150 rounds per minute, and with a well-practiced loading block change, up to 200 were possible. By the standards of its era, this was an incredible number. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, the mitrailleuse failed. Not in its design, but in its method of use: it was placed in line with cannons and forced to fire over areas one and a half to two kilometers wide, whereas its strength was dense fire at close range.
A battery of Gatling guns used by the US Army, presumably during the Indian Campaign.
American Richard Gatling received a patent for his design back in 1862. It featured six to ten barrels on a rotating block (depending on the model), a side handle, and natural cooling by "resting" each barrel during the cycle. Its use in the American Civil War was sporadic, with the main mass-market experience coming from the British and American colonial campaigns.
What both systems had in common was an external drive. The rate of fire depended on how vigorously the operator cranked the handle. This was the ceiling of the rate of fire, set by human capabilities. The only way to break this ceiling was to force the shot itself to operate the mechanism.
Hiram Maxim: 1884 diagram
American Hiram Stevens Maxim moved to London in the early 1880s. He filed a patent for an automatic machine gun in 1883 and demonstrated a working prototype in 1884. The principle he implemented was so comprehensive that it can be described in a single sentence.
When a shot is fired, the barrel and bolt recoil as a single unit, compressing the recoil spring. The bolt then separates, the extractor ejects the spent cartridge, the next round is fed from the belt, the barrel and bolt return forward, and the cycle repeats. The shooter merely holds the trigger. The energy of the propellant gases acts not only on the bullet but also on the mechanism itself.
Three engineering solutions converged in one system. The first was the barrel's recoil as a power source, replacing the operator's muscular strength. The second was a water jacket around the barrel: four liters of water absorbed the heat of hundreds of consecutive shots; during a long burst, the water in the jacket boiled and escaped as steam (the crew was supposed to divert the steam into a special condenser, a measure devised for the British). fleet, where fresh water was conserved). Third, a 250-round cloth belt: a reserve of fire unavailable in any magazine of that era.
These capabilities came at a price: the water, the sturdy tripod, and the portable ammunition made the system heavy. The rate of fire was approximately 500–600 rounds per minute, with an effective range against manpower of 1000–1500 meters. However, the system, including the tripod, water, and belt, in a typical field configuration, weighed close to sixty kilograms. Such a system could no longer be carried by one person—unlike a hand-held weapon. weaponsMaxim had finally become a gunner. A machine gun requires a crew: the second man with the belts, the third with the ammo boxes, and the fourth with the water canister, if there's someone available.
Three national schools of one Maxim
By the end of the 19th century, the Maxim family had spread across the world. The basic design (barrel recoil, water cooling, belt) remained the same. Everything else was different: the cartridge, the machine, the receiver, the details.
British Vickers Mk I The machine gun appeared in 1912. The company's designers reversed the receiver, replaced some bronze parts with steel, and reduced the system's weight by almost a third. The result was a machine gun weighing about forty kilograms (without water) and chambered for the .303 British cartridge, with a rate of fire of approximately 450–600 rounds per minute, depending on the muzzle adjustment. It became the standard weapon of the British Expeditionary Forces during World War I and for the next fifty years.
German heavy machine gun MG 08 (Maschinengewehr 08) from World War I
German MG08 It was adopted in 1908 as a licensed version with its own details. The main difference was the sled-type machine. Slide Instead of a tripod, a four-legged steel structure was used. In position, the machine gun sat on it, low to the ground, and when moving, the crew dragged the entire mount behind them, grasping the long handles—hence the name "sled." The solution seems odd until you recall German military doctrine at the turn of the century: the German General Staff was preparing for a war in which the machine gun would occupy a pre-prepared position and hold a sector, rather than running after the infantry. For such a mission, the weight of the mount was irrelevant; on the contrary, the more stable it was, the better. The 7,92×57 Mauser cartridge fired at a rate of about 500–600 rounds per minute, and the weight with the mount was about sixty kilograms. By August 1914, the German army had several thousand of these machine guns, and in terms of their number, Germany outnumbered any of its adversaries.
Maxim machine gun model 1910
The Russian Maxim machine gun, model 1910, was redesigned for the 7,62×54R cartridge by Pavel Tretyakov and Ivan Pastukhov at the Tula Arms Factory. The distinctive Sokolov mount with wheels and shield emerged from a simple engineering impasse: the weight of the entire system, including the shield and water supply, approached 65 kilograms, making it unrealistic for the crew to carry it across the field. The wheels allowed two soldiers to roll the machine gun, and the shield provided at least some protection from rifle fire. A curious detail: the Sokolov mount is essentially a cart with a lifting and rotating mechanism, which could be mounted on a bipod if necessary, and in defense, the wheels could even be removed and the machine gun mounted on a fixed pedestal. Its versatility was forced, but it was real. The rate of fire was approximately 600 rounds per minute.
The British lightened the system so the crew could drag it. The Germans increased the mount's weight, relying on a prepared position. The Russians accepted the weight and mounted the machine gun on wheels. The same design survived all three approaches, and that's perhaps the most important thing that can be said about it.
First Test: Colonial Wars and Manchuria
Omdurman in 1898 wasn't the first or only demonstration of the Maxim in colonial use, but it was the most illustrative. Six machine guns in a square opened fire on dense formations of Mahdist infantry from a distance of one and a half to two kilometers and held fire until the attackers reached rifle range. The machine gun did exactly what was expected of it: it controlled a front that would otherwise have required an infantry battalion.
British soldiers during the colonial wars of the late 19th or early 20th century
The Boer War of 1899–1902 first demonstrated that the Maxim was a weapon that could fire in both directions: now they had it for themselves. The Boers, armed with modern Mauser rifles and possessing their own Maxims (purchased from a British manufacturer before the conflict), made good use of the terrain and prepared positions. The British were now exposed to machine-gun fire, not from spear-wielding opponents, but from riflemen using the same system. The experience was unpleasant, and the British Army was slow to learn from it.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 marked the first large-scale use of machine guns in a major war between regular armies. By the start of hostilities, Russia was armed with both British-made Maxim machine guns chambered for the British .303 cartridge, purchased in the late 1890s, and Tula-made models chambered for the domestic 7,62×54R; mass rearmament to the Russian cartridge began during the war. The Japanese had Japanese-made Hotchkiss machine guns (licensed from Hotchkiss) and imported Maxim machine guns. At Port Arthur, Liaoyang, and Mukden, the machine gun count in a single army's area reached into the tens and hundreds. Exact figures vary in open sources (which is a problem in the Russo-Japanese War), but the order is clear: the machine gun company ceased to be a rarity and became a standard unit.
Russian soldiers with a Maxim machine gun during the Russo-Japanese War.
Berlin, London, and St. Petersburg drew their own conclusions. The German General Staff accelerated the equipping of infantry regiments with machine gun companies of six MG08s. The British revised their organization charts for the Vickers. The Russian military department began increasing the number of Maxim guns per division to a level that, by 1914, would be 32 units (eight per infantry regiment). By August 1914, everyone was armed with Maxim guns in one national version or another. No one seriously understood what this system would do to the battlefield when armies of equal strength met, and the First World War responded to this in the very first weeks.
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