The Gatling machine gun. History of occurrence

The sensational development of Dr. Richard Gatling became one of the first real machine guns. Its practical rate of fire is 700 bullets of 50 caliber per minute. The Gatling machine gun is a six-barreled weapon with a clockwise rotating barrel that can be moved thanks to the handle. It was patented in 1862 by Dr. Richard J. Gatling called "Revolving Battery Gun".

Each barrel was fired and charged mechanically. When they turned, under gravity, there was a process of supplying ammunition to the liberated cells.

"Gatling" first appeared during the American Civil War, but it turned out to be really useful only in the Spanish-American. The British used the machine gun of the Gatling system in the colonial battles in South Africa, Sudan. Not without him in the rest of the battles of this period.

The Gatling machine gun was constantly improved: every year it became more reliable and gained speed of the rate of fire. For example, in 1876 a five-barrel mechanical model with a caliber of 0.45 inches allowed to fire at a rate of 700 bullets per minute. At short bursts, the machine gun reached a colossal speed for those times - 1000 bullets per minute.

In addition, the Gatling machine gun was overheated by an order of magnitude slower than other similar guns, thanks to the flow of air that was created when the barrel rotated.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Gatling's invention began to be equipped with an electric drive. This improvement allowed to achieve an absolutely incredible rate of fire - 3000 bullets per minute. However, this made Gatling's machine gun even more cumbersome, which was the biggest drawback of this weapon.

Later, there were analogues containing only 1 barrel and working on the principle of the use of energy, which occurs when giving a short stroke. This dislodged Gatling's machine gun and all the other multi-barreled guns.

Finally, I would like to list a few interesting facts about the topic of our article:

1. No matter how surprising this may sound, Dr. RJ Gatling developed his weapon based on the ideas of humanity. As the inventor himself said: "If I could invent a mechanical, extremely quick-fire system that could replace a hundred shooters, then the number of military personnel could be reduced, thereby significantly reducing losses on the battlefield." Nobody knows if the US Army has declined after the appearance of this weapon, but Gatling's machine gun has brought a significant success in the wars to the developed states. Photos of the very first version of the machine-gunner can be seen in many encyclopedias.
2. At the end of the Vietnam War , a 5.56 mm NATO machine gun was invented, which was named M193 Microgun. It significantly exceeded the M134 Minigun machine gun at a rate of fire, but it did not go into mass production. However, "Microgan" was lucky to "light up" in the films "Predator" and "Terminator 2".
3. During one of the colonial wars, the British army, consisting of 1,000 cavalrymen and 4,000 infantrymen, entered into battle with 20,000 Zulu. However, thanks to the use of only two Gatling machine guns, the British won, losing only 15 people. Zulu died more than a half thousand.