Gatling saw too many dead and wounded officers and soldiers evacuated in the hospital, and in addition to the dead and wounded on the battlefield, many soldiers also died of disease and malnutrition. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 Info Gatling believes that if the number of soldiers can be reduced, thousands of lives could be saved. Gatling hoped to invent a gun that relied on ferocious firepower, one gun could top many rifles, so that a soldier could have the combat effectiveness of many soldiers (his goal was to have a soldier on top of a company), so as to reduce the number of soldiers on the battlefield and achieve the goal of reducing war casualties. Later he finally invented this machine gun. [2]

Fold? Conceive the design

In the summer of 1861, Gatling began to design and conceive a rotary tube machine gun, which was completed by the end of that year and validated the following year. On November 4, 1862, Gatling was granted a patent for a rotary machine gun, which included a technical description of the 1862 model of the Gatling machine gun, as well as a statement of design features common to two-point rotary machine guns: a cylindrical rotating body with a firing pin inside that provided a lock chamber and rotated with the barrel; Each barrel has an independent firing pin. This made it impossible to patent all designs similar to the Gatling gun in the future.

The Military Museum of the Chinese Revolution has a Gatling gun

The Military Museum of the Chinese Revolution has a Gatling gun

The Model 1862 Gatling Rotary Machine Gun was available in two different configurations. The first used a separate steel chamber (the chamber was separated from the barrel), which had a closed tail and was equipped with a percussion cap. The shooter rotates the barrels, which are evenly arranged along the circumference, by shaking the crank, and the chambers filled with ammunition enter the latching slots behind each barrel from the feed hopper. When the barrel is turned to a certain position, the firing pin fires the ammunition. And when the barrel is turned to another position, the chamber after the shot exits the machine gun. The chamber can be reused, and the barrel rotation can complete the loading, firing and unloading of 6 rounds of ammunition, reaching a rate of fire of 200 rounds per minute, but there are disadvantages such as gunpowder gas leakage. To solve this dilemma, Gatling used a separate metal cartridge shell munition developed at the time. This ammunition structure was adopted by all later designers of machine guns. The other structure uses 0.58-inch copper shell-edge-fire ammunition. To overcome the difficult problem of how to make the independent chamber coaxial to the chamber, Gatling used a tapered chamber with a larger diameter at the rear of the barrel, making it easier for the projectile to enter the barrel. But simultaneously with the problem of loading, a much more serious problem arose: the warhead rolled over during flight due to the excessive diameter of the chamber. As a result, at the end of the 19th century, Gat was an important weapon for European countries to control and expand their colonies; The improved Gatling gun had a maximum rate of fire of 1,200 rounds per minute, a staggering figure in 1882. But it also has a problem: its biggest weakness is that the shooter can't control himself on the battlefield due to excitement and red-eyedness, and will go crazy and turn the handle faster and faster, causing the machine gun to jam or burst.

Folding technology improvements

The Gatling gun was invented in 1861, improved accordingly in 1865, and equipped with the US Army in 1866. The Gatling gun can be called the forerunner of modern machine guns. In the 19th century, when the development of metal gun bullets gradually matured, American inventors began to design manual machine guns. However, it was not until the time of the American Civil War that machine guns were taken seriously by the military. During this period, the multi-barreled "Lepti" machine gun, the "Bartley" machine gun and the "Kraton" machine gun appeared one after another, which were of interest to the military. The inventor of these machine guns was not a gunsmith or mechanic, but Richard Jordan Gatlin, MD. After 1865, the Gatling gun was changed from 4 barrels to 6 barrels, and in 1867~1868 it was increased to 10 barrels, and began to be distributed to American border guards. In 1870, the British government built a factory in England to produce Gatling guns after comparative tests. At the same time, the Tsarist government also purchased Gatling machine guns, renamed Golov machine guns.

Beginning in 1884, the tube-withdrawn, gas-conducting, free-bolt-operated and semi-free bolt-operated types were adopted

Gatling gun

The Gatling gun folded out of history

According to historical sources, in the Russian-Turkish war, there were 8 companies of Russian troops using Gatling guns, 50 per company. In the Zulu War of 1879, the British army dominated the battlefield with the help of Gatling guns. Another British naval unit began to install Gatling guns on its ships. It was not until the eighties and nineties of the nineteenth century, due to the advent of the Maxim machine gun, that the Gatling machine gun was squeezed out of the historical stage of war.

Automatic weapons based on the principle of automaticity were invented one after another. Compared to these single-barreled automatic weapons, the advantages of the Gatling rotary machine gun no longer exist, but the disadvantages are even more obvious. By the time Richard Jordan Gatlin's long life came to an end in 1903, the multi-barreled hand-cranked rotary machine gun had largely disappeared. Most of the world's armies switched to automatic weapons, such as tube-retracted Maxim machine guns, gas-guided Browning machine guns, and Harchiais machine guns. Many of the Gatling guns were completely destroyed as scrap metal, while others were lost in dusty warehouses or excavated for display in museums and private collections. The reason for this is very simple, one is that the operation of the Gatling machine gun requires 4 people, while the Maxim machine gun only needs 1 person to complete. The second is the rate of fire, although 200-400 rounds per minute is already very fast, but other machine guns, such as the Maxim machine gun, can reach 600 rounds per minute. Third, in case of jamming in battle, it is very difficult to deal with, while other machine guns are well established in this regard.

In modern times, some people have applied its principle to machine guns in order to achieve a high rate of fire; The most famous example is the 20mm M61 Vulcan cannon used by the US Air Force. After the 60s, Gatling machine guns and cannons were nothing more than the power source for the rotation of the barrel at that time, from manual to electric or relying on recoil to drive the barrel rotation. The former became an external energy source (the Gatling cannon used by the United States liked to use), and the latter was an internal energy source (the Soviet Union liked to use it). There is always another six-barreled machine gun called the "Gatling gun" circulating on the Internet, which is actually the M134 rapid-fire machine gun of the US military, and has no direct connection with the Gatling machine gun. At best, it can only be an extension.

Collapse the exit history

According to historical sources, in the Russian-Turkish war, there were 8 companies of Russian troops using Gatling guns, 50 per company. In the Zulu War of 1879, the British army dominated the battlefield with the help of Gatling guns. Another British naval unit began to install Gatling guns on its ships. It was not until the eighties and nineties of the nineteenth century, due to the advent of the Maxim machine gun, that the Gatling machine gun was squeezed out of the historical stage of war.