Maximum damage. Maxim is the first weapon of mass destruction. Machine gun "Vickers" - inverted "Maxim Great Patriotic War

04.03.2020

Canonical, arr. 1941

Machine gun Maxim(Maxim's automatic shotgun) - the famous means of cutting out running men on an industrial scale, the first successful example of automatic small arms.

History of creation

The machine gun was invented by the racial English Pindos Hiram Maxim (yes, my young friend, Maxim is a surname, not a name, in which there is also an accent on the first syllable, Maxim!) already in the dense 1883. It was the first to apply the successful implementation of the idea of using recoil energy to reload weapons, which in the days of single-shot army rifles, which were just starting to have a magazine, and manually operated shotguns, was just fucking high-tech (especially the fact that the designer wanted to gash an automatic rifle , but looking at the size of the brainchild, he said “Well, fuck it !! 1” and decided to sculpt a machine gun). Subsequently, the cunning Pindos ported the weapon to other calibers and sold the license for it to many European countries, which, in turn, made a bunch of modifications and alterations on their own.

The tachanka, sobssno, was not invented by the Makhnovists at all. Even during the First World War, on the southwestern front, Russian troops used spring wagons made by racial Russian Germans in the Crimea aka Tavrida to transport machine guns. [ prooflink?] The very word "tachanka" is a distorted "taurian", according to the place of origin. And already in the Civil Carts grandfather Budyonny introduced into mass use, the idea was picked up by the Makhnovists and other participants in the general mess. Grandfather Chapai generally preferred motorcycles and afftos, his division was so motorized that it was just right to call it “motorized rifle”.

The Great Patriotic War

Another Also. On the Sokolov machine gun, the first semblance of a grenade launcher (in the sense of rocket acceleration in flight) was washed down from this machine gun - three RS-82s on rails. With remote ignition by wires. This evil little thing was washed down to the delight of the German panzergrenadiers. And rejoiced. But only up to 200 m - further dispersion and all that. Not everything is clear with armor penetration, but you can vouch for 30 mm (the caterpillar breaks at once).

After the war

Despite the introduction of a single PK machine gun into the army, which replaced the outdated machine guns, the Maxims, which were decommissioned, lay peacefully in warehouses, just in case. And every chance nevertheless came when the Chinese communist friends decided to grab the little-known Damansky Island, located in the Primorsky Territory, from the Soviet revisionists. In the end, the crowd of Chinese advancing in "small groups" was stopped only with the help of a prodigy (MLRS "Grad").

During the debriefing, it turned out that against the Chinese zerg rush, Soviet infantrymen really do not have suitable small arms, because after intensive shooting of several magazines in a row, the AK (as well as other air-cooled shooters) overheats and becomes temporarily useful a little less than a club. This is where Maxims come in handy, thanks to their water cooling, they are able to mow down enemies in quantities of over 9000 without any fatigue. After that, all Maxims in the USSR were collected and transported to the Soviet-Chinese border, where they were stored for another 30 years.

I fell in love with the device in fraternal countries (they generally loved everything that shoots). For example, with the help of Maxims, the Koreans reduced the number of each other, and the Vietnamese communists reduced the number of Vietnamese non-communists and their masters from across the ocean. Who knows, maybe right now some Nigra drank another of the antiquity of Maxim.

Also, if the oldfags don’t lie (and this sin doesn’t happen to anyone), it’s the barrels from the classic “Max” of the 1910 model, devoid (unlike the three-ruler barrel) of unnecessary devices, that fit perfectly into the barrel of an ordinary 12-gauge hunting shotgun with cylindrical drilling (or, possibly, with pay), regularly serving the so-called. caliber converter and turning a peaceful civilian buggy into a chthonic, fiercely illegal rifled fucker.

Today, anyone can purchase for personal use a civilized version of the legendary meat grinder, passing according to the documents, attention! hunting carbine. The fulfillment of a childhood dream can only be hindered by the absence of a five-year experience in owning civilian weapons (because Maksimka is rifled) and a very non-acidic price, fluctuating around 300 thousand wooden ones.

In the unconscious

Canonical Maxim on the machine with a shield symbolizes the USSR , communists , commissars , detachments and mass executions .

Currently, Maxim is one of the favorite objects for conversion into the MMG “Grad” installation, because it symbolizes very high quality, and is still lying around in warehouses in incredible quantities.

Well, if you have a pink piece of paper, you can buy Maxim. The stoned guys from the Vyatka-Polyansky arms factory certified it as a hunting carbine. The price tag, however, anon will not like ...

In music

Cinema

The Maxim machine gun is present in a huge number of films, of which 2 large groups can be distinguished: about the Civil War (in particular, "Chapaev", where Anka the machine gunner fired from it) and about the Great Patriotic War. From the new machine gun lit up in the movie "Brother 2", where two cars with bandits were juicily shot from it into a sieve. However, SUDDENLY appeared in the film "The Return of the Hero", where Arnie himself stood behind him! But anon should know that this is actually Vickers - the British version of Maxim. Nevertheless, over the brain he is called "a real Russian killer of Nazis." Although in the original he was simply a "fascist killer"

Literature

In Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front, German soldiers, left without water, "refuel" the machine gun with urine. Later, having beaten off a trench from the French, the same soldiers drink water from the casing of an enemy machine gun (however, there were risky guys. Or just really thirsty.). However, in reality, the French machine guns were completely air-cooled without any water tanks there ... [ prooflink?]

Also Ernst Junger in steel thunderstorms, as far as I remember, mentioned the use of antifreeze.

Notes

A bullet is a fool, Machine gun Maxim is well done!

firearms	M-16 AK-47 Glock Deagle Shotgun (Bucket) Golden Pistol Goat Colt Short Barrel Minigun Murka Flamethrower Panzerfaust Makarov Pistol PPSh Machine gun Maxim Samopal Thompson TT-33 Uzi Shushpangever
Steel arms	Boxcutter Chainsaw Katana Mochet Titanium Scrap
panzers	Abrams Motorway tank Armata Mammoth tank Peaceful Soviet tractor T-34 T-35 T-90 Tiger tank Tank building
bombs

95 years ago, the creator of the most famous machine gun in the world passed away

On November 24, 1916, 95 years ago, in London, at the age of 76, the American born Hiram Maxim, who invented the world's first full-fledged easel machine gun, died in 1883. No one in the world noticed this loss. On the fields of Europe that day, the First World War continued to rumble, during which the participating countries lost 12 million people. A solid part of this mournful list fell on Maxim's "hellish mowers". They served with equal success in many armies on both sides of the front line.

What was before

No wonder the machine gun was invented in America - a country that (judging by westerns) is simply obsessed with rate of fire! Although, in fairness, attempts to make bullets fly out of the barrel were more often made before that. The previous one was called mitrailleuse and was a block of 5-7 trunks (sometimes there were as many as 20!), Manually rotating around an axis. The supply of cartridges was also carried out manually using a special handle. God forbid, the calculation began to turn the handle too quickly - the mitraleuse jammed from this.

In the USA, it was used during the war of the North and the South, in which Maxim lost two siblings and because of this was not drafted into the army. Mitraleuses also served (we called them carders) in Russia. However, at the end of the century before last, the arms business developed at such a pace that while the last mitrailleuses were finishing their service on the Russian destroyers in Port Arthur, the first Maxim machine guns were already trying their hand at the infantry near Mukden.

Machine gun and man

Hiram Stephens Maxim was born on February 5, 1840 near the town of Sangerville, Maine. His school education was reduced to five classes, but his father, a talented carpenter and mechanic, taught the guy everything he knew. And the ability to invent young Hiram was apparently rewarded in abundance by the enterprising American God himself. Among the thousands (!) of his inventions are watches, steam engines, new types of gunpowder, an echo sounder, an inhaler (he himself suffered from bronchitis all his life), a spring mousetrap, an airplane, which, however, never took off ... But now we are talking about a machine gun .

Maxim later said that the idea of automatic reloading was prompted by his childhood experience. When he and his father hunted a bear, an English Lee-Enfield rifle, when fired, hit him in the shoulder with a butt so hard that the kid got angry at the waste of recoil energy for nothing. The first development of a machine gun was carried out by Maxim in 1873, but then the matter was limited to drawings. For some reason, the inventor lost interest in his brainchild for a whole decade.

Evil tongues then said that in the early 1880s, Maxim returned to the development of automatic weapons because he was mortally offended by another American inventor, Thomas Edison. Tom managed to patent a new electric lamp two days before Maxim. By the way, it was this circumstance that forced Maxim to emigrate to England. He never returned to his homeland. Such an asymmetric answer...

Be that as it may, the Maxim machine gun of the 1883 model used the recoil force to perform several operations at once: opening the bolt, ejecting the spent cartridge case, cocking the firing pin, loading the chamber with a new cartridge, locking the bolt and lowering the firing pin, that is, firing the next shot. The first Maxim design was designed for the British 11.43 mm rifle cartridge. This model still suffered from all the childhood diseases of new weapons systems, primarily low reliability. But already in 1885, Maxim receives a patent for his new invention.

“They don’t have Maxim…”

The first experience of the combat use of the "maxim" dates back to 1893, when a detachment of 50 British soldiers armed with rifles and four machine guns repelled the attacks of the natives in southern Africa for an hour and a half. There were wars that went down in history as the Zulu. After the machine-gun barrels cooled down, the British counted 3,000 corpses of brave, but technically backward black warriors on the battlefield.

Soon, rumors about a weapon firing 600 bullets per minute (such is the technical rate of fire of the "maxim" with a continuous - as in computer "shooters" - machine-gun belt, the true rate of fire in combat conditions is half as much) reached even China. Li Hongzhang, one of the most influential and odious dignitaries of the Qing Empire, was sent to England, awarded by Empress Qixi a yellow jacket, a peacock feather and the title of educator of the heir to the throne. Li Hongzhang was impressed, but he only asked Maxim one question:

- Dear master, how much does shooting from such an amazing, excellently made machine gun cost?

“130 pounds a minute,” Maxim answered succinctly.

“Perhaps this wonderful machine gun shoots too fast for China,” the courtier finally said after a long thought and departed back to China. That is why, when in 1900 the troops of several European powers, including England and Russia, had to suppress the uprising of the Yihetuan (Boxer Rebellion), the Chinese did not have machine guns.

Where are the cheeks of the machine gun?

Everyone remembers the scene from the cult film "Chapaev", in which Petka introduces Anka to the "maxim" device and at the same time crawls under her skirt. But how did a foreign machine gun become its own in Russia for several decades?

Just like in other countries: they bought the right to manufacture. If in Germany “Maxim” was called “Schwarzlorse”, in America “Vickers”, then we left the native name for the machine gun, slightly changing the accent in it. The caliber of the Russian "Maxim" was reduced to 7.62 mm, more than 200 changes were made to the design, and at the turn of the century they were put into service. In 1905, the first batch of their own machine guns was assembled at the Tula Arms Plant. They fought in the First World War, the Civil War, the Soviet-Finnish War, but in 1940 the veteran machine gun was discontinued in the USSR. Turns out it was a rush...

On the one hand, it was inexpedient to keep in service an obsolete machine gun with a total weight of more than 60 kg (20 kilos of the machine gun itself, 8 of the shield, 36 of the wheeled machine, 5 of the water in the casing for cooling) was inappropriate - despite the fact that the German "machine gun" MG- 34 weighed half as much). However, the DS-39 designed by Degtyarev, adopted to replace the “maxim”, did not live up to expectations and was also discontinued. After June 22 of the 41st, the People's Commissariat for Armaments, under the leadership of Dmitry Ustinov, made heroic efforts to return the 19th century machine gun to service! Only in 1942, the front received more than 55 thousand "maxims", which eventually reached Berlin. The last cases of the use of a veteran machine gun were noted during the conflict in Korea and even at the beginning of the Vietnam War!

In general, the machine gun designed by Hiram Maxim went down in history as a classic example of automatic small arms, which any Anka-machine gunner can shoot from. Of course, if you explain to her in time where the “maxim” has cheeks. By the way, you will not find such a designation on any drawing of "maxim". Let's reveal a secret: this is how the side walls of the machine gun box, which is located immediately behind the shield, were called in common parlance.

Good grandfather Maxim.

In 1870, an unknown Swedish lieutenant D. H. Friberg patented the principle of operation of an automatic weapon, which would later be called a machine gun. The oldest surviving drawing dates from 1883. The inventor was noticeably ahead of his time by presenting a design unsuitable for the era of black powder. At the time, no one was interested. Only in 1907, another Swede, Rudolf Henrik Kjellman, combined a long-standing patent with new smokeless powder parons and received an Fm / Kjellman light machine gun, quite reliable, but released due to the high cost of production in a series of only 10 pieces. But the shutter according to the principle of D. H. Friberg in the future will be in such cult machine guns of the next era as the DP and MG-42.
But back to the 1880s... The famous American inventor Hiram Maxim ( Hiram Stevens Maxim) of his more than two hundred inventions, among other things, he invented a mousetrap, a vacuum cleaner, a gas generator, a bulletproof vest, acorn coffee, a pocket inhaler, a "flying car" - an attraction that brought him a fair income, sued Edison over the authorship of the invention of an electric light bulb, and received from under an agreement on annual payments for refusing to further invent in the field of electricity, he thought about using recoil energy to reload weapons. What came of it - we know:

Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not.
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc

Roughly translated as: We will answer any of your questions we answer: " We have a machine gun, and at you don't have it!"

For several years he unsuccessfully worked on the invention of an automatic rifle. In the end, he managed to design all the main components of an automatic weapon, but it turned out to be so bulky that it looked more like a small gun. The rifle had to be abandoned. Instead, Maxim assembled in 1883 the first working example of his famous machine gun. Shortly thereafter, he moved to England and set up his own workshop here, which later merged with the Nordenfeldt arms factory.
The first machine gun test was carried out at Enfield in 1885. In 1887, Maxim offered the British War Office three different models of his machine gun, which fired about 400 rounds per minute. In subsequent years, he began to receive more and more orders for him. The machine gun was tested in various colonial wars waged by England at that time, and proved to be excellent as a formidable and very effective weapon. Great Britain was the first state to adopt a machine gun into service with its army. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Maxim machine gun was already in service with all European and American armies, as well as the armies of China and Japan.
At the same time, one should not forget that a machine gun costs a lot of money and is a real high-tech era. There, the accuracy of processing parts is in thousandths of an inch, which requires high-quality machines and, most importantly, workers. ..... Cartridges must also meet the requirements.
The most interesting options for Maxim were the Germans and the British. In addition to Maxim, several other machine gun systems appeared, including light ones ....
And now - GALLERY!

Light machine gun Friberg/Kjellman 1907

The Maxim family.

Prototype machine gun Maxim.

Swiss machine gun Maxim model 1894

Early British air-cooled Maxim, Boer War.

Early Maxim-Nordenfeld 1890s.

Maxim-Nordenfeld on a machine - a tripod, which has become the hallmark of the British.

Early Vickers-Maxim, WWI.

Vickers Mk1.

German "maxim" MG-08

The skid machine is clearly visible.

Booking machine gun and shooter.

With a large armored shield.

Without flame arrester.

On a lighter later machine.

Early Russian Maxim-Sokolov.1905. Pay attention to the abundance of brass in the design.

A story about the machine guns of that time cannot do without the French Hotchkiss machine gun. Its characteristic feature was a solid plate clip.

Pancho Villa with Hotchkiss.

Its direct predecessor is the St.Etienne M1907.

General view on a late machine.

Clips are clearly visible.

There was also an advanced version with tape power, but reliability was lame there.

The machine is a tripod.

Air cooling.

Colt-Browning 1895 became another independent machine gun. Nicknamed by the soldiers as a "potato digger" for the mobile system under the barrel, it became the first machine gun of the US Army.

Modification on a wheeled machine, used in 1898 in Cuba.

On a high tripod.

And low.

Lightening the design and abandoning the machine led to the emergence of "light" machine guns, which could be controlled by one fighter.

The most massive, but possessing high firepower, was the German Maxim MG 08/15 converted from an easel.

Here, the differences between the easel and light models are clearly visible.

In fact, this is the first rather unsuccessful ancestor of single machine guns ...

The French went in a similar way - their Hotchkiss 1909 system in a lightweight version, also produced in the USA as Benet-Mercie, was in fact the first converted machine tool.

In this case, this is the American version on the bipod.

The British Hotchkiss 1909 Portable light machine gun featured a small tripod and interchangeable barrel.

But the first really successful light machine gun was the famous Lewis Lewis (in this case with a 63-round disk)

Watch... admire.

It was this machine gun that first made small groups of infantry a force.

The characteristic aluminum casing on the barrel is the hallmark of the system.

Another, really sad, famous light machine gun was the French Shosh Chauchat ...

The belief in his extreme unreliability was firmly entrenched in public opinion.

Which is 50% typical for the French version and 100% for the American version.

The first really successful light machine gun was Madsen.

The serial model saw the light in 1902.

It is paradoxical but true - this machine gun, which did not receive special recognition, was in service with many countries for almost the entire twentieth century ...

“Everything will be as we want.
In case of various troubles,
We have a machine gun "Maxim",
They don't have Maxim.
(Hilary Bellock "New Traveler")

Two materials published in a row about machine guns of the first and second world wars aroused great interest among the VO readership. Someone even said that it’s better, they say, there is no “maxim”. And is it possible to argue here when, after the battle of Omdurman, the approximate number of killed dervishes was calculated, and it turned out that out of 20,000, at least 15,000 were killed by fire from the “maxims”. Naturally, the British, and after them the armies of other countries, urgently began to take this machine gun into service. And here it is interesting, so to speak, how national approaches to this new one were embodied in metal and what came out of it as a result. Moreover, we will take only Europe for now, because in America the machine-gun business differed from the European one in some way.

Machine gun "Vickers" Mk I, during the First World War. Museum of Horse and Field Artillery. Australia.

It should be noted here that the only country where the "maxim" managed to really improve and improve its performance characteristics was, again, Great Britain. So in the British armed forces, the Vickers Mk I became the main heavy machine gun. A classic machine gun that can still be found in the most remote corners of the globe. "Vickers", in essence, was the same machine gun "Maxim", produced for the British army earlier. But he also had some differences. For example, Vickers engineers reduced its weight. After disassembling the Maxim, they found that some of its parts were unreasonably heavy. They also decided to reverse the linkage so that it opens up instead of down. Thanks to this, it was possible to significantly reduce the weight of the shutter. Well, the reloading system remained "Maximov" - reliable and durable, it was based on the principle of barrel recoil. The middle hinge bar in a straightened state locked the barrel at the time of the shot. However, when fired at the muzzle device, some of the gases were vented, pushing back the barrel, coupled with the bolt. The sleeve pushed him back, and the joint movement of the barrel and bolt back continued until the rear shoulder of the hinge bar hit the figured ledge on the box and folded up. Then the bolt disengaged from the barrel, and then the usual cycle followed: extraction and removal of the cartridge case, cocking and reloading.

"Maxim" of the British army, who participated in the battle of Omdurman.

Marking tripod machine gun "Vickers" Mk I.

The weight of the Vickers Mk I machine gun reached 18 kg without water. Usually it was mounted on a tripod machine weighing 22 kg. As on the machine gun for the Hotchkiss machine gun, the vertical installation of the machine gun was carried out by a screw mechanism. Sights made it possible to conduct indirect fire and shoot at night. The supply of 7.7 mm cartridges came from a cloth tape for 250 rounds.

Mk 7 - .303 inch 7.7mm standard cartridge of the British Army during the Second World War. The cartridge has a rim - a welt, and this is both its advantage and disadvantage. Welt cartridges are less sensitive to the calibration of machine tools, they can also be produced on second-rate equipment. But they require more non-ferrous metal. They also create problems for magazine weapons. Shops under them have to be bent so that they do not cling to the edges. But for belt-fed machine guns, this is the perfect ammunition.

The machine gun could fire at a rate of 450-500 rounds per minute as long as the casing was poured. Continuous fire was often practiced during the first period of the war, although wisps of steam escaping from the casing unmasked the position. The casing contained four liters of water, which boiled after three minutes of firing at a speed of 200 rds / min. The problem was solved by using a condenser, where steam was removed, which turned into water there, and the water returned back to the casing.

Side view of a Vickers Mk I machine gun.

Machine guns were produced both with a smooth and corrugated casing. The steam outlet tube and the condenser tank are clearly visible.

At the beginning of the war, machine guns were distributed in two copies per infantry battalion. However, the need for this weapon was so great that special machine-gun troops were formed to meet it.

Emblem of the British Machine Gun Troops.

These were well-trained units, able to quickly eliminate the delays in firing that were given to infantry battalions. Another useful skill of the soldiers of the machine-gun troops was the ability to quickly change the barrel. After all, even with a constant addition of water, the barrel had to be changed every 10,000 shots. And since in battle such a number of shots were sometimes fired in an hour, a quick change of barrel became vital. A trained crew could replace the barrel in two minutes, with almost no loss of water.

The butt plate of the Vickers machine gun.

Shutter handle.

The presence of own troops, trained crews and servants also caused growing tactical requirements for the use of machine guns in positional warfare. It is not surprising that the Vickers machine gun was then considered as a model of light artillery. This point of view can be illustrated by the role of heavy machine guns in the First World War, in the operation carried out by the 100th machine gun company at the battle of High Wood during the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916. On August 24, it was decided that the infantry attack would be supported by the fire of 10 machine guns of the 100th machine gun company, hidden in the trenches. Two infantry companies gave their ammunition to machine gunners. And during the attack, the soldiers of the 100th company fired continuously for 12 hours! Naturally, the fire was fired from carefully placed positions on the targeted area. The barrels were changed every hour. The first and second numbers of the calculations were replaced at short intervals so that the company could conduct continuous heavy fire to support infantry attacks and prevent German counterattacks. On that day, in 12 hours of combat, 10 machine guns of the 100th machine gun company used up about one million rounds of ammunition!

The tape receiver at the machine gun was bronze ...

...as well as many of the details of his tripod, considered one of the best in its class.

Russia, which fought on the side of the Allies, also had its own modification of the Maxim machine gun, which received the official name "Maxim Machine Gun Model 1910". It was similar to the 1905 model machine gun, only differing in the presence of a steel rather than a bronze casing. Heavy and expensive Maxim machine gun arr. 1910, however, was an excellent weapon, suitable for Russian requirements for simplicity and reliability. This fact confirms that the Maxim machine gun was produced in Russia until 1943, this is a kind of record for the production of Maxim machine guns. The machine gun weighed 23.8 kg, and it is interesting to compare it with the 18 kg of the Vickers. The Russian machine gun was mounted on a small wheeled machine, which, together with the shield, weighed 45.2 kg. The caliber of the machine gun was 7.62 mm, the supply of cartridges was also carried out from a cloth tape and also for 250 rounds. The rate of fire was 520 - 600 rounds per minute, that is, higher than that of the Vickers machine gun. The fact that the lever mechanism was not changed in the Russian Maxim machine gun explains the increased size of the receiver below the level of the barrel.

"Vickers" with an improved muzzle.

To ensure the efficiency of the automation, it was necessary to ensure reliable recoil of the barrel. For this purpose, the British screwed a cup onto its muzzle, which, together with the barrel, was inside a spherical muzzle. When fired, the gases coming out of the barrel were forcefully given into this cup, which increased the recoil of the barrel. The shutter spring (in the photo it is removed from the box), as well as on the “maxim”, is on the left. For confident shooting, the force of its tension should be regularly measured and, according to a special table, then weaken it, then, on the contrary, tighten it. For example, if it was planned to shoot at aircraft, the spring should be tightened, and if it was necessary to fire from top to bottom, then loosen it somewhat. It also depends on the time of year!

View of the machine gun on the right. On the barrel is a thermal insulating cover that protected the calculation from burns.

The German machine gun of the 1908 model of the year (MG08) was also a Maxim machine gun. As in the Russian version, it used the mechanism without any changes, resulting in a tall receiver. The machine gun was produced under the standard German caliber 7.92 mm, the supply of cartridges was carried out from a tape for 250 rounds. The rate of fire of 300-450 rounds per minute was lowered, as the Germans believed that it was not the speed of fire and massive fire that was important, but accuracy and efficiency.

German MG08.

This approach made it possible to alleviate problems with ammunition supply and changing the barrel. The machine gun was known under the name "Spandau" by the name of the factory where it was produced. The weight of the machine gun reached 62 kg with a tripod machine and spare parts. The Germans mounted a machine gun on a skid machine to increase mobility. The German machine gunners were selected very carefully, the command, taking into account the events of the end of 1914, believed that the machine gun had become the master of the battlefield. The machine gunners were distinguished by an excellent level of training and skillful skills, which is confirmed by the losses of the French and British in the battles of Chem-de-Dame, Loz, Nue Chapelle and in Champagne.

Details of a standard cup muzzle.

Muzzle at the end of the barrel.

All these machine guns - Vickers, MG08 and the Maxim machine gun of the 1910 model - were created on the basis of the same design. However, the Vickers machine gun had an initial bullet speed of 744 m / s with a barrel length of 0.721 m. The German bullet speed was 820 m / s with a barrel length of 0.72 m, but our machine gun had 720 m / s with a barrel of 0.719 m The Austro-Hungarian Schwarzlose machine gun, which was already mentioned at VO, worked satisfactorily, but the 0.52 m barrel was too short for an 8 mm cartridge. As a result, the Schwarzlose machine gun was often identified by a powerful muzzle flash when fired. Power was supplied from a tape for 250 rounds, the initial velocity of the bullet was small - 620 m / s. Rate of fire 400 rounds per minute.

"Vickers", used during the Second World War.

The calculation of the machine gun "Vickers" in the Libyan desert.

... And a set of figures for gluing, made from this photo!

As for the Vickers, this machine gun is still in service in some countries of the world. For its time, it was a successful and reliable weapon, capable of firing for hours and conducting indirect fire. The French of that time rightfully enjoyed the fame of avid creators of all kinds of modifications. As varieties of the Hotchkiss machine gun, the machine guns of Puteaux, Saint-Etienne and Benet-Mercier appeared. Only they were all unsuccessful copies, mainly due to unreasonable changes in the design. The best Hotchkiss machine gun was the "Model 1914", which used all the improvements of previous models to create a really successful machine gun with a relatively low weight.

Perino machine gun 1901

Now Italy somehow does not appear to us as a "great machine-gun power." But at the dawn of their creation, it was in Italy that one of the most brilliant examples of all time appeared - the 1901 Perino machine gun of the year. The Italians were very pleased with the new machine gun, but preferred to keep its creation a secret for a long time. The purchase of a large batch of Maxim machine guns, just to hide the fact of the presence of a new weapon, shows what a veil of secrecy the Italian machine gun was surrounded by. In this machine gun with air or water cooling, an original power supply system was arranged using clips of 25 rounds each, which were fed in turn from the cartridge box installed on the left, and on the right came out packed in the same clip! Since the cartridges in such a power system were aligned, there were practically no delays in their supply. Any delay was quickly eliminated by pressing a button that removed the problematic cartridge. The weapon showed many other remarkable qualities, but the Italians were delayed with its production, which forced them to use Maxim machine guns and 6.5-mm Revelli machine guns - mediocre weapons, the operation of which was carried out due to the recoil of the barrel and a semi-free shutter. The shutter, of course, could be called lockable, but that would be loudly said.

Device machine gun Perino.

Perino machine gun, converted to belt feed.

At that time, there were other models of machine guns. But the types of weapons described above dominated the battlefields of World War I. It was a grandiose battle, in which, during positional battles, the superiority of this type of weapon was finally proved, which led to the characteristic methods of warfare.

"Vickers" and "Schwarzlose" (in the background).

From experimental purchases of the end of the 19th century to the end of the Second World War.

And use in irregular formations (from Makhno with Antonov to Brat2).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1kQcqfnHJw

Lurkmore ()

“Everything will be as we want. In case of various troubles, We have a Maxim machine gun, They don’t have Maxim.
»
- Quote from Hilaire Bellock's poem "New Traveler".

Canonical, model 1941. The Maxim machine gun is a famous weapon, the progenitor of all modern automatic weapons.

History of creation History of creation “Ah, here, Wikipedia says that “The traditional spring mousetrap was invented by Hiram Maxim, who also invented the Maxim machine gun.” Yes, the dude was not a humanist.
»
- Habrahumorists

The machine gun was invented by the racial English Pindos Khairam Maxim (yes, my young friend, Maxim is a surname, not a name, in which there is also an accent on the first syllable, Maxim!) already in the dense 1883. It was the first to apply the successful implementation of the idea of using recoil energy to reload weapons, which in the days of single-shot army rifles, which were just beginning to have a magazine and manually operated shotguns, was just fucking high-tech (especially the fact that the designer wanted to gash an automatic rifle, but looking at the size of the brainchild, he said “Well, fuck it !! 1” and decided to sculpt a machine gun). The weapon quickly had the disposition of English racial colonialists, as it allowed the crowd of wild nigr, Chinese and Malays to quickly and without losses quickly and without loss, extracting a considerable profit out of this. Subsequently, the cunning Pindos ported the weapon to other calibers and sold a license for it to almost all European countries, which, in turn, made a bunch of modifications and alterations on their own.

Technical features Technical features The machine gun was originally liquid-cooled, which was both a plus in the form of the ability to shoot long bursts without the risk of sticking the barrel from the very first belt, and a minus, expressed by a lot of weight, the need to carry a supply of water with you and problems when using it in winter . Cunning Russian designers, after many complaints about the lack of water, washed down a version with a lid in the casing - to pile snow instead of water (however, racial Finns were the first to use this idea unrestrictedly).
Could be used both on a wheeled machine and on a tripod. And cunning Germans also from bipods and hands. However, not only them.
Initially, the Russian version was equipped with a high shield to protect against bullets, which greatly unmasked the shooter. During the war years, machine gunners often removed this shield themselves, relying more on stealth and good camouflage of positions. Nevertheless, the shield provided good protection for the shooter, so according to knowledgeable people, even a "digged" shield can withstand a bullet from a Mauser rifle fired at close range.
In this country In this country
Antipsychotic applicationIn Russia, the machine gun appeared in 1887, and in 1888 it was personally approved by Tsar Alexander III, after which it was adopted. Initially, machine guns were assigned to artillery, put on heavy carriages, assembled into batteries and used in defense, which did not allow them to be used effectively. However, one such battery shredded quite a few Japanese in a day during the Russo-Japanese War.

Civil War Civil War The Maxim machine gun is one of the symbols of the Civil War. It was actively used by both Reds and Whites, and the Makhnovists even came up with a cart by installing a machine gun on a horse-drawn cart. Subsequently, Chapai copied her and even got himself a specially trained machine gunner.

Great Patriotic War Great Patriotic War
Severe and pretentious machine gunner. By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Maxim was outdated and was discontinued. However, the Degtyarev machine gun, washed down in the 39th year to replace it, turned out to be not without childhood illnesses, therefore, in the first years of the war (in order not to be left without machine guns at all), the long-established production of maxims was restored. Back in 1909, a cover was added to the barrel casing so that cooling water could be made right on the spot and straight from the snow. By the same time, a metal tape was already used to power the machine gun instead of canvas (in fact, both options were produced). By the end of the war, he was still removed from production, and this time - completely.

Four times more lead. Also, on the basis of Maxim, a four-barreled anti-aircraft gun was created for drinking Nazi Junkers and Heinkels, and the racially correct English anti-aircraft gun “pom-pom” (double / quadruple automatic cannon) is simply Maxim, swollen to a caliber of 37 millimeters.

Also, is the source of the local Brest defensive meme "water only for the wounded and machine guns."

And even before the First World War, the British developed a tactic of firing from machine guns from closed positions (at sighted points), which made it possible in the First World War not to let the enemy get out of the trenches and made it possible to hit the enemy in the trenches or fire over the heads of their advancing infantry. This tactic was taught in this country until the start of the war.

After the war After the war Despite the appearance of advanced units such as AK / PK / RPK and others like them, the Maxims removed from service lay peacefully in warehouses, just in case. And every chance nevertheless came when the Chinese communist friends decided to grab the little-known Damansky Island, located in the Primorsky Territory, from the Soviet revisionists. In the end, the crowd of Chinese advancing in "small groups" was stopped only with the help of a prodigy (MLRS "Grad").

During the debriefing, it turned out that against the Chinese zerg rush, the Soviet infantrymen really do not have suitable small arms, because after intensive shooting of several magazines in a row, the AK (as well as other air-cooled shooters) overheats and becomes temporarily useful a little more than nothing. This is where Maxims come in handy, thanks to their water cooling, they are able to mow down enemies in quantities of over 9000 without any fatigue. After that, all Maxims in the USSR were collected and transported to the Soviet-Chinese border, where they were stored for another 30 years.

In the unconscious In the unconscious
Medvedev with a subject. Judging by the look, this is a special presidential meditation.
The canonical Maxim on a machine with a shield symbolizes the USSR, communists, commissars, detachments and mass executions.

In music In music "Wings his machine-gun belt His fire is irresistible The barrel is blued his super-dick And he is full of iron forces "Maxim machine gun", 1990
»
- Agatha Christie
“Look at the map, Where it ripens in March, Where the first orange ripens in March. Where in the shade of the olive Looks at the valleys, Looks at the valleys Machine gun Maxim ...
»
- The Dartz
“From the bell tower he watered everyone with living water The new forty-pound machine gun "Maxim"
»
- "Gypsy", gr.Pilot

Cinema Cinema The Maxim machine gun is present in a huge number of films, of which 2 large groups can be distinguished: about the Civil War (in particular, "Chapaev", where Anka the machine gunner fired from it) and about the Great Patriotic War. From the new machine gun lit up in the film "Brother 2", where two cars with bandits were brutally shot from it.

Literature Literature In Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front, German soldiers, left without water, "refuel" the machine gun with urine. Later, having recaptured the trench from the French, the same soldiers drink water from the casing of the enemy machine gun (however, there were risky guys. Or just really thirsty.).

Also, in G. Wells, in his “War of the Worlds”, troops armed with (especially emphasized) Maxim machine guns oppose tripods. With clear results.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS3N3kmT4KM