machine gun
machine gun, automatic weapon of small calibre that is capable of sustained rapid fire. Most machine guns are belt-fed weapons that fire from 500 to 1,000 rounds per minute and will continue to fire as long as the trigger is held back or until the supply of ammunition is exhausted. The machine gun was developed in the late 19th century and has profoundly altered the character of modern warfare.
Modern machine guns are classified into three groups. The light machine gun, also called the squad automatic weapon, is equipped with a bipod and is operated by one soldier; it usually has a box-type magazine and is chambered for the small-calibre, intermediate-power ammunition fired by the assault rifles of its military unit. The medium machine gun, or general-purpose machine gun, is belt-fed, mounted on a bipod or tripod, and fires full-power rifle ammunition. Through World War II the term “heavy machine gun” designated a water-cooled machine gun that was belt-fed, handled by a special squad of several soldiers, and mounted on a tripod. Since 1945 the term has designated an automatic weapon firing ammunition larger than that used in ordinary combat rifles; the most widely used calibre is .50 inch or 12.7 mm, although a Soviet heavy machine gun fired a 14.5-millimetre round.
From the introduction of firearms in the late Middle Ages, attempts were made to design a weapon that would fire more than one shot without reloading, typically by a cluster or row of barrels fired in sequence. In 1718 James Puckle in London patented a machine gun that was actually produced; a model of it is in the Tower of London. Its chief feature, a revolving cylinder that fed rounds into the gun’s chamber, was a basic step toward the automatic weapon; what prevented its success was the clumsy and undependable flintlock ignition. The introduction of the percussion cap in the 19th century led to the invention of numerous machine guns in the United States, several of which were employed in the American Civil War. In all of these either the cylinder or a cluster of barrels was hand-cranked. The most successful was the Gatling gun, which in its later version incorporated the modern cartridge, containing bullet, propellant, and means of ignition.
The introduction of smokeless powder in the 1880s made it possible to convert the hand-cranked machine gun into a truly automatic weapon, primarily because smokeless powder’s even combustion made it possible to harness the recoil so as to work the bolt, expel the spent cartridge, and reload. Hiram Stevens Maxim of the United States was the first inventor to incorporate this effect in a weapon design. The Maxim machine gun (c. 1884) was quickly followed by others—the Hotchkiss, Lewis, Browning, Madsen, Mauser, and other guns. Some of these utilized another property of the even burning of smokeless powder: small amounts of the combustion gas were diverted through a port to drive a piston or lever to open the breech as each round was fired, admitting the next round. As a result, during World War I the battlefield was from the outset dominated by the machine gun, generally belt-fed, water-cooled, and of a calibre matching that of the rifle. Except for synchronizing with aircraft propellers, the machine gun remained little changed throughout World War I and into World War II. Since then, innovations such as sheet-metal bodies and air-cooled, quick-changing barrels have made machine guns lighter and more reliable and quick-firing, but they still operate under the same principles as in the days of Hiram Maxim.
Most machine guns employ the gas generated by the explosion of the cartridge to drive the mechanism that introduces the new round in the chamber. The machine gun thus requires no outside source of power, instead using the energy released by the burning propellant in a cartridge to feed, load, lock, and fire each round and to extract and eject the empty cartridge case. This automatic operation may be accomplished by any of three ways: blowback, recoil, and gas operation.
In simple blowback operation, the empty cartridge case is hurled backward by the explosion of the cartridge and thereby pushes back the bolt, or breechblock, which in turn compresses a spring and is returned to the firing position upon that spring’s recoil. The basic problem involved in blowback is to control the rearward motion of the bolt so that the gun’s cycle of operation (i.e., loading, firing, and ejection) takes place correctly. In recoil operation, the bolt is locked to the barrel immediately after a round is fired; both the bolt and barrel recoil, but the barrel is then returned forward by its own spring while the bolt is held to the rear by the locking mechanism until a fresh round has fallen into place in the opened breech.
More common than either of these two methods is gas operation. In this method, the energy required to operate the gun is obtained from the pressure of gas tapped off from the barrel after each cartridge explodes. In a typical gas-operated machine gun, an opening or port is provided in the side of the barrel at a point somewhere between the breech and the muzzle. When the bullet has passed this opening, some of the high-pressure gases behind it are tapped off through the hole and operate a piston or some similar device for converting the pressure of the powder gases to a thrust. This thrust is then used through a suitable mechanism to provide the energy necessary for performing the automatic functions required for sustained fire: loading, firing, and ejection.