Gatling Gun. The history of

A Sensational development of Dr. Richard Gatling was one of the first real machine guns. Its practical rate of fire - 700 rounds of 50-caliber in a minute. Gatling gun - a six-barreled weapon with a clockwise-rotating barrel, which can move thanks to the handle. It was patented in 1862 by Dr. Richard J. Gatling called "Revolving Battery Gun". 

Each barrel fired and is charged mechanically. When they turned, under the force of gravity was the process of ammunition handling in the vacant slot.

"the Gatling" first appeared during the American Civil war, but was really only useful in the Spanish-American. The British used a machine gun Gatling system in colonial battles in South Africa, the Sudan. Not without him and in other battles of the period.

The Gatling Gun was constantly improved with every year he became more reliable and gained momentum rate of fire. For example, in 1876 batistella mechanical model caliber 0.45 inch allowed to fire with a rate of 700 bullets per minute. With a short machine gun bursts reached just enormous for those times the speed of 1,000 rounds a minute.

In Addition, the Gatling gun overheated order of magnitude slower than the other similar tools, thanks to the air flow, which was created during the rotation of the barrel.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries the invention of the Gatling began to be equipped with electric drive. This improvement has allowed to achieve quite incredible rate of fire - 3,000 rounds per minute. However, this made the Gatling gun even more bulky, and so that was the biggest drawback of this tool.

Recommended

Professional figure skates: review, views, and reviews

Ice skating is popular with many. But if you do it professionally, you will need the proper equipment. First and foremost, professional figure skates, which have to meet certain requirements. Before I talk about the most popular brands of this mercha...

Spinner for pike with his hands. The most successful turntables on the pike. The best turntables for pike

The Most effective bait when fishing for pike is considered a spinner. Type it is vertical, oscillating, and rotating. While all of these lures has one goal: the imitation of a fish.All about turntablesthis type is characterized by an absolute unique...

Telescopic fishing rod for fly-casting

Modern rods are composite structures of glass or carbon tubes-knees, having the shape of a cone or cylinder.When choosing a rod professionals pay attention first and foremost on their basic parameters: weight, material, length with stiffness. However...

Later, there were counterparts containing only 1 barrel and working on the principle of using energy generated during impact for a short course. It's knocked out of the use of the Gatling gun and all the other multi-tools.

Finally, I would like to list a few interesting facts regarding the theme of this article:

1. As it surprisingly sounds, but Dr. R. J. Gatling developed his instrument based on the idea of humanity. As said by the inventor himself: "If I could invent an automatic, extremely rapid-fire system which would be able to replace a hundred gunmen, the military could be reduced, thereby to reduce the losses on the battlefield". No one knows, fell whether the US Army after the appearance of the gun, but success in war brought the developed States the Gatling gun. A photo of the first version of the gun-kartechnitsy can be seen in many encyclopedias.
2. At the end of the Vietnam war were invented machine gun caliber 5.56 mm NATO, which was called the M193 Microgun. It was much higher than the rate of fire machine gun M134 Minigun, but mass production never happened. However, the "Microgene" lucky "to be lighted" in the movies "Predator" and "Terminator 2".
3. During one of the colonial wars, the British army, consisting of 1 cavalry and 4 thousand infantry, joined the battle with 20,000 Zulus. However, thanks to the use of only 2 Gatling guns, the British were victorious, losing just 15 people. The Zulu killed more than a thousand.