Carousel of Death: Gatling Gun. Background of modern multi-barreled machine guns 6-barreled Gatling machine gun

Six-barreled machine gun minigun known to us from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s films “Terminator 2”, “Predator” and some computer games in which it acts as a powerful firearm. That Terminator machine gun left no one indifferent.

The rotating trunks and the light from the fire look very impressive and create a truly surreal picture. Perhaps that is why on the screen for many viewers this weapon seems to be just a skillful dummy with well-chosen special effects. But this is not true at all!

Machine guns and Gatling guns ( common name all varieties of these weapons) have been in service with the armies of the United States and many other countries since the century before last and, it seems, are not going to give up their positions in the future. Oddly enough, doctor R. Jordan Gatling invented this miracle to destroy enemy personnel. The doctor's idea was very simple. The soldier rotated the handle of the rotating mechanism, while it rotated and each of the six barrels alternately went through six stages of the firing cycle: chambering a cartridge, closing the bolt, firing, opening the bolt, removing the empty cartridge case and starting the next cycle. If it misfired, the cartridge was ejected along with the spent cartridge case unfired, and did not get stuck in the barrel, as usual, stopping the firing process.

The Minigun machine gun is a former Maxim machine gun

The idea of ​​​​creating weapons of this type appeared at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1865, the so-called “Gatling Canister” was created, which did not remain in service for long, since lightweight and practical automatic systems like “Maxim” appeared and the canister was soon forgotten. But not for long. The fact is that automatic systems were improved, but at the same time it was not possible to increase the rate of fire beyond a certain value, since, as is known, when fired, the metal heats up and expands; with prolonged use, the weapon fails and stops firing. This is where we remembered about multi-barreled weapons: while one barrel is firing, the other 5 are cooling down. If you replace the soldier’s rotating mechanism with an electric motor and improve the supply of cartridges, you will get a weapon with a maximum rate of fire (up to 15 thousand rounds per minute). At first, this multi-barrel system was installed on combat aircraft, helicopters, and ships. Then, during the Vietnam battles, a lightweight “carryable” version of the machine gun appeared.

Although the advantages of the weapon were clear, the disadvantages quickly emerged:

1. To operate the electric motor, you need a powerful battery, which made the weapon heavier, and it was additionally necessary to monitor its charging status. God forbid he gets discharged in battle!
2. Heavy weight, especially taking into account the supply of cartridges and battery.
3. High ammo consumption.
4. Strong recoil.
5. Long recharge time.

During the filming of Terminator 2, precisely because of these shortcomings, it was necessary to use lightweight blank cartridges when shooting, and electricity was supplied via a hidden cable by removing the battery. To prevent the actor from suffering from recoil, he was propped up with a special stand and a bulletproof vest was put on him, since hot shell casings flying out at high speed pose a real danger to humans.

For the Terminator's heavy machine gun, a tripod, or as they are called, a bipod, would be useful. You can also use a monopod instead - this is a specialized tripod for photo and video equipment from the site sotmarket.ru. But this is a last resort; after all, the monopod is not intended for six-barreled machine guns!

Today we are reviewing another Hollywood bestseller - the six-barreled Gatling machine gun M-134 or “Magic Dragon”. In general, this machine gun has many names, it is called “Jolly Sam” and “Meat Grinder”, but the most suitable nickname is still “Magic Dragon”, received by the machine gun not only for its characteristic “roar” but also for its strong fiery flash when firing.

The first order for this type of weapon for infantry came in 1959 from the US armed forces, since machine guns of that time did not allow creating a high density of fire at distances over 500 meters. The company undertakes to fulfill the order General Electric already having decent experience in creating systems of this kind. In nineteen sixty, the company began developing the first prototype of a multi-barrel machine gun system with a caliber of 7.62 millimeters. The basis was the six-barreled 20-mm M-61 Vulcan air cannon, which was also previously created by this company for the US Air Force.

Initially, the order specified a caliber of 12.5 millimeters, but the recoil with a power of more than 500 kgf at 6000 rounds per minute brought the idea to naught. The first tests are carried out in Vietnam on the AC-47 Spooky fire support aircraft (the predecessor of the Finger of God - the Lockheed AC-130 aircraft). The machine gun turned out to be so good that a couple of months later it was accepted into service and began to be installed en masse on the UH-1 Iroquois and AH-1 Cobra.

The ability to switch the rate of fire and its light weight made it possible to install the M-124 even in a double-gun; when firing, this led to the target being fired at being covered with lead. These machine guns terrified the North Vietnamese rebels for a very long time, when firing from them the “green stuff” was simply mowed down for a hundred or two meters. By the seventies, more than 10,000 machine guns had been produced, the lion's share of which went into service with transport and attack helicopters, as well as with light vessels and ships as a means of combating low-flying targets and boats.

For some time, M-134 machine guns were installed on vehicles, but if the vehicle’s engine failed, the machine gun would operate for no more than three minutes until it was completely discharged. By the mid-seventies, “The Magic Dragon” became popular among the civilian population, especially in “armed” states like Texas, it sold more than a thousand copies. The machine gun was used on an infantry bipod with a box for a thousand rounds; firing required a constant 24-volt power source and consumed about three thousand kilowatts per hour at six thousand per minute.

For the defense of stationary structures it was acceptable, but as an offensive weapon it was useless. The weight of the machine gun itself is about 30 kilograms with battery, and the weight of the ammunition load of 1,500 rounds is almost 60 kilograms, this amount of ammunition is enough for a minute of battle. The optimal ammunition load is 4,500 rounds (weighing 136 kg) or 10,000 rounds (290 kilograms).

The operation of the machine gun mechanisms is extremely interesting: the M-134 uses automation with an external drive of the mechanisms from a DC electric motor. Through three gears and a worm shaft, an electric motor drives a block of six barrels. The cycle of loading, firing and unloading is divided into several operations performed at various points of connection between the barrel block and the receiver.

When the barrel moves up in a circle, it is extracted and ejected spent cartridge case. The barrel is locked by turning the bolt cylinder; the movement of the bolts is controlled by a closed curved groove on the inner surface of the machine gun casing, along which the rollers located on each bolt move. Feeding is produced in two ways: the first is using a mechanism without a link feed of cartridges or using a tape.

To control the rate of fire, an electronic fire control unit is used, which has a rate of fire switch, a fuse, a button to start rotating the barrel block and a fire button located on the handle. Modern version The M134D machine gun has only two firing options - 2000 and 4000 rounds per minute. Recoil when firing is directed only back, no barrel toss or pull to the side.

The machine gun also has diopter sights, which, in general, are not needed when using tracer cartridges in a belt for correction, when firing from a machine gun there is a pronounced tracer trail, more like a stream of fire.

I would like to note that the M-134 machine gun has never been used in films; the enormous weight and very strong recoil simply knocks a person off his feet when trying to fire from the hip. For the filming of some cult films (Predator, Terminator, The Matrix), an experimental XM214 machine gun with a caliber of 5.45 millimeters and a recoil of 100 kilograms was used. Despite its relatively small dimensions and “weak” recoil, its rate of fire of 10,000 rounds per minute was simply not acceptable for the army, and the machine gun did not go into production, although it was actively advertised until the nineties of the last century.

/Alexander Martynov, specially for Army Herald/

The principle, created by Gatling in the middle of the 19th century, is now actively used to develop new weapons. The idea of ​​distributed shooting as a way to increase the rate of fire came and returned.

7.62-mm six-barrel aviation machine gun M134 "Minigun"

The 30mm GAU-8 anti-tank machine gun, in service with the US Air Force since the 1970s, is often rightly called the “Gatling gun.” Photo: Ssgt Aaron D. Allmon II, USAF

Hundreds of famous gunsmiths have puzzled over the problem of increasing the rate of fire for centuries. However, the modest American doctor Richard Jordan Gatling (1818–1903) was ahead of everyone. Dr. Gatling had the most harmless medical specialty- he was a homeopath and tried to treat soldiers of the North American Union with herbal tinctures, who were massively decimated by colds, pneumonia, dysentery and tuberculosis. His treatment did little to help the sick, and, quickly becoming disillusioned with the capabilities of medicine, Gatling decided to help the unfortunate people in a different way.

“I think that if I could create a gun-machine, which, thanks to its rapidity of fire, would enable one man to do the work of a hundred, it would largely eliminate the need for recruiting large armies, and, consequently, greatly reduce losses in battle, and especially from diseases,” wrote the good doctor.

Perhaps he was haunted by the fame of his French colleague Dr. Guillotin (Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, 1738–1814), who invented the most effective remedy headache treatment - guillotine.

Reproduction of Richard Jordan Gatling's patent, 1865: National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Patent and Trademark Office

Gatling succeeded much more in the design of various equipment than in medicine. As a young man, he invented several agricultural machines, and in 1862 he patented a type of propeller. In the same year, he presented the federations with his famous machine gun, which, as the doctor hoped, could replace an entire company of riflemen.

For a while the most rapid fire weapon steel revolvers and repeating rifles. Some virtuosos could make one shot per second out of them. However, reloading magazines, drums or barrels (there were multi-barreled revolvers) took a lot of time, which might not have happened in battle.

Therefore, Dr. Gatling set about creating a simple and reliable system fast recharge. His invention was striking in its simultaneous originality and simplicity. Six barrels (of the first model) were attached to a special rotor block, in the grooves of which there were six bolts. When this block began to rotate, each of the barrels (with its own bolt) went through six stages in a circle: opening the bolt, removing the spent cartridge case, chambering a new cartridge, closing the bolt, preparation and the actual shot.

It was possible to shoot from this machine gun indefinitely, until the cartridges ran out or until... the shooter, who set this hellish carousel in motion with the help of an ordinary handle, got tired. By the way, the system received the nickname “meat grinder” for this design feature and rate of fire.

But it very rarely ran out of cartridges. In the first model, they came into the breech from a very simple bunker magazine, in which they lay freely, like cigars in a box. As needed, they were added there by another assistant shooter. If suddenly the cartridges got stuck and stopped pouring into the receiver, it was enough to just hit the hopper with your fist. For the following, capacious multi-sector stores were created in the form of cylinders or tall boxes.

The Gatling machine gun was not afraid of misfires - and this was its second advantage after the unprecedented rate of fire for that time (200–250 rounds per minute).

The 1898 model was in service with the US Army. To teach calculations, a special The educational center in Florida. Photo: US Army

The Gatling system was adopted by the powers of the New and Old Worlds. Both its author himself and other designers created many modifications based on it, differing in caliber, number of barrels and magazine design.

However, human effort was only enough to spin up the Gatling system to a maximum of 500 rounds per minute. With the advent of the Hiram Maxim machine gun (Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, 1840–1916) and other single-barrel self-loading systems recharged by the power of powder gases, the Gatling system, as a slower-firing, bulkier, and most importantly manual, was removed from service and forgotten for several decades.

Until the end of World War II, the military got by just fine with single-barreled machine guns. However, with the advent of high-speed aviation, including jet aircraft, at the end of the war, anti-aircraft gunners needed faster-firing weapons than traditional single-barreled cannons and machine guns, which, at a higher rate of fire, either overheated or their automation failed.

And then they remembered the multi-barreled Gatling machine guns, still stored in spare military warehouses. Gatling's brainchild suddenly discovered two new advantages.

Firstly, with the total rate of fire of the system, say, 600 shots, each of its barrels actually fired only 100 - which means it heated up 6 times slower than the barrel of a conventional machine gun with the same rate of fire. At the same time, the barrels rotated, simultaneously being cooled by air. Secondly, the rate of fire of the Gatling system depended only on... its rotation speed.

The Americans solved this problem simply - they replaced the soldier turning the handle with a powerful electric motor. Such an experiment was carried out at the beginning of the 20th century. The result was amazing: machine guns from the Civil War fired up to 3000 rounds per minute! However, at that time it was regarded only as exciting experience- and did not attach any importance to it.

When in 1946 the American company General Electric received a contract to develop high-rate-of-fire aircraft guns, codenamed Project Vulcan, it remembered this experiment.

By 1950, the company presented the first prototypes, and in 1956, the 20-mm six-barreled M61 Vulcan gun appeared, firing 100 rounds per second! The Vulcan was immediately installed on airplanes, helicopters and ships as the main anti-aircraft weapon. At the end of the 1960s, the Pentagon, which was waging war in the jungles of Vietnam, received a 7.62 mm six-barreled M134 Minigun machine gun, which had electric drive and switchable rate of fire (2000/4000 rounds per minute). Ammunition of 10,000 rounds was enough to turn any suspicious grove into silage! And the powerful 30-mm GAU-8/A, which is armed with attack aircraft, hits armored targets at a distance of up to 2000 meters.

One of the latest American developments is the XM-214 machine gun, chambered for 5.56 mm. It was intended to be used as a hand-held small weapon. However, this was prevented by the large recoil, which knocked down the strongest shooters, as well as the large mass of ammunition (almost 25 kg), the battery for the electric motor and the machine gun itself. Therefore, now they have decided to use it as an easel to protect especially important objects from terrorist attacks.

By the way, the XM-214, which was used hand-held in the films Predator and Terminator 2, was equipped with special low-power blank cartridges. Electricity was supplied to it through a camouflaged cable, and the actors were dressed in body armor so that they would not be disfigured by flying cartridges - and they were even propped up from behind with special hidden stands!

Domestic designers began resuscitating multi-barreled systems before the Americans - back in 1936, Kovrov gunsmith Ivan Slostin created an eight-barreled 7.62 mm machine gun that fired 5,000 rounds per minute. At the same time, Tula designer Mikhail Nikolaevich Blum (1907–1970) developed a machine gun with a twelve-barrel block of barrels. At the same time, the domestic system had a fundamental difference from the future American one - it was rotated not by an electric motor, but by gases removed from the barrels, which significantly reduced the total weight of the installation. And this difference remained in the future.

Unfortunately, the adoption of multi-barrel systems in the USSR was delayed until a potential enemy acquired them. Only in the 1960s did designer Vasily Petrovich Gryazev and scientist Arkady Grigorievich Shipunov create the GSh-6-23M air cannon with a rotating block of six 23-mm barrels, firing up to 10,000 rounds per minute. Then the 30mm AK-630 shipborne mounts were created, recognized as one of the best in the world! And only Evgeniy Glagolev’s four-barreled GShG-7.62 machine gun, created for helicopters, had an American-style electric drive.

And Tula designer Yuri Zhuravlev created an aircraft cannon that set a rate of fire record: 16,000 rounds per minute! Apparently, this is the limit of the rate of fire: during tests, unable to withstand the high rotation speed, its barrels scattered in different directions. And now the Gatling system is being replaced by new ones - with more big amount barrels and a truly fantastic rate of fire.

Domestic-made multi-barreled guns began to be used by the Soviet army in the 1970s. The Tarantula class patrol ship, built in the USSR, bore the name of Rudolf Egelhofer until 1991. Under this name he “served” in the GDR. Now “serving” in the USA under the name “Hiddensee”. Photo: Don S. Montgomery, US Navy

Multi-barreled machine guns and automatic cannons, which became widespread in the second half of the 20th century, had an interesting backstory. One of its little-known pages was the weapon of the Soviet designer Ivan Ilyich Slostin - a striking example of an invention that was ahead of its time.

From pepper shaker to meat grinder

Firearms with a rotating block of barrels appeared at the end of the 18th century, when pepperboxes, muzzle-loading multi-barreled pistols, became widespread in Great Britain. The first models with a flintlock located above a common seed flange had six barrels screwed into a common base. For each next shot, it was necessary to rotate the block by hand, placing the priming hole of the next barrel under the lock - approximately the same way as you need to rotate a manual pepper mill. The flintlock turned out to be quite unsuccessful for such a design, and pepperboxes became widespread only in the 30s of the 19th century, after the advent of the cap lock. In the United States, Ethan Allen received a patent for capsule pepperboxes in 1834. The rotation of the barrel block and cocking of the hammer in his models were carried out by a trigger, in the manner of a revolver.

Allen's Pepperboxes were equipped with several barrels (up to six) with a length of 6 to 14 cm and a caliber from 21 to 36 (7.8–9.1 mm in the metric system). In addition to the USA, multi-barreled pistols of the American designer have become widespread in the UK.

In 1839, the Belgian designer J. Mariette patented his pepperbox design. His pistols, ranging in caliber from 7.62 to 12.7 mm, had from 4 to 18 barrels and were produced in continental Europe, primarily in Belgium itself and in France. Distinctive feature Pepperboxes had a high rate of fire, but this advantage was negated by the lengthy process of loading through the barrels (however, there were also Pepperbox models that were loaded through the breech). The tight trigger mechanism was the reason for low shooting accuracy, and they were used for shooting at short distances, mainly for self-defense - although in Civil War in the USA, volunteers used such pistols during combat operations. Pepperboxes, which had many trunks, were quite heavy. After several decades of existence, they finally disappeared from the scene after revolvers chambered for centerfire became widespread. Pepperboxes ceased production in the 1870s.

The next generation of multi-barreled weapons with a rotating block of barrels was the famous “Uncle Gatling’s meat grinder.” Richard Gatling, the son of a farmer from Connecticut, received a patent for his most famous (but not the only one - he had patents for a rice seeder, a steamboat propeller, etc.) invention in November 1862. A doctor by profession, Gatling was distinguished by his rare love of humanity. He wrote about the motives that prompted him to invent weapons of mass destruction in the 19th century:

"If I could create mechanical system shooting, which, thanks to its rate of fire, would allow one person to replace a hundred riflemen on the battlefield, the need for large armies would disappear, which would lead to a significant reduction in human losses.".

British-made Model 1865 Gatling gun

Tellingly, the new miracle weapon received its slang name (“meat grinder”) not because of its destructive effect on the flesh, but, like the Pepperbox, because of its reloading method. The block of barrels and the trigger mechanism were driven by a handle that the shooter had to rotate. This action had an obvious resemblance to the preparation of minced meat using an ordinary manual meat grinder, which is quite widespread in our time.

The invention of the American humanist doctor spread widely across the planet. This was facilitated by the pace of possible destruction of their own kind, proposed by Gatling and pleasant for the military, unprecedented at that time. If the first model Gatling gun had a rate of fire of about 200 rounds per minute, numerous improvements in the design by 1876 increased it to a fantastic theoretically possible 1200 rounds per minute (although in battle a rate of about 400–800 rounds per minute was achievable). The production of the “meat grinder” and variations on its theme was mastered in other countries. In Russia, for example, a “4.2-line automatic cannon” of the Gatling-Gorlov system under the “Berdanov” cartridge was adopted.

The design of a 4.2-line machine gun of the Gatling-Gorlov system. The name “cardbox” in modern terminology for the Gatling system is not entirely correct

The rotating block of barrels itself, as we remember, was not Gatling’s invention. His merit was in creating a mechanism for feeding cartridges from the tray into the barrel and subsequent extraction of the cartridge case from the barrel. Each of the barrels had its own bolt and firing pin, which were driven by a spring at the top of the barrel's trajectory after a cartridge from the tray entered the chamber. Despite the lack of real automation, the rate of fire of the multi-barrel Gatling design was many times greater than the rate of fire of single-barreled machine guns. Several barrels (in the most common samples from – 4 to 10), firing one after another, did not have time to overheat and did not become dirty from soot so quickly.

“Classic” Gatling machine guns barely made their way into the American army, but then became quite widespread around the world and managed to take part in several wars at the end of the 19th century. Multi-barreled rapid-fire small-caliber guns were also adopted, for example the five-barreled 37-mm Hotchkiss gun.

Five-barreled 37-mm Hotchkiss gun on the deck of a Russian ship

Chemistry put an end to the multi-barreled machine gun with a rotating block of barrels. Developed by Hiram Maxim, a single-barrel machine gun with real automatics used cartridges invented in 1884 smokeless powder. Now the barrel was not so dirty - and the water cooling system allowed Maxim’s invention to successfully combat overheating. Yes, a single-barrel machine gun, in theory, had a slower rate of fire - but at the same time it was much less bulky. In addition, the absence of the need to rotate the handle when firing had a very beneficial effect on both the accuracy of the fire (aiming the barrel while simultaneously rotating the handle is another pleasure) and the degree of fatigue of the machine gunner.

To the beginning of the First World War, victory of single-barreled automatic machine guns became obvious. True, in 1916 in Germany, the Fokker Werke GmbH company developed a 12-barrel Fokker-Leimberger machine gun with a caliber of 7.92 mm with an external automatic drive and a declared rate of fire of 7200 rounds per minute for arming aircraft. But by the end of the war, only one prototype was created, which did not take part in hostilities.

Second coming

For about half a century, the single-barrel machine gun reigned supreme. As a rule, its rate of fire suited the military quite well. If it was necessary to increase the density of fire, for example, to hit fast-moving air targets, the machine guns were simply connected into bulky batteries. And the planes themselves were armed with many barrels of various calibers - in an air battle, an enemy plane was in the sights literally for an instant, and increasing the second salvo for the designers was a very important task.

By the end of World War II, single-barreled cannons and machine guns had practically reached the “structural” rate of fire limit, which was primarily due to overheating of the barrel. Meanwhile, aircraft speeds, and, as a result, the dynamics of air combat, grew rapidly as a result of the advent of jet aircraft. It turned out that hitting a jet plane from the ground and hitting it from jet plane targeting a small target on the ground with a traditional single-barreled automatic weapon is very problematic.

In the late 1940s, specialists from the American corporation General Electric began experiments on museum exhibits, installing electric motors on samples of Gatling weapons. However, there is information that such experiments were carried out back in late XIX century, but at that time their super-rate of fire simply did not find application. The replacement of muscular power with electrical power on the move pleasantly surprised the designers, allowing for a rate of fire of more than 2000 rounds per minute. And after improving the design using technologies available in the mid-20th century, the new six-barreled automatic 20-mm cannon M61A1 Vulcan fired 6000 rounds per minute.

20-mm automatic cannon M61А1 Vulcan from the armament of the Hornet F18 fighter

The return of the multi-barrel rotating design was triumphant. Of course, cannons and machine guns made according to this design occupy a special niche - as a light or single machine gun, for example, they cannot be used due to their large mass. And this is true even for the most “miniature” 5.56 mm machine guns - a Terminator and Tony Stark in an exoskeleton can conduct aimed fire from such weapons, but not an ordinary infantryman. But as weapons for aviation and air defense forces, such systems have become indispensable and are still used by all advanced armies to this day. Although, of course, they have certain disadvantages, such as the inertia of the heavy barrel block, due to which the maximum rate of fire does not occur immediately, and some of the ammunition is wasted when the burst ends.

Slostin machine gun

Widely known multi-barrel designs Soviet gunsmiths appeared after General Electric experiments on museum exhibits and had a significant difference in terms of automation operation. Domestic designers decided to abandon the use of an electric motor, which requires an external energy supply, and used the energy of powder gases. Gas engine, powered by exhaust gases, rotates the block of barrels, and the initial spin-up is carried out by a spring starter device that stores energy when the block is braked at the end of each burst. It should be noted that in addition to electric and gas, pneumatic and hydraulic drives can also be used in various multi-barrel systems.

Despite the later adoption of domestic models, the opinion that Soviet designers lagged behind their American colleagues in the matter of reviving the concept of cannons and machine guns of a multi-barreled design is fundamentally incorrect.

Slostin machine gun on a Sokolov wheeled machine

Weapon designer Ivan Ilyich Slostin, unfortunately, is little known. It was he who, back in 1939, presented for field testing the first model of his 7.62-mm eight-barreled machine gun with a rotating block of barrels, the automation of which worked using the removal of powder gases. For testing, the machine gun was mounted on a wheeled machine. The rate of fire of 3300 rounds per minute, the instantly (in 4.5 seconds!) empty belt of 250 rounds of ammunition and a small crater at the site of the stand with the target amazed military officials - no one expected this from a 7.62 mm machine gun. However, the design turned out to be “crude” - after 250 shots, the barrels overheated and the machine gun refused to work. The accuracy of fire was also unsatisfactory.

After the war, in August-September 1946, Ivan Ilyich presented his new heavy machine gun for testing. The operation of its automation was also based on the removal of powder gases. By means of two couplings, eight barrels were connected to each other into a single drum, which could move longitudinally. Each barrel had a gas piston placed in the gas chamber of the adjacent barrel in such a way that a closed circuit was formed between all the barrels. The transfer of the impulse of pore gases through the piston to the chamber of the next barrel set the automatic machine gun in motion.

Slostin machine gun

Despite the fact that the rate of fire of 3000–3100 rounds per minute declared by the designer was not achieved during the tests (in reality it was 1760–2100 rounds per minute), and the accuracy of fire of the eight-barreled machine gun was 6–7 times inferior to this indicator of the Goryunov heavy machine gun model 1943, the commission highly appreciated Slostin’s brainchild, as evidenced by the opinions of test participants:

Engineer Lieutenant Colonel Lysenko:

“Designer Slostin managed to solve the idea of ​​​​creating a multi-barreled machine gun well: a high rate of fire, the possibility of long-term firing, and a compact system. Modify this machine gun and use it as a means of reinforcement in the infantry. Try to make such a 14.5 mm machine gun. You can create a good zen under it. installation."

Engineer-Captain Slutsky:

“The high rate of fire has a depressing effect on the enemy... The weight of 28 kg, when compared with the Maxim machine gun, is not very large. You can get decent survivability. Reliability can also be improved. The machine gun allows 1500 shots without cooling the barrels. This gives him a colossal combat rate of fire. Modify the machine gun<…>There will be a place for its use immediately. As a means of strengthening for infantry, it is indispensable, as evidenced by the experience of war. The infantry loved to use Maxim's fours, and this would be better than fours. Make this machine gun chambered for 14.5 mm.”

Engineer-Captain Kutsenko:

“I agree with Comrade Comrade’s opinion. Lysenko and Slutsky. For a 14.5 mm caliber it is unlikely to achieve good survivability. Stopping the drum suddenly will have a detrimental effect on its strength. But getting such a machine gun is very tempting - it has a purpose. The rate of fire for the 14.5mm needs to be kept the same as for this 7.62mm caliber. Belt – 250 rounds is not enough, you need at least 500 (coupling).”

Engineer Lieutenant Colonel Tsvetkov:

“It is impossible to use the Slostin machine gun in infantry units (platoon, company) - it is too heavy. As a means of enhancement it deserves attention. Increase tape capacity. The machine gun has no small parts. You can get good survivability. It is premature to judge how this machine gun will behave with a caliber of 14.5 mm.”

The commission's report stated:

“Under acceptable firing modes with a cutoff of 1,500 rounds, a machine gun designed by Slostin, in addition to high fire efficiency and continuous barrage fire, will also provide a demoralizing effect on the enemy. He will almost certainly put the advancing infantry units to flight. The noise created by a machine gun has a depressing effect on nervous system»

Slostin machine gun on an anti-aircraft stand

Main characteristics of the 7.62 mm Slostin machine gun

Already in 1946, the reports of the commission members expressed the opinion that it would be possible to increase the caliber of the system. The colossal power of a large-caliber machine gun with an ultra-high rate of fire looked in an interesting way qualitative increase in fire power. In May 1949, at the Research Site for small arms and mortar weapons of the Main artillery control A prototype of a Slostin heavy machine gun chambered for 14.5 mm was tested. In case of successful tests, it was planned to be used, among other things, as an anti-aircraft weapon on the IS-7 heavy tank being developed. Another option for using a machine gun was a project to install it on the chassis of a ZIS-151 truck to combat enemy aircraft and manpower. IN heavy machine gun the barrels were assembled into a rigid structure and did not move longitudinally, and the automation was activated by rolling back the slide with the gas piston of the firing barrel.

Slostin's large-caliber machine gun, unfortunately, had two significant drawbacks that could not be eliminated without a radical redesign of the entire design. Difficulties in braking a massive block of eight barrels led to an off-central puncture of the primer, and the locking unit for the barrel bore without a bolt was unreliable and caused transverse breaks in the cartridge cases of the powerful 14.5 mm cartridge.

With this test, the history of the original Slostin multi-barreled machine guns ended. To multi-barreled machine guns and artillery systems Soviet designers returned later, at the height of cold war. It is possible that, creating another rapid fire machine gun, one of them was looking at the drawings of the Kovrov gunsmith Ivan Ilyich Slostin, a designer who was ahead of his time.

Literature:

• Yu. Ponomarev. Heavy machine guns I. I. Slostin - Kalashnikov. Weapons, ammunition, equipment 1/2008
• Yu. Shokarev. Pepperbox - Weapons
• D. Yurov. A barrage of lead: a Soviet multi-barreled machine gun that was ahead of its time tvzvezda.ru

In the history of mankind there are many examples of weapons that have become not only iconic, but have also been used by people for centuries. The Gatling gun is one of these ingenious inventions.

History of appearance

The Gatling gun is a figment of the imagination and hands of a man who did not have a military education, but was a certified doctor. Despite the fact that instead of saving lives, its creator intended to effectively take them, it was thanks to this weapon that he left a mark on human history. Richard Jonathan Gatling (1818-1903) had a passion for invention from a young age. Having become a certified doctor, he did not devote himself to the health of patients for long, but began to develop effective weapons. In 1862, he received his first patent for the Revolving Battery Gun. At that time, the fastest-firing weapons were revolvers and repeating rifles. Their disadvantage was the long reloading time, which had to be done after several shots. Gatling decided to create a new system that would be convenient, reliable and would not require long downtime to change cartridges.

Operating principle

The first Gatling gun created a real sensation. Many could not even imagine that it was possible to solve the problem of rate of fire and reloading with such grace. The principle of operation of the Gatling machine gun is so simple that it is strange that the most famous gunsmiths in the world had not thought of it before. For his gun, the doctor chose a rotating cylinder as a means of feeding the next cartridge into the barrel. He led him to the firing mechanism, which accelerated the firing of shots. The 1862 Gatling gun had 6 barrels. They were attached to a special rotor unit. 6 shutters were placed in its grooves. The Gatling gun, the design of which was elementary to the point of banality, allowed us to take a different look at the possibilities of rate of fire. When the rotor block rotated, each barrel, which had its own bolt, went through 6 stages in a circle:

• opening the shutter;
• removing the sleeve;
• sending a new cartridge;
• closing the shutter;
• Preparation;
• shot.

The Gatling machine gun, drawings of which are available in our review, is simply amazing in its exceptional simplicity and effectiveness. That is why, even a century and a half after its invention, the military did not lose their interest in it. The Gatling machine gun can now be found in service with many armies around the world. They are installed on armored vehicles, vehicles, aircraft, ships and used manually.

Gatling's innovation

By the 60s of the 19th century, various multi-barreled weapon systems already existed, but they were ineffective in combat because they required long reloading times. Also, Gatling was not an innovator in the arrangement of barrels according to the revolver design. The merit of this inventor is that he was able to design a simple and original mechanism for feeding new cartridges and ejecting spent cartridges.

First demonstration and slow progress

The first Gatling gun was demonstrated in 1862 in Indianapolis. At first it was not much better than the weapons of other inventors. The Gatling gun was able to demonstrate its real advantage only after it used bimetallic cartridges with a pointed bullet and a primer inserted during manufacture. Despite the fact that such ammunition was invented several years before the advent of the Gatling gun, they were used extremely rarely. Only in 1866 did the inventor, Colonel E. Boxer, add a centrally located primer to such a cartridge. Such ammunition received Gatling approval only five years later, when tubes made of copper wire attached to the base proved their worth in rapid-fire shooting.

Ammo

The Gatling gun, like other weapons of the era, used cylindrical cartridges to fire. They were rolls of wax paper into which gunpowder and a bullet were stuffed. The design of the Gatling machine gun for continuous firing provided for the presence of special steel tubes, the walls of which were particularly strong. The cartridges were inserted into them and sealed. A puncture was made in their base, which had room for the detonator. The entire package of tubes with cartridges was fed into the barrel by rotating the breech of the weapon mechanism. It acted as a disposable chamber (a cavity in a gun), removed after firing. After shooting the ammunition, the cycle was repeated.

The advantage of paper cartridges was that they burned almost completely with the charge they contained, so there was no need to remove them from the chamber. This is why Gatling persisted for so long in using new types of ammunition. Copper and brass cartridge cases had to be removed after firing. To facilitate this procedure, they were equipped with a rim located at the base. A special pulling device grabbed the cartridge case for removal from the chamber. There were several varieties of these innovations. Ultimately, the best solution to this problem was to create a bolt device that removed the spent cartridge case and loaded a new cartridge from a special magazine in just one back-and-forth motion. Gatling adapted this device for his rotating machine gun. He almost completely changed the design of the first gun and combined the barrel and chamber.

Trunks

Gatling mounted a group of 6 barrels on one axis. Moreover, they are all evenly located around the central “rod”. By rotating them all together, he was able to solve the alignment problem. A simple fixed cam moved the bolts in each chamber back from the firing position and forward again (on the way down, where the empty chamber was filled again). The spent cartridge was ejected at approximately the ten o'clock position. It occurred when the shooter turned the handle to rotate the barrel assembly.

The machine gun was equipped with a magazine located on top. The supply of ammunition was carried out without a spring by gravity. During one cycle of rotating the block of barrels by 360°, each of them fired a single shot, was released from the cartridge case and loaded again.

Drive and carriage

The six-barreled Gatling gun was equipped with a manual drive. The military man used a special handle to rotate the block of barrels. The rate of fire and firing range of this system was greater than that of artillery pieces that time. Since the size of the Gatling gun at that time was very large, it was mounted on carriages and was often equated to a cannon.

First order

Gatling received his first official order for the manufacture of a multi-barreled machine gun from McQuinney, Rindge & Company in Illinois. A batch of guns with a conical bore was ordered by General B. F. Butler. The caliber of the gun was 0.58 inches. For 12 weapons, Gatlig received a decent amount of 12 thousand US dollars. General Butler used the resulting guns during the siege of Petersburg (Virginia) in 1864. Since Gatling demanded a high price for his machine guns at that time, demand for them was quite low. Only small quantities were ordered from the creator of rapid-fire guns, which did not justify his hopes for industrial production on a large scale.

Improvement

Over the course of several years, the inventor continued to improve his creation. The Gatling gun, whose design remained largely the same, achieved a stable rate of fire. It fired 300 rounds per minute. Moreover, in many tests it was even higher. In 1866, the Gatling gun was introduced to the market in two modifications:

1. A six-barreled heavy gun, the caliber of which was 1 inch. Such guns were mounted on massive carriages with large wheels. From a distance they looked like real cannons.
2. Ten-barreled light gun with a caliber of 0.45 inches.

At this time, the Gatling gun received official approval from representatives of the US Army.

Further promotion

In the late 60s of the 19th century, Gatling sold several large quantities of guns not only to his military, but also to the armies of Great Britain, Russia, Turkey, Japan, and Spain. Gatling guns were constantly being improved. The inventor constantly improved their reliability and rate of fire. In 1876, a mechanical 5-barrel 0.45-inch model fired 700 rounds per minute. The rate of fire of the Gatling machine gun when firing in short bursts reached 1000 rounds per minute. Despite this rhythm of work, the gun barrels did not overheat at all, since each of them fired no more than 200 shots. At the same time, they were also cooled with the help of the air flow created during rotation. The Gatling machine gun in traditional versions has 4-10 barrels with a caliber of 12-40 mm. Firing range - up to 1 km.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, electric drives began to be installed on Gatling guns. This modernization brought the machine gun’s rate of fire to a record 3,000 rounds per minute. There was one significant drawback in such a system: the electric drive made the weapon even more cumbersome. Subsequently, the armies of the world began to give preference to single-barreled machine guns, which were more compact and maneuverable. Gatling's brainchild began to be gradually forgotten.

Modern life

After years of undeserved oblivion, the Gatling gun has become popular again. It was especially relevant during the Second World War. It was installed on warships, vehicles, airplanes. After the war it was developed a large number of various modifications of this machine gun. Moreover, they were all of different calibers and sizes, but the design of the Gatling machine gun remained the same. Various drives are installed on such weapons: hydraulic, electric, gas, pneumatic. The machine gun is loaded using drum magazines or cartridge belts. Modern technologies and materials have made it possible to create a very convenient and highly efficient light machine gun Gatling, which is often used in special military operations by special forces.

Gatling's invention lives on beyond the military. He can be found in unexpected place. So, Space Engineers - the Gatling gun is one of the weapons often used in computer game about space adventures.

Since the drawings of this weapon is freely available, and in stores you can find anything you want, many craftsmen, seduced by the simplicity of the design of the tool, decide to make it themselves. And this applies not only to models made of paper or wood, but also to fully combat-ready metal specimens. The Gatling gun was made by hand not only from iron, but even from copper. Moreover, all these attempts were quite successful. So, one craftsman created a homemade six-barreled Gatling machine gun, which was quite functional. But this does not mean that it is worth experimenting with such a serious weapon. Besides, it's illegal. It is better to stick to simple wooden or paper layouts.