"Cowboy" machine gun in the trenches of the Russian front
The contribution of the American arms company "Colt" (to be precise - Colt's Manufacturing Company) to the combat potential of the Russian army can certainly be considered one of the "blank spots" in the history of the Great War. Although in the public consciousness, thanks to popular literature and cinema, the word "Colt" is firmly associated with cowboys and revolvers, in the Russian trenches it was well known thanks to a much more formidable weapon - the Colt М1895 / 1914 heavy machine gun. They were purchased in very large volumes by the military department of the Russian Empire for the needs of the active army, and in terms of the number of barrels on the Russian front, this system was second only to the legendary "Maxim", produced at domestic factories. The deliveries of Colts from the United States made it possible, if not to overcome, then, in any case, to significantly reduce the severity of the shortage of automatic weapons in Russian infantry formations.
In Soviet Russia, these machine guns did not last long, since they were removed from service almost immediately after the end of the Civil War. To a large extent, this was facilitated by the operational fragility of the machine gun barrel, a small stock of repair parts in warehouses, and most importantly, the reorientation of Soviet weapons production to create their own automatic weapons systems.
Originally from the Mormons
The creator of the Colt M1895 / 1914 machine gun was the famous American and then Belgian gunsmith John Moses Browning. It is noteworthy that the outstanding designer of small arms and automatic weapons, who received 128 patents in his life, was born into an American Mormon family.
John Moses Browning. Photo: wikimedia.org
Jonathan Browning, father of John Moses, was a staunch Mormon who moved to Utah in the late 1840s. He had 22 children from three wives, was a lover and connoisseur of weapons. In 1852, with the support of the Mormon community, Jonathan Browning opened his own weapons workshop. Subsequently, John Moses Browning recalled that, constantly playing with weapons being repaired, he learned the name of parts, parts and mechanisms of various weapon systems before he could read.
In the weapons literature there is an indication that John Browning designed his first single-shot rifle, as a gift to his brother Matt, at the age of 14. It is possible that in this case we should still talk not about design, but about the modernization of some already existing system, however, it is completely reliable fact that Browning received his first weapon patent at the age of 23. The single-shot rifle was named “J. M. Browning Single Shot Rifle "and began to be produced under the serial label" Model 1879 ". Browning later modified his first system and under the serial designation "Model 1885" the rifle is still produced in the United States.
As indicated in his treatise on weapons research (the only special Russian-language study on the Colt machine gun to date) S. L. Fedoseev, in the early 70s of the nineteenth century, Browning began work on the "automation" of the multiple-charge rifle. The first design of a kind of "proto-machine gun" was made on the basis of the design of the Winchester M1843 magazine rifle with a swinging arm-brace for reloading. This rifle is well known to all fans of American "westerns" with the participation of unchanging cowboys. Browning introduced a special mechanism into the rifle's device, which, when fired, diverts part of the energy of the powder gases for reloading.
In view of the fact that the brothers John and Matt Browning's own arms company “J. M. Browning & Bros "was financially and technologically low-power, the idea with a gas recharge was proposed to the large arms company" Colt "for joint development. S. L. Fedoseev cites in his research an interesting entry from the diary of the head of the department of advanced developments of the Colt firm K. J. Ebets: “Today, 1891, on June 10, two of the ten Browning brothers were here to discuss their machine gun, a model of which John had brought back on May 1. We agreed that we will try to implement the principle of using gas to drive the weapon mechanism as early as possible in order to get ahead of the claims to Maxim's priority."
Photo: Canadian War Museum
The note in this note is about the gunsmith Hiram Maxim, the creator of the famous and most "large-circulation" in the military history of the Maxim-Vickers heavy machine gun. As you can see, the competition in the American market for inventions and production of automatic weapons at the end of the nineteenth century was extremely sharp. Various arms companies went into their developments literally "head to head", and the advantage in patenting did not exceed several weeks, and sometimes even days.
A patent application for the machine gun modified by the Colt firm was sent to the US Patent Office on August 3, 1891. Over the next few years, the design of the machine gun was protected by three more patents. At the same time, work was underway to improve this automatic system and adjust the technological cycle during its industrial production.
The alliance of John Browning's design ideas and the financial capabilities of the Colt company eventually bore fruit: in 1896, the US Navy adopted the Colt M1895 machine gun chambered for the 6-mm Lee. Around the same time, a small series of Colt M1895 machine guns in the version chambered for 30-40 Krag was acquired by the US Army.
For the first time, the Browning heavy machine gun was used in the battles of the American-Spanish conflict in 1898 in Cuba. However, the Colt M1895 received truly massive use only during the Great War of 1914-1918, moreover, oddly enough, in the Russian army. On the Russian front, unlike the American army, this machine gun has become a truly massive weapon, the second in terms of the total number of barrels after the Hiram Maxim machine gun. The machine gun of the Russian defense order was modernized (the barrel was strengthened, the machine was changed) and was admitted under the Colt Model 1914 neck.
In addition to Russia, Browning's brainchild was purchased in relatively small batches for the armed forces of Great Britain, Belgium and Italy. In the Italian army, the Colt M1895 was used the longest: until the end of 1943, units of the "second line" of defense, formed on the basis of volunteer organizations of the "black shirts" of Mussolini, were armed with these machine guns.
Soldier's potato digger
John Browning, creating his first machine gun, apparently tried to simplify the system as much as possible, to make it so maintainable that it could be repaired in front-line conditions with the help of the simplest tools - a hammer, a file and a wrench. Such a technical installation of the designer is seen in the mechanism of the gas engine of the machine gun, which is responsible for reloading the system, which was very simple and as accessible as possible to external repair.
The vast majority of gas-operated reloading systems are equipped with a linearly moving piston, which moves under the influence of the pressure of the powder gases in a special tubular gas chamber located either under the barrel of the weapon or above it. In modern weapon systems, a similar principle of the gas outlet is used very widely: under the barrel - in many developments of the Browning company (for example, in the Browning Bar II carbine), above the barrel - in the domestic Kalashnikov assault rifle and the Simonov Self-loading carbine (SKS), in a large family German rifles and machine guns Heckler & Koch.
The automatic reloading system of the Colt М1895 machine gun is fundamentally different. When fired, the powder gases, after passing through a special gas outlet in the barrel, did not enter the closed chamber, but flew into the atmosphere, having previously hit the heel (short piston) of the swinging connecting rod. This lever, fixed at one end to the coupling under the barrel of the machine gun, produced a semicircular - 170˚ backward - movement in the lower underbarrel sphere, ejecting the spent cartridge case, reloading the next cartridge and cocking the mainspring.
The connecting rod lever returned to its original position under the action of two return springs mounted in the guide tubes under the barrel. At the same time, the bolt sent another cartridge into the barrel and, if the trigger remained pressed, the next shot took place.
Since the main parts of the bolt group and the reloading mechanism consisted of levers and springs, almost everything was in sight, incomplete disassembly of the Colt М1895 machine gun and the replacement of individual elements of the system did not present any problem.
The flip side of the medal of this scheme was the increased vibration of the machine gun barrel due to the long-stroke movements of the levers attached to the barrel. Vibration became an organic drawback of the Colt M1895 machine gun, and it could not be eliminated either by a significant increase in the weight of the barrel or by a massive tripod type machine.
Demonstration of the Colt machine gun at the Wentworth Military Academy, USA, 1916. Photo: Connecticut State Library
The shaking of the Colt's barrel had the most negative effect on the accuracy of firing from this machine gun, especially at long distances. Even experienced machine gunners, shooting from the Colt, could not show those results of accuracy that were easily given when shooting from the "Maxim", "Lewis" and even "Madsen".
The Colt M1895 also had one more, very unpleasant in frontline conditions, feature: an excessively high profile. A machine gun, installed in the field on an unprepared site, instantly turned a soldier into a virtually half-hull target. This feature of the "Colt" was determined by the need to have at least 15-20 centimeters of free space under the machine gun for the pendulum-like movement of the connecting rod. The movement of the lever under the machine gun excluded the use of "Colt" without a regular, rather high tripod machine.
In the field, a specific clanking knock from the movement of the reloading levers, as well as clouds of dust that rose from the powerful release of powder gases into the lower hemisphere of the weapon, gave the Colt M1895, according to the soldiers, an external resemblance to a mechanical potato digger. "Potato digger" - this is how the English-speaking soldiers called the brainchild of John Browning. This name could arise, of course, only among soldiers from the USA and Great Britain, where mechanical harvesting equipment was used en masse.
In the Russian Empire during the Great War, the overwhelming majority of conscripts from peasants did not have the slightest idea about some kind of "potato diggers". Therefore, in the Russian army, the Colt machine gun was sometimes called in everyday life "Bull" - for its resemblance, apparently, to an angry boogey, which in this state vigorously throws dust and dirt on itself with its front hooves.
The machine gun was powered from a canvas belt for 100 and 250 (later versions) cartridges. Colt M1895 / 1914 was equipped with charging boxes and a machine gun "low tripod", developed specifically for a contract with the Russian military department. The machine was very heavy - almost 24 kilograms. Together with an armored protective shield covering the arrow, the weight of the machine exceeded 36 kilograms. At the same time, the body weight of the machine gun was relatively small - 16, 1 kilograms.
Transportability "Colt" even in comparison with the heavy easel "Maxim" was unsatisfactory. The efforts of the two-man machine-gun crew, in case of urgent need, were enough to move and use the Maxim in combat on the battlefield. "Colt" without fail required at least three machine gunners, otherwise the machine gun moved to a new position risked being left either without a "tripod", or without an armor shield, or without ammunition.
American bulls on the Russian front
The staffing of the infantry formations of the Russian army with machine guns at the beginning of the Great War, to put it mildly, left much to be desired. In a specialized study, S. L. Fedoseev, it is reported that at the end of 1914 the Russian army should have had 4,990 machine guns (for comparison, Germany had more than 12 thousand machine guns for the same period), but in reality only 4,157 barrels were delivered to the troops before August 1, 1914.
In June 1915, the Main Artillery Directorate of the General Staff (GAU) determined the front’s monthly need for 800 machine guns, and in October of the same year, the army’s total need for machine guns for January 1917 was planned at 31,170 pieces. These calculations, as the sources indicate, turned out to be deliberately underestimated, because at the beginning of 1917, about 76 thousand machine guns were delivered to the front, due to extreme necessity. It is clear that the weak industrial base of the Russian Empire could not provide such a number of machine guns for the front.
Armored cars Davidson, equipped with Colt machine guns. Photo: wikimedia.org
With the assistance of the British government, in January 1915, the Russian GAU placed an order in the United States for an installation series of one thousand Colts. The price per unit of $ 650, according to modern experts, was clearly overstated. However, in the future, despite the significantly larger orders, the Americans invariably refused to revise the price downward. Having missed the precious pre-war time, thinking more about the construction of ambitious dreadnought battleships than about machine-gun and artillery support for the ground forces, the Russian military department was now forced to generously pay foreign manufacturers in gold rubles.
At the end of 1915, the British ceded their order in the United States to the Main Artillery Directorate of the General Staff for 22 thousand Maxim and Colt machine guns. At the beginning of the next 1916, the placement of orders for the manufacture of the Colt M1895 machine gun in the United States continued. On January 29, 1916, through English mediation, a contract was signed with the American company Marlin-Rockwell Corporation for the supply of 12 thousand Colt machine guns under the Russian welted cartridge 7, 62x54R. Weapons for this order were to arrive in Russia no later than September 1916.
Almost simultaneously with the Marlin-Rockwell firm, the Colt firm agreed to produce 10,000 "potato diggers" by order of the Russian military department. Subsequently, on September 28, 1916, another, this time the final contract for 3000 Colt М1895 / 1914 machine guns was concluded with the Marlin company.
The vast majority of Colt machine guns were delivered to Russia significantly upgraded. The thickness of the barrel was significantly increased, which made it possible to improve the ballistic performance of the shot and increase the firing time until the barrel warms up dangerously. The concerns of the Russian emissary to the United States, Major General A. N. Sapozhnikov, the height of the tripod machine was reduced, which somewhat reduced the vertical profile of the machine gun.
"Colts" of the Russian order had a frame sight with an entire diopter in the form of a disc with five holes and a scale at 2300 m. Combat use of the "Colt" sight was simple: the sight disc was rotated by the required hole (depending on the range and lighting) on the aiming line. The sight also had a rational mechanism for introducing lateral corrections (corrections for derivation - the deflection of bullets when shooting from a rifled weapon in the direction of rotation - were entered automatically when setting the firing distance).
According to military experts, the "Colt M1895 / 1914" was more agile when firing at a prepared position than the "Maxim" machine gun. The brainchild of John Browning was probably the most technically simple automatic system used in the battles of the Great War.
The Colt machine gun consisted of only 137 parts, of which only 10 screws and 17 springs. The Austrian "Schwarzlose", almost perfectly simple for a heavy machine gun, consisted of 166 parts. British "Vickers" (deeply modernized version of "Maxim") was assembled from 198 parts, 16 screws and 14 springs. Russian "Maxim" model 1910 (later the design was simplified and the number of parts reduced) had about 360 parts, 13 screws and 18 springs.
Russian soldiers with a Colt machine gun. Photo: historyworlds.ru
At the same time, in terms of operational survivability, the Colt machine gun could not even be compared with the Maxim, which had a liquid-cooled barrel. The first versions of the "Colt" generally could only shoot in short bursts and for a very short time, because otherwise the barrel of the machine gun would get almost red-hot and become unusable. The "Russian version" of the Colt M1895 / 1914 machine gun, which received a thick barrel and transverse ribbing along it, could already shoot in long bursts, but also for a very short time. With fire from the "Maxim", the advancing battle formations of the enemy could literally be "flooded" with lead.
The factor of insufficient operational durability of the "Colt" barrel, the relatively low rate of fire from it was, apparently, the reason that in the Russian army American machine guns did not enjoy the special love of soldiers. "In the absence of fish and cancer - a fish!" - says a Russian proverb: the "Colt" machine gun was used only until it happened to change it to "Maxim" or "Lewis".
During the war years, 17,785 Colt machine guns were delivered to Russia, making this automatic system the second most common on the Russian front after the legendary Maxim. Despite the significant volume of supplies from the United States, the Colt machine guns (as well as machine guns of other systems) in the front-line infantry formations, even at the end of the war, were not enough. As of March 1, 1917, there were 2,433 Colt machine guns on four Russian fronts, while according to the staffing table they should have been in the army at least 6,732 barrels.
