Almost from the very beginning of the appearance of firearms, designers in many countries of the world tried to achieve an increase in its rate of fire. The advantages of massive fire quickly became clear to the military of all countries. For a long time, the only way to increase the rate of fire of a weapon was to train the shooter himself. A well-trained soldier could fire more shots per minute, in reality this could have an impact on the outcome of the entire battle. The second way to increase the rate of fire was a constructive change in the weapon, and the simplest option was to increase the number of barrels.
It is worth noting that the idea of increasing the number of barrels was simple, lay on the surface and became one of the first on the way to increasing the real rate of fire of firearms. In many countries of the world, designers have created real multi-barreled monsters that could not replace a modern machine gun or machine gun, but definitely made an impression, at least with their appearance, like a 14-barreled gun created by the English gunsmith William Dupé at the dawn of the 19th century.
14-barrel shotgun by William Dupé
English gunsmith William Dupé created firearms at the turn of the 19th century, some of his models have survived to this day, on the Internet you can find sets of dueling pistols from this gunsmith. However, of greatest interest is the 14-barrel shotgun, which can be seen today in the collection of the Museum of Weapons in Liege. It is believed that the master made this unusual specimen for the British Army Colonel Thomas Thornton around the turn of 1800.
A feature of the gun was the presence of two blocks of seven barrels each. Each of the 14 barrels had a caliber of 12.5 mm. For weapons of the era of black powder domination and round bullets, the caliber was small. Traditional army guns of those years had a caliber of 15, 4 mm, and for fortress guns it reached 25 mm. At the same time, a volley of a 14-barrel gun could become a weighty argument in any battle or dispute that needed to be resolved with a weapon. Most likely, firing from an unusual gun was fired in volleys, which made it possible to fire seven bullets at the target in one shot. The effect for the enemy was monstrous, as was the expected recoil at the moment of the shot.
The weapon could hardly be called mobile, given the size and weight, which should have been very impressive. It is difficult to understand for what purpose such a weapon was needed by the colonel of the British army. In battle, the weapon could be used only in specific conditions (in defense with strong walls or a suitable support), hunting with it would be sheer madness, if we do not take into account the case when a deer or other forest animals would not run out to the position hunter yourself. The original decisions of the gunsmith include the presence of a tactical grip, an advanced solution for its time. Without her, holding the gun at the moment of the shot, apparently, was simply impossible.
British assault boarding rifles
Separately, you can highlight the multi-barreled guns, which were used during boarding fights. We are all familiar with the image of a pirate who has become entrenched in the cinema. An on-screen character preparing to attack an enemy ship is armed with several pistols at once. In a world that lacked multiple-charge weapons, this was the way out. Another solution was multi-barrel models of guns, some of which most resembled a sawn-off shotgun.
The famous models of multi-barreled small arms of the era of the Napoleonic wars include the British seven-barreled naval gun Nock. The weapon gained fame thanks to a series of novels by the writer Bernard Cornwell, telling about the adventures of the shooter Sharpe. The model was produced in a small series in the late 18th - early 19th centuries. The design of the seven-barreled gun was developed by James Wilson, but the manufacturer Henry Knock was engaged in the production, who gave his name to the unusual model of firearms.
The weapon was a fairly heavy (weighing more than 6 kg) musket with seven barrels and one flintlock. The gun fired in a volley, sending seven lead bullets of 13.2 mm caliber at the enemy, the total weight of the volley was 170 grams. Such a volley literally swept away opponents from the deck of an enemy ship. With all the shortcomings, which included not the most outstanding shooting accuracy and huge recoil from the shot, the weapon found its connoisseurs. In a situation where targets are piled up on the deck of the ship, this was not so important. The disadvantages of weapons also included the difficulty of leaving and the duration of the reloading process, these problems were common to all samples of multi-barreled weapons of those years.
The multi-barreled gun could be used both when boarding an enemy ship and as an anti-boarding weapon. There is also a version that the unusual gun could have been used by the captains of British ships as a weighty argument when it was necessary to prevent a riot of the crew. In any case, the British government bought about 600 of these seven-barreled Knock rifles for the navy.
Five-barreled boarding gun
Another example of such a boarding weapon is presented on the strangernn.livejournal.com blog. on the pages of the blog, the author talks about an assault rifle with five barrels. The main materials are wood and bronze. The multi-barreled weapon was manufactured in about the same time frame as the unusual 14-barreled shotgun of William Dupé. Moreover, it is technologically simpler. All five bore holes were drilled into a large bronze blank. This is the main difference of the model from previous samples, where each barrel was separate.
With a rather modest size, the mass of a five-barreled assault rifle was 5.8 kg. At the same time, the weapon was much shorter than the seven-barreled Nok rifle, resembling modern sawn-off shotguns. In battle, it was somewhat more convenient. During boarding fights, the small length of the barrels was enough, it was assumed that the shooter would fire a volley almost at point-blank range before jumping onto the deck and starting a fight with the enemy using cold weapons. In this regard, ballistics and accuracy should have been enough, at least one bullet would definitely find its target.
Multi-barreled pepperboxes
Multi-barreled pistols, which also appeared at the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries, deserve special mention. The unusual name "Pepperbox" was assigned to them. Literally translated from English, it means "a box of pepper" or simply "pepper shaker". At first, the term was widely applied to all multiple-charge pistols, it was even used to refer to the first revolvers. But first of all, the word characterizes multi-barreled pistols, most of all resembling an externally enlarged revolver or a very small Gatling machine gun.
A distinctive feature of such multi-barreled pistols was a rotating block of barrels. Pepperboxes were charged from the muzzle side, initially this repeated the process of charging old flintlock pistols, but in the future, samples of multi-barreled pistols began to appear more and more resembling revolvers, also having a folding mechanism in the design, which made it possible to load pistols from the breech. It is believed that the first pepperboxes were created by designers in Great Britain and the United States, this happened around 1780-1800, after which pistols quickly spread throughout the world. Their own models of pepperboxes were also created in Russia, but in our country they were never a priority, and the rare created samples were almost an exact embodiment of foreign counterparts.
If we consider the traditional scheme, the pepperboxes were distinguished by the presence of six short barrels, models with four barrels were also widespread, the barrels were screwed into a rotating block. Common in the design were a flint lock and a seed shelf. In all the first models of unusual weapons, the barrel block was rotated by the shooter exclusively by hand, it was necessary to do this with gloves, since after the shot the "spent" barrel was heated. Also, the shooter had to pour a new portion of gunpowder on the shelf every time, which did not increase the efficiency and rate of fire of the pepperbox, but even in this form the pistol found its niche.
At first, it was the presence of a flintlock that significantly reduced the capabilities of multi-barreled pistols. After the appearance of the capsule lock, they found a second life. Proto-revolvers with a new capsule lock (sometimes experts use this designation for pepperboxes) could boast of the possibility of continuous firing. It was revolvers that put the cross on the unusual family of short-barreled firearms. Classic revolvers became widespread already in the first half of the 19th century, and the invention of Samuel Colt, who improved their design by adding the ability to automatically rotate the drum, finally buried the pepperboxes.
The idea of multi-barreled weapons today
If you think that multi-barreled small arms have fallen victim to technological progress and have been lost forever in the first half of the 19th century, you would be wrong. Samples of multi-barreled weapons were created in the XX and XXI centuries. In the Soviet Union, on the basis of the TKB-022 PM machine gun, gunsmith German Korobov in 1962 creates, perhaps, the most interesting automatic weapon chambered for 7.62 mm cartridges. The designer created a three-barreled machine gun, which was officially called a 7.62-mm three-barreled device for salvo firing, the weapon received the model 3B index. Three barrels combined in one machine gun provided a rate of fire that was crazy for such a weapon - up to 1400-1800 rounds per minute. At the same time, Korobov borrowed some of the structural elements from the legendary Kalashnikov assault rifle, which made it possible not only to speed up the development, but also to significantly simplify the very design of the unusual assault rifle.
It is worth noting that German Korobov did not stop at the 3B model, creating an even more advanced three-barreled machine gun, which received the TKB-059 index. Its main difference from its predecessor was its smaller mass-dimensional characteristics; this was achieved through the processing of some weapon assemblies and the introduction of new production technologies. The model has successfully passed the tests, and was a real military weapon. Moreover, the TKB-059 demonstrated excellent firing accuracy, thanks to the almost simultaneous firing of three cartridges in one burst. The disadvantages of the weapon included the complexity of the equipment with cartridges, the specificity of the design, all this, along with the absence of an urgent need to replace the AKM, left the unusual machine in the status of an experimental development.
The idea with multi-barreled small arms did not disappear in the 21st century. In 2012, at one of the weapons exhibitions, the Israeli designers of the Silver Shadow company demonstrated to the public their vision of a modern multi-barreled weapon - a double-barreled multiple launch rocket launcher called the Gilboa Snake. In fact, this is a modern assault rifle that can be made in various calibers, the basic one is chambered for the NATO cartridge 5, 56x45 mm. The Israelis created their model on the basis of a shortened version of the Gilboa Commando assault rifle. The new copy received an extended receiver, with which the designers combined two barrels located parallel to each other at a distance of 30 mm. It is important to understand that this is not a mass sample. The salvo machine was originally developed for the needs of the special forces of the Israel Defense Forces, the weapon never claimed to be a mass weapon for arming conventional infantry units. The presence of such a double-barreled machine gun only expands the capabilities of the special forces, allowing it to be used when circumstances and circumstances require it.
