Palmcrantz's "machine gun" aboard the ship. One sailor directs, the other rotates the drive handle.
So it was with the Maxim machine gun. It would seem that it is clear what prospects its application promises and what opportunities it opens up, but … "difficult", "expensive", and so on. How many people, so many explanations why this new product should not be used. In addition, competitors stood in the way of the innovation he created. It was clear to them that a high rate of fire was good. However, they immediately tried to convince the public that it could be achieved in more traditional and familiar ways, without resorting to complex automation. As a result, in spite of Maxim, like mushrooms after rain at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, projects of more and more new machine guns with a manual drive began to appear - still much more familiar. In addition, many designers wanted not only to make money on new types of weapons, but also to bypass Maxim, to show that they, too, can make a "machine" no worse than him.
Gatling mitraille device. The complexity of the design is striking.
Gatling mitraleza for pedestal installation.
One of these weapons engineers was the Swede H. Palmcrantz, who in 1897 proposed his own version of a weapon with a high rate of fire and, according to tradition, with several barrels and a mechanical, manual drive.
Five-barreled Hotchkiss revolving cannon with a rotating block of barrels.
In fact, Palmcrantz was engaged in nothing more than improving the mitraillese known before him, and above all, the Gatling mitraillese. Only she had six barrels and they all rotated, and in the most common version of the Palmkrantz machine gun there were only four of them with a common receiver and separate bolts for each barrel, which were mounted in a row on a single gun carriage. That, in turn, was mounted on a pedestal installation with "artillery" type wheels, which had the necessary devices for guidance in the horizontal and vertical planes. And again, this did not surprise anyone. All exactly the same thing was available with other mitrailleuses. Nevertheless, he managed to simplify the design of the Gatling mitraillese in such a way that for some "machine gun" he created he became a competitor to the Maxim machine guns.
Diagram of the Hotchkiss cannon.
And here's what he managed to come up with: each barrel of his machine gun, regardless of their number, had its own bolt. It was a cylinder moving in a reciprocating manner inside the receiver along the guides. There was a drummer and a mainspring inside the bolt. The locks were set in motion by means of rods connected to the crankshaft. He had a handle for rotation, located on the right side of the receiver. Discs were mounted on the shaft, which served as flywheels, on which there was a lenticular protrusion. The protrusion was inside the part in the form of an inverted "P", attached to the shutter from the back. When rotating, he made the shutter move back and forth. At the same time, the drummer was cocked and, at the same time, with a special lever with a tooth-hook, it was also lowered during rotation.
Palmcrantz's five-barreled ship mount.
For one complete revolution, each barrel fired one shot. If the protrusions of all the discs were in the same plane, all four barrels would fire in a volley. But at the same time, the recoil would be too high and the position of the protrusions was disaggregated in such a way that the barrels fired alternately. Now, in half a turn of the handle, two volleys took place, and for a full turn, all the barrels of the machine gun were fired.
Four-barrel installation on a wheeled machine.
Well, this mechanic worked as follows: taking aim, the shooter rotated this handle, while rotating the crankshaft. As soon as the shaft with the faces began to rotate, the bolts alternately retreated, and the cartridges from the magazine common to all barrels, under their own weight, fell down onto the ramming line. Then the bolts also pushed the cartridges one by one into the chamber, and at the extreme forward point of their movement, the protrusions on the disk were lowered by the drummers. There were shots, then the spent cartridges were extracted and everything was repeated. The system was quite efficient, and besides, it was convenient in that its rate of fire was easily increased by simply increasing the number of the barrel: two barrels - one rate of fire, four - another, and if you put ten barrels in a row, it will grow even more. True, the more barrels, the greater both the weight of the disks on the shaft, and the inertia of the system, that is, the rotation of the handle of a 10-barreled machine gun would be very tedious for the shooter. Well, on the other hand, if you put a conventional electric motor instead of the handle, then the rate of fire of such a system could increase significantly, but the weight and complexity of the design for the same ship installations would not play a big role!
Diagram of the device of the Palmcrantz bolt group.
Delighted with his success, Palmcrantz now set about improving the design of the machine gun. Moreover, it is interesting that its development went in two directions: the first is an increase in the number of barrels, and the second is an increase in their caliber. At the same time, machine guns with more than five barrels received a special mechanism that made it possible to spread the barrels to the sides and thus create a real fan of bullets flying in one plane. Due to the deviation of the barrels at a distance of 300 meters, it was possible to move the aiming point of the barrel sideways by more than a meter, and thereby significantly increase the density of fire. As for the caliber, various samples of Palmcrantz machine guns could use ammunition with a caliber of 7, 69 and up to 25, 4 mm, which turned them into small-caliber guns. But large-caliber samples somehow did not take root, although they had a strong destructive effect on the then destroyers and mine boats. Variants with more than five barrels also did not become widespread. Great Britain, for example, ordered mainly three-, four- and five-barreled guns in calibers.303 and.45. It is noteworthy that Palmcrantz developed a special armor-piercing cartridge with a steel core in the nose of the bullet for his machine gun.
Diagram of a double-barreled machine gun. Top and side view.
Palmkrantz's work aroused the interest of a prominent businessman T. Nordenfelt, who first financed the completion of work on the machine gun, and then organized its serial production at his factory … "Maxim-Nordenfelt", giving it the name "Nordenfelt machine gun". Praising the simplicity, cheapness and efficiency of his "machine guns" in every possible way, Nordenfelt managed to sell it to the British military in 1898, who thought this weapon was more familiar than the machine gun of H. Maxim. They began to be installed primarily on the ships of the British fleet, after which other European countries became interested in the novelty. Affected, apparently, the authority of Britain, that is, what is good for the British - will be good for us! In general, by the beginning of the 20th century, the production of these machine guns at the Maxim-Nordenfelt plant became widespread.
The device stores for a five-barreled machine gun.
The positive in the design of the Palmcrantz machine gun was that it was simple and, as a result, relatively cheap. At the same time, a large receiver and a flat block of barrels turned it into a rather bulky weapon. In terms of weight, however, it was not much superior to the Maxim machine gun, but it was greatly inferior to him in ease of use. It was inconvenient for one shooter to fire at the same time, that is, to rotate the handle, and to direct the machine gun at the target. Well, then, the rate of fire … If even the early versions of the Maxim machine gun could fire 600 rounds per minute, the Palmcrantz machine gun, even with 10 barrels, did not fire more than 400 rounds. For this reason, very soon they began to be removed from service, and by the beginning of 1910 they were finally removed. True, their images remained in almost all military encyclopedias and books about the navy …
