Appetite comes with eating, as you know. So I, having found a voluminous "folder" of Martin Vlach's photographs, dedicated to the Bran machine gun, was very happy to see his own photographs of the Schwarzlose machine gun. An article about him on VO was published in 2012 (see: https://topwar.ru/14291-stankovyy-pulemet-shvarcloze-pulemet-avstro-vengrii-v-pervuyu-mirovuyu.html), but the point is, that … I didn't really like her. After all, you can write material about this or that sample of small arms in this way: open the manual for use, and rewrite in your own words, inserting even descriptions of assembly and disassembly for volume. And also to cram into it the terms of that time, in order to completely make it incomprehensible, but serious in appearance. I repeat, this is possible, and so is done. But, in my opinion, it is much more interesting when the article describes not so much the "pieces of iron" as the "adventures of thought", they contain prisoners, that is, a kind of "detective story" is considered. It may or may not be successful. In any case, the dry text of the instruction is good at the training ground, but on the popular site it would be necessary to give something "livelier", and give it in such a way that it would be instructive … This is how, for example, it was with the machine gun of the German designer Andreas Wilhelm Schwarzlose, who designed his own heavy machine gun in opposition to the Maxim machine gun.
Here it is - the Schwarzlose machine gun: the barrel is short, and the flash suppressor is very impressive!
And it so happened that the British themselves, not to mention the Chinese, very quickly noticed that "this wonderful machine gun shoots … very expensive!" Therefore, a number of countries, including the Austro-Hungarian Empire, tried at the end of the nineteenth century to create their own models of machine guns, which would not be so ruinous for their military budgets. Very early, namely in 1888, such a machine gun was developed by Colonel Count Georg von Dormus and Archduke Karl Salvator. Serial production was started by Skoda under the leadership of engineer Andreas Radovanovic. The finished machine gun appeared in 1890. And in 1893 it was accepted into service under the index Mitrailleuse M / 93 (it was also called "Salvator-Dormus"), which was then replaced by the 1902 model, which weighed 34 kg with the machine; barrel length - 570 mm; and rate of fire - 350 rds / min; and this despite the fact that the mitrailleza de Reffy could fire 300 shots back in 1871! The main feature of the machine gun was a vertically located magazine, where the cartridges were loaded in bulk, an oiler built into the mechanism for lubrication and a swinging semi-free shutter, in which the barrel itself remained motionless. Moreover, the bolt, which had the form of a massive lever, spring-loaded with a coil spring, after the shot was thrown upwards, which resembled the bolt of the Madsen machine gun. It was equipped with a tripod machine with a shield and a seat, and was a fully functional design.
"Salvator-Dormus" with shoulder support, mod. 07/13.
It was supplied to Japan during the Russo-Japanese War, but the Japanese did not like it, and they preferred the French Hotchkiss. The experience of the war forced to equip the machine gun with belt feed. This is how the 1909 model appeared, and then even the 1913th. But the Austrian military still did not like their own machine gun, and in 1905 they announced a competition, as a result of which they preferred the design of the German gunsmith Schwarzlose to everyone else, who, apparently, well, just really wanted to create a machine gun more perfect than the Maxim machine gun, and secondly - to fulfill the requirements of customers to the maximum.
Machine gun "Salvator-Dormus" mod.09.
Actually, it happens. You see a good thing, and you want to make yours even better. This is what both the designers and the military want, who dream of an asymmetric, but cheaper and more effective answer. But in the case of the Maxim machine gun, it was very difficult to carry out both! The fact is that the design of Maxim was protected by a great many patents, and it was not possible to get around them all. And she herself was very perfect. That is, it was just the case when it is customary to say “the best is the enemy of the good”. This was understood in Russia, where they adopted the Maxim machine gun with minimal alterations. This was understood in England, where there were a little more alterations, but they did not change the design itself. So it was in Germany, where the rate of fire was lowered for the Maxim and … that's it! But in Italy and in Austria-Hungary they decided to go their own way, and in the end, in both cases, nothing good came of it! It didn't work out to create something more perfect than "maxim"!
Machine gun "Schwarzlose" with all accessories.
But did the Schwarzlose machine gun have any advantages? Yes, they were, of course. So, his design was simpler, it had only 166 parts, which is why his machine gun cost 1,500 guilders instead of 3,000 guilders, which would have to be paid for "maxim". But at what cost did this cheapness come from?
Machine gun "Schwarzlose" model 1907. The flame arrester is removed. The bronze handle of the bolt cocking, the "plug" of the casing filling with water, as well as the tripod device are clearly visible.
If the "Maxim" automatic worked due to the recoil (rollback) of the barrel, then in the "Schwarzlose" machine gun the barrel remained motionless during firing. It was in a sense more convenient, as it simplified its maintenance: it was not necessary to constantly stuff the oil seals and monitor the water leaks from the barrel casing. The bolt did not engage with the barrel when fired, that is, the fire was fired with an unlocked bolt, which was held in place by its mass, a powerful spring and a system of levers that prevented its free rollback.
Scheme of automatic action of the machine gun "Schwarzlose": A - crank. It is marked in red in the position when it pulls the connecting rod back and cocks the drummer, while the bolt itself is still moving and pulls the empty sleeve out of the barrel.
Such gates are called semi-free, in contrast to purely free ones, which, in fact, are a heavy spring-loaded blank. The system was simpler than the “Maksim” system, more technologically advanced (it didn’t require such a thorough machining of parts!) And therefore cheap.
At the front, the machine gun was often transported by dogs …
When fired, the unlocked bolt began to move back under the influence of the recoil of the fired sleeve, as soon as the bullet began to move in the barrel (the law "action is equal to reaction"), but the system of levers and the spring slowed down this process, and also eliminated the need to make the bolt massive and heavy. This ensured that the bullet had time to leave the barrel before the bolt opened. Well, after the shutter rolled back, everything happened as usual. The extractor removed the spent cartridge case, and with the reverse movement of the shutter, the next cartridge was captured from the tape and sent to the barrel.
Cloth tape and drawer for it.
True, because of this, a shortened barrel had to be installed on the Schwarzlose machine gun in order to accelerate the pressure drop in it (66 calibers instead of 90-100 calibers for other heavy machine guns of those years), which ensured the reliable operation of its automation. However, this reduced the muzzle velocity of the bullets fired by the impulse, and it turned out to be lower than the optimal one, which reduced the flatness of shooting at medium and long distances. To compensate for this shortcoming had to increase the consumption of cartridges or narrowing the zone of fire. As a result, the consumption of cartridges in monetary terms compensated for the lower cost of the machine gun.
Czech model of a machine gun - "kilomet" chambered for the German 7, 92-mm cartridge.
The same machine gun - depression angle.
The same machine gun - ascent angle.
The same machine gun: the details of the shutter box cover are clearly visible.
The short barrel had another drawback: it gave a powerful burst of flame, and it's clear why. But this unmasked the machine gun, especially at night, so a massive funnel of a flash suppressor was usually screwed onto the barrel. The machine gun "Schwarzlose" had a water-cooled barrel. 3.5 liters were poured into the cooling jacket through a special hole, and the steam was removed through a steam line, which consisted of a steam outlet pipe, a tap and a steam outlet with a horn, on which a rubber hose was put on.
The horizontal arrangement of the handles is considered more ergonomic - the hands are less tired this way. They are also made foldable. To fire a shot, it was necessary to move the fuse to the right and press the trigger.
The machine gun tripod was very durable. There was simply nothing to break in it!
Rear tripod support.
It should be emphasized that the deceleration of unlocking in the Schwarzlose system occurred in two ways at once: the first - due to the resistance of a pair of articulated levers and the second - by redistributing the recoil energy between the two parts of the shutter. A pair of levers consisted of a connecting rod connected to a massive breechblock frame and a crank connected to the box, which were close to dead center in their forward position. That is, while the bullet was moving along the barrel, the bolt with levers was held in place by friction force, its mass and spring, and retreated only when the bullet left the barrel! A striker with a striker slid inside the channel of the shutter frame, and it was cocked during the movement of the latter forward.
Here it is - the flame arrester, which was required due to the relatively short barrel.
It could be screwed on, or it could be folded with a special key or a simple iron bar. The presence or absence of a flame arrester did not affect the operation of the automation.
For reliable extraction of spent cartridges from the chamber, the machine gun, as well as the Salvator-Dormus system, was equipped with an automatic oiler to lubricate the cartridges entering the chamber. "Oil burned in the red-hot barrel, and the smoke unmasked the position" - this is what they write very often when it comes to this machine gun, but this is not entirely true. Can you imagine how much smoke from the burnt oil was needed to unmask the position? Try to burn a little vegetable oil in a frying pan, and you will be convinced that … yes, there will be a lot of stinking blue smoke in the apartment, but it is unlikely that it will be visible from afar on the battlefield. But did the smoke get in the way? Of course, it interfered, interfered with the calculation of effectively servicing the machine gun, to put it simply, it "smelled" of burnt machine oil, the smoke from which, like a haze, covered the target.
The box is open. The shutter levers and tape feed mechanism are clearly visible.
Oil lubrication had another big drawback: it required … a lot of oil. In a machine gun, its capacity was 0.5 liters, which was enough to lubricate 4500 cartridges, that is, for 18 belts. And then the oil had to be added. Add water, add oil … But there is no oil, the machine gun started to jam! Therefore, in 1912, they abandoned the lubrication, simply making the bolt heavier by another 1.7 kg to increase the opening delay.
The tape was fed into the machine gun using a drum mechanism with two toothed wheels, which served simultaneously as grippers and guides for cartridges. The drum was turned by means of a ratchet wheel, which was turned by a bolt. The Schwarzlose machine gun was powered from a cloth belt for 250 rounds of 6, 62 m long, and together with cartridges weighed 8, 25 kg. The tape was stored in a cartridge box with a hinged lid. To facilitate loading, the tape had a leather tip.
Sight: side view.
Sight: top view.
The machine gun entered service with the Austro-Hungarian army in 1907 and received the designation after all the improvements M1907 / 12, but the army was staffed with these machine guns only in 1914, just before the war. The weight of the machine gun reached 19, 9 kg, the machine for it - 19, 8 kg. The length was 0.945 m, the barrel length was 0.53 cm. The rate of fire was 400 rds / min, and the bullet speed was 620 m / sec. The cartridge was used 8 × 56 mm R, that is, welted, with a rim. In addition, the following types of ammunition were used in different models of this machine gun: 8 × 50 mm R Mannlicher cartridge; 7, 92 × 57 mm Mauser cartridge; 6.5 × 55 mm Italian, 6.5 × 54 mm Mannlicher-Schönauer cartridge, 6.5 × 53 mm.
Oiler lid and carefully designed strainer for filtering the oil.
The machine gun automation scheme used by Schwarzlose required the use of a relatively short 526 mm barrel, which was necessary in order for the bullet to leave the barrel before the empty cartridge case was removed from the chamber. However, the muzzle velocity of the 15.8-gram Schwarzlose bullet was the same 620 m / s as that of the Mannlicher rifle with its 770 mm barrel. In any case, compared to the 820 m / s for the Russian "maxim" of the 1910 model, this was too little. The English Vickers had a bullet speed of 744 m / s, and the rate of fire of the Russian Maxim was again higher than that of the Vickers! True, our machine gun was heavier and had a very heavy wheeled machine. But on the other hand, his stability and mass had a positive effect on accuracy.
Linkage: left side view.
Lever mechanism and bolt cocking handle: right side view.
Cocking the shutter.
By the beginning of World War I, the Austro-Hungarian army had 2,761 machine guns, most of which were Schwarzlose machine guns. True, Skoda machine guns were also used, especially in fortresses. It is believed that the "Schwarzlose" was one of the lightest and most mobile heavy machine guns, the accuracy of fire from it, judging by the reviews, was practically not inferior to the accuracy of the "maxim", although for its dimensions it was still too heavy. A positive quality was its simplicity, a small number of parts, as well as their large dimensions and guaranteed high strength. True, the cloth tape got wet and warped in the rain, and in the cold it could freeze and lose flexibility, but this was a general drawback of machine guns under the cloth tape. Machine guns "Schwarzlose" in large numbers fell into the Russian army as trophies and were actively used. On February 1, 1916, there were 576 of them on the Southwestern Front alone. Another 1215 were captured during the famous Brusilov breakthrough.
Ribbon feed "gear" and reloading handle. The latter was located on the right side of the box and was firmly planted on the right crank neck. The difference between the Schwarzlose system and the others was that it was required to turn the reloading handle three times in order for the first cartridge to hit the chamber.
There was no shortage of cartridges either. Nevertheless, some of the captured machine guns were remade under the Russian cartridge, and at the Petrograd Cartridge Plant, the production of Austro-Hungarian cartridges began, which only in November-December 1916 were produced at 13.5 million per month.
Sector arc of horizontal guidance.
Sector arc of vertical guidance.
In Romania, machine guns chambered for 6, 5 mm rounds were used. Under the same cartridge, machine guns were produced in Sweden and Holland, and in service, in addition to these countries, they were also in Turkey, Greece, Italy, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. At the same time, the Czechs lengthened the barrel, from which the muzzle velocity increased to 755 m / s, and the rate of fire increased to 520 rounds per minute. In 1938, when the Germans captured Czechoslovakia, Czech "Schwarzlose" came into service with the Wehrmacht.
A certain number of "Schwarzlose" were in the Brest Fortress, and fell as trophies to the Poles. After 1939, they again got to us and were used in the defense of the Brest Fortress in 1941! The Czechs continued to produce a modernized version of their M1924 "kilomet", converted to German Mauser cartridges. Austrian "Schwarzlose" in 1930 was redesigned for a new more powerful and long-range cartridge 8x56R with a pointed bullet, so it received a developed conical flash suppressor at the muzzle end of the barrel. Hungarian machine guns were also redesigned for the same cartridge. It is interesting that the Czech machine guns entered the Wehrmacht, but for some reason they were armed with the Austrian rifle companies of the policemen.
Such "machine-gun cars" were also armed with machine guns "Schwarzlose".
Longest of all - until 1950 - "Schwarzlose" held out in service with the Swedish army. There is, however, evidence that Czech machine guns were supplied to the Mozambican partisans in the early 1970s, since how else can you explain that they ended up there?
