“An interlude is an episode, performance, play or scene. Such an interpretation of this term is given in the "Dictionary of Russian synonyms" ".
And now it makes sense to interrupt our story a little about H. Maxim and his machine gun and "wander into that steppe" a little. That is, to see what other inventors were doing at the same time. After all, not only Maxim was an intelligent and educated engineer. There were people who were better educated than him, who graduated from universities, who built bridges and steam locomotives, who developed sophisticated machines and equipment for the same weapons factories, in a word - people who, at least, were not inferior to him in intelligence, knowledge and experience. Were there such? Of course, but what they were doing at the same time, we will now see.
Salvator-Dormus machine gun, first model.
And it so happened that as soon as rumors about Maxim's work got into the relevant circles, a lot of people began work on the machine gun. So, in 1888, Colonel of the Austro-Hungarian Army Georg Ritter von Dormus and Archduke of Habsburg Karl Salvator received a patent for a machine gun that they developed with a semi-free swinging bolt. In itself, this was an out of the ordinary business. In Russia, it was an unthinkable thing for a nobleman, a military man, and even more so a titled person to get a patent, invent something and draw drawings. It was just indecent. The Colonel, in company with the Grand Duke, is busy with patenting … but it's just a scandal. But in Austria-Hungary, this was treated differently. By the way, this was not their only job. Salvator and Dormus also patented several automatic rifles they designed, and in 1894 (two years after Salvator's death), Dormus alone received a patent for both of them for a self-loading pistol. But only their machine gun was embodied in metal, and at the same time it did not find much fame. Although many experts of that time liked it. I liked it first of all for its obvious simplicity, since the "maxim" itself in those years was considered an extremely complex weapon. The production of the new machine gun was launched at the Škoda plant in Pilsen. Moreover, the Skoda company was already then the leader in the Austro-Hungarian field of mechanical engineering, but this was the first time it began to produce small arms.
Diagram of the device and kinematics of the Salvator-Dormus machine gun.
The technological revision of the machine gun was carried out by engineer Andreas Radovanovich. Already in 1890 he was presented with a finished design, and in 1891 the Salvator and Dormus machine gun was officially tested at a shooting range near Pilsen.
The machine gun entered service with the Austro-Hungarian army in 1893 under the name Mitrailleuse M / 93. It was used in the navy, and for arming fortresses, where they were installed in casemates or on parapets on a pivot. According to unverified information, in 1900, during the “boxer uprising” in China, M / 93 machine guns were apparently used in the defense of the Austro-Hungarian embassy in Beijing.
Among the numerous features of this machine gun, first of all, it is necessary to include the device of its automation, which acted by recoiling a semi-free bolt, which in turn swung in a vertical plane like the bolt of the 1867 Remington rifle, the bolt of which was propped up by the trigger when fired. In the Salvator-Dormus machine gun, the bolt was supported by a figured spring-loaded connecting rod, and the position of both the axes and the profiles of the contacting surfaces of the bolt and the connecting rod were selected so that their friction against each other slowed down the movement of the bolt from the barrel, the recoil force of which, just like Maxim's, forced move back. Moreover, it slowed down so much that this time the bullet was enough to leave the barrel, and the gas pressure would drop in it to a safe level. The connecting rod was connected by a rod with a helical return spring, which was located in a long tube located behind the box. At the bottom there was a pendulum regulator that made it possible to change the rate of fire from 280 to 600 rds / min. The barrel was cooled with water, just like in Maxim's machine guns. The sight is the simplest, rack-mountable. All this was well thought out, but then the designers followed the lead of the military, for whom the belt feed seemed too wasteful, so they equipped their machine gun with a magazine located on top, from which cartridges poured inward under the influence of gravity. A lever was connected to the bolt by means of a hinge, which sent cartridges into the chamber when the bolt moved forward. The same lever pushed down the spent cartridges. That is, the machine gun box was open from below, which increased the risk of clogging, but the pendulum located openly could be easily damaged. In addition to the vertical magazine, an oiler was also attached to the machine gun from above. The arrangement of the oiler was simple. It was a container of gun oil and a spring-loaded rod that covered the outlet. Whenever the chuck pressed on this rod, a drop of oil would drip onto it. On the one hand, this really facilitated the extraction, but in the overheated chamber, the oil began to burn and the machine gun was enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke. The oil had to be changed regularly, as firing unlubricated cartridges led to delays. The machine gun was firing with cartridges of 8x50 mm.
In 1902, a modification M / 02 was created for the army, which had a tripod machine with an armored shield and a seat for the shooter. A canister of water could be attached to the shield to increase the efficiency of barrel cooling. There were two options for the machine: a light infantry tripod machine, and a cavalry one, with a single-bar carriage on wheels, with a shield mount and packing for ammunition boxes, as well as a front end. The relatively cheap and "light" machine gun "Skoda" aroused interest in Romania, which acquired several such machine guns for study, as well as in Japan and Holland. But even in their own army, the number of these machine guns was small.
M / 02 (left), M / 09 (right)
And here, in addition to everything else, the Schwarzlose machine gun was adopted, and the Skoda company had to compete with it. For this purpose, two samples were developed in 1909 and 1913. (M / 09 and M / 13), which already had a ribbon supply, but they decided to remove the rate of fire regulator. Canvas cartridge tape was fed into the receiver from the left-bottom of the box, and they came out from the left-top. They decided to fix the shoulder rest on the return spring tube. Moreover, the machine gun even received an optical sight. But all the same, the Schwarzlose machine gun (there was a large article about it on the pages of the VO) turned out to be more preferable than the Salvator-Dormus machine gun.
And now let's go to northern Sweden, the homeland of "Swedish matches" and, no matter how strange it sounds, a machine gun, proposed and even patented back in 1870, that is, long before the first patents for the Maxim machine gun appeared! The lieutenant of the Swedish army D. H. Friberg received it, but he could not embody it in metal. Rather, the first prototypes appeared only in 1882, and it turned out that his system did not work with black powder cartridges! But she worked for Maxim, so everyone immediately forgot about the Friberg machine gun.
Here it is - this unusual semi-tank, semi-manual Kjelman machine gun! (Army Museum in Stockholm)
The most important thing is that he came up with … an unusual locking system for that time with the help of a drummer. In the final phase of the movement, the drummer pushed the lugs of the bolt into the cutouts in the side walls of the receiver, thereby locking the bolt at the very moment of the shot. A similar locking system was on the most famous Soviet light machine gun DP, so that its performance was confirmed in practice.
And then it happened that Freeberg's patents in 1907 came to the attention of a certain Rudolf Henrik Kjellmann, and he, having bought them out, and then refined the design for a 6.5 × 55 mm cartridge with smokeless powder, received a fully operational machine gun. And not just a machine gun, but very light, despite the use of water cooling, with a vertical magazine - i.e. something like a light or light machine gun with a bipod.
The author himself fires out of it.
It just turned out that the mechanism for spreading the locking elements with a striker requires very precise manufacturing and high-grade steels. And any, even the smallest, inaccuracy in manufacturing can lead to unreliable operation, accelerated wear of machine gun parts and its failure.
Therefore, the Swedes, although they adopted the Kjelman machine gun for service under the name Kulsprutegevär m / 1914, managed to produce only 10 of them. It turned out to be too complicated and expensive to manufacture this seemingly simple and uncomplicated mechanism even for them.
Another unusual machine gun, although outwardly similar to the "Maxim", appeared in Italy. Its development began in 1901, when Italian army officer Giuseppe Perino patented the design of a machine gun with an unusual power system. The cartridges for it were located in 20-charge cassettes (as, for example, on the Hotchkiss machine gun), but instead of throwing the spent cartridges out, the machine gun mechanism inserted them back into the cassette! When all 20 cartridges were used up, the cassette fell out from the right side of the box, and it could be immediately packed and sent along with the casings for reloading. The idea was to prevent hot casings from falling under the feet of the soldiers and clogging up the position, and in addition, in this way, non-ferrous metal was saved.
Machine gun Perino M1908. Caliber 6.5 mm.
The cartridge power system was also unusual. If in the Hotchkiss machine gun, cartridges with cartridges were inserted on the left one by one, then Perino came up with a box on the left for five magazines, of which only the lowest one was automatically fed into the lower part of the machine gun for firing. It was enough for the shooter's assistant to simply put new magazines on top so that the machine gun could fire continuously. Even in the "maxim" it was required to periodically change the tape, but from the "perino", having charged only once, it was theoretically possible to shoot continuously.
Machine gun Perino. The structure of the cartridge power system is clearly visible.
Unfortunately, for Perino, his machine gun was declared "Top Secret" by the government. It was slowly tested and, due to its secrecy, never participated in large-scale screenings. Therefore, when the First World War broke out in 1914, Perino lost to the Fiat-Revelli machine gun, since it was ready for mass production, but Perino's design had to be prepared for it!
Mounting the Maxim machine gun on a tripod. Auckland Museum. New Zealand.
In some countries, they "creatively" approached the improvement not of the Maxim machine gun itself, but of the machine tool for it. Different systems were created here: tripods, sleds, and Sokolov's wheeled machine, however, with all their external dissimilarity, they are structurally very close, since the machine gun is attached to the machine on all these machines is almost identical and was carried out by the eyelet in the lower part of the box.
Mounting the machine gun on the Sokolov machine.
But in Switzerland, for some reason, they decided to create their own machine in principle. They did not like the English tripod and the German "sled", and they came up with a "device" in which the attachment of their 7.5-mm machine gun model 1894 to the machine was carried out … at the end of the barrel casing! There seemed to be a certain logic in this. The machine turned out to be record-breaking light, and most importantly, the barrel, attached to it almost at the muzzle end, did not experience such a shake as the barrels of machine guns on "ordinary" machines.
Machine gun M1894 caliber 7, 5 mm.
That is, theoretically, shooting from it was more accurate. However, in the end it turned out that the entire body weight of the machine gun now fell on the hands of the shooter. He had to lie or sit and … shoot, holding the machine gun in weight. Agree that "pleasure" is below average. But since Switzerland did not fight, then … "it got away and so."
Mounting a machine gun on a Swiss machine.
Another original development was the transportation of Maxim machine guns using dog sleds. And in fact: who should carry the machine gun across the battlefield or to it? The horse is too big for that, and the machine gun is too small for it. Of course, you can use a pack, but then before shooting the machine must be unloaded and assembled, and this takes time.
Belgian machine-gun team of the early twentieth century.
Meanwhile, in Belgium, dog teams have been delivering milk to cities for a long time. And the size of the machine gun with the machine was slightly larger and heavier than the cart with milk cans. This is how such a system for transporting machine guns took root in the Belgian army!
Several types of machines and different breeds of dogs were used to transport machine guns.
And finally, the banal story of "returning to square one." Well, this is when history makes one round and very often, albeit in completely new conditions, tries to return to its beginning, to what it left. And the history of machine guns has gone from … mitrailleus, in which the mechanism was driven, so to speak, by "manual drive". Kh. Maxim's machine gun solved this problem once and for all. Now the shooter did not have to simultaneously aim and think about turning the mitraillese handle at a constant speed and in no case accelerating it.
But this experience was either forgotten, or it was simply ignored, but be that as it may, there was a man, Australian Thomas F. Caldwell from Melbourne, who in 1915 received a patent for a machine gun … with a manual drive, with which he went to England, to offer it to the British army. The machine gun was similar to the Maxim pistol, but had two barrels, capable of firing simultaneously or separately, providing a rate of fire of 500 rds. / min. Food - shop from disk magazines for 104 rounds. In his opinion, their use was preferable to tape, which was prone to jamming.
Caldwell was able to sell his invention for £ 5,000 in cash, and bargain £ 1 for every machine gun made in Great Britain, and another ten percent of the reward received from the sale of his machine gun or its licenses to foreigners.
Diagrams of the device of the Caldwell machine gun.
The machine gun was designed for the standard British.303 cartridge and was water-cooled. The inventor himself believed that the manual drive with which he equipped his brainchild was very convenient, as it allows you to adjust the rate of fire by rotating the handle. In addition, the precision of parts manufacturing no longer played such a role as in the Maxim machine gun. That is, it was simpler and therefore cheaper. But it is not without reason that it is said that "other simplicity is worse than theft!" As a result, the Caldwell machine gun was never adopted by any army in the world!
