Machine Guns · 5:44am Aug 8th, 2014
The first firearms were single-shot. That clearly wasn’t good enough.
By some people’s definition, this still isn’t good enough.
dakka dakka dakka
Rapid fire technology has come a long way. But before we had that, guns just had a lot of barrels. Pretty much since guns were invented, weapons with more than one barrel have been around. Of course, that generally means they were too big for the average infantryman to carry.
An example of a volley gun, the Mitrailleuse, a French weapon with 25 barrels from the 1860s.
Volley guns aren’t used so much these days, although the Spanish Meroka CIWS with twelve 20mm barrels is a notable exception. For the most part, weapons have shifted to fewer barrels and higher firing rates. To do this, we needed the technology to build automatic reloading weapons.
Alright, before we start killing everything that moves, let's set some terms. As you are probably aware, a machine gun is a weapon that keeps automatically firing bullets until you let go of the trigger. Machine guns come in many different kinds.
A machine pistol is exactly what it sounds like. Examples include the MAC-10 and the Glock 18.
Submachine guns are small, but larger than pistols. They generally have a forgrip and sometimes a shoulder stock. They fire the same ammunition as pistols. Examples include the 9mm firing MP5 and the .45 ACP Thompson.
Automatic rifles are larger and fire larger bullets. Lighter weight models are sometimes called assault rifles. These include the AK-47 and the M16. These two weapons are covered extensively in my blog Small Arms.
Light machine guns generally fire the same ammunition as assault rifles. The 5.56x45mm firing M249 is an example. They differ from automatic rifles by being sturdier to fire for longer periods of time. Sometimes the barrels can be changed out so they don’t overheat. They are also usually belt-fed.
Medium machine guns typically use the same ammunition as the heavier automatic rifles (battle rifles.) The 7.62x51mm firing M60 is an example. Medium machine guns are also generally where the line is drawn between small arms and heavy weapons. Medium machine guns and up are typically operated by at least two people.
Heavy machine guns are .50 caliber and bigger. The reigning heavyweight champion of the world since before WWII is the famous Browning M2.
Most of these powerful weapons are not suitable for a person to carry around. Not only are they heavy, but their accuracy is decreased by the high rate of fire. Even with the lighter versions of machine guns, it’s common to see them mounted on a bipod, tripod, or pintle. Not being able to move around, their tactics are usually suppressive fire, able to put a lot of rounds downrange so the enemy is pinned down and the friendly guys with smaller weapons can maneuver more easily. Used in this capacity, a machine gun can be referred to as a Squad Automatic Weapon.
Machine guns wouldn’t have become a defining feature of modern war if they didn’t have a purpose. If you use them in your story, understand what that purpose is.
A machine gun nest is what you see in WWI movies: a lot of flying lead keeping the enemy from advancing. Machine guns are good for holding ground, but not so great at taking it. They can, however, provide support for other forces that are maneuvering to advance.
But what if that’s simply not enough? Well, for more firepower you need an autocannon. A cannon is loosely defined as a gun that fires bullets big enough to contain explosive charges. This usually means 20mm and larger. Wooo! Now we’re talking. Autocannons are generally mounted to armored vehicles or ships. An autocannon I used in one of my stories was the Mk110 57mm gun, firing at 220 rounds per minute.
In amongst all this talk of size, we should also discuss type. As it turns out, there are lots of ways to make a gun shoot really fast.
The simplest type is blowback. The force of the bullet firing drives the action back to load the next round. This is also typical of most semi-automatic handguns.
Blowback
The most common type for lighter machine guns is gas operation. A small hole in the barrel collects hot gasses from the fired bullet and uses them to drive the reload. Most assault rifles and lighter machine guns use this system.
Gas operation
Recoil operation is difficult to explain, but generally involves the barrel moving backwards a short amount, pushing the rest of the parts back even further.
But what if the gun gets too heavy or too unreliable to use the force of the bullets firing to reload the next shot? That’s where externally driven weapons come in. The first machine guns were hand cranked. These days, they’re mostly driven by electric motors. The most common kind are chain guns and gatling guns. They have the advantage that if one cartridge fails to fire, the mechanism keeps driving the gun anyway. The disadvantage is that the electric motors need a moment to spin up to full speed.
“Simple” diagram of the M242 25mm chain gun.
Video of gatling gun. Instead of going back and forth like a bolt in a more traditional gun, the parts just spin. This allows a gatling to fire at super speeds – sometimes more than one hundred times per second.
I tend not to capitalize “gatling” even though it’s named after the inventor. At this point, I figure it’s kind of like kleenex.
A variant of the gatling system is the revolver cannon, which uses the spinning chambers to load and fire, but the bullets exit through one barrel like, well, a revolver. It’s lighter, but perhaps not as reliable. There are a few gas operated gatlings, and most of them are Russian. The most famous gatling, the M134 minigun, is so named because it fires 7.62mm, which makes it miniature compared to the M61 20mm Vulcan cannon used on fighter jets.
So what’s next? How do we put even more lead downrange? Just like the trend in everything high tech, the answer is solid-state, with no moving parts.
Metal Storm is a weapon that has multiple barrels, and the rounds are stacked inside each barrel. Small electric charges fire the bullet closest to the end of the barrel. Once it’s been fired, the computer fires the next one and so on.
A fictional pistol demonstrating Metal Storm technology.
The company behind Metal Storm appears to have gone out of business, but they did some awesome stuff. A 36-barreled prototype weapon demonstrated a firing rate of just over 1 million rounds per minute for a 180-round burst of 0.01 seconds. One million rounds per minute. While we probably won’t see something like this on the battlefield for quite a while (and I can’t imagine what target would need that many bullets fired at it), the idea is interesting.
If you’re a player of video games, you probably have a preferred kind of weapon: sniper, shotgun, machine gun. I’ve always preferred the gun that allowed me to fire the most before reloading. From personal preference, I’d rather put out a continuous stream of firepower than larger but less frequent blasts. That doesn’t conserve ammo, but that’s not what a machine gun’s for, is it?
There’s a specific time and place for machine guns. Sometimes they’re clumsy and wasteful, sometimes there's simply no substitute for steel on target.
And sometimes you get them for Christmas.
Can you do a live demonstration on how quickly a gun can kill a human being?
2353008 This may help
2353019
Thanks.
What can you tell me about this gun:
wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/5/5c/Minigun_concept1.png
2353026 Well, based on the image URL, I'm guessing this is Sasha.
I just began reading Skin Game today. There was a fun scene with a couple machine guns in it.
(Of course, that's where shield spells and flashbangs come in handy!)
2353034 I need to read this latest book. I'm slightly behind in the series.
2353032
And this?
joystickdivision.com/rcp90okaythistime%20%28570%20x%20244%29.jpg
2353038 It's a P90
2353040
Also known as RCP90 in Goldeneye 007, right?
2353041 Does it show how old I am if I say yes?
2353043
Hell, I still have that game and Perfect Dark and an N64. And I'm 17 years old!
2353037
The above quote is from chapter 10 (as far as I've gotten, so far). In one of the first couple chapters, Mab ropes Harry into working for Nicodemus. They're gonna go burgle a vault. Hades' vault.
This can only end horribly.
Also, I haven't yet gotten that far, but apparently Maggie has MLP posters in her room. More proof that psychicscubadiver is Jim Butcher.
2353038
This is a weapon of war.
I've always wanted to build a Gov't model equivalent to one of these, using either a Caspian or ParaOrdinance frame. All it really takes is a weakened firing pin spring and a heavy firing pin. Just make sure it has the Series 80 trigger assembly, or it will not stop till the magazine empties, or the gun jams lol
Lets not forget the MK-19 40mm autocannon. Thats a fun one to shoot, until you get a misfire... then you better FUCKIN RUN lol
The only version I have heard of that fires at a rate of more than 100 rounds a second was an experimental five barrel gun firing the 5.56 NATO round. It was capable of a rate of fire of ten THOUSAND rounds a minute. That comes out to a hundred and sixty-six rounds downrange every second. Personally, i feel that is a bit wasteful. Even the max rate of fire of six thousand rounds a minute that the M134 and M61 are both capable of is a bit much. Fifty rounds a second (3000 rpm) is plenty in my book.
Some weapons designer out there thinks he's the next Rainbow Dash I guess.
2353079
But can you dual wield it like this:
gameplayersreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Goldeneye-RCP90.jpg
That chaingun diagram doesn't make much sense to me. Does it just operate every action by driving a belt?
Metal Storm!
2353034 Even I would find it rather hard to accept with certain weapon types being able to just be blocked by any kind of shield given the kind of force they deliver in a small localized area. A shot, or two, from something of high caliber, maybe with an excellent mage or equivalent abjurer.
A flashbang is what effective out to about 15-20 feet overall? And with an enclosed, you get an improved effect. So yes, it would be possible there to disorient. Its a combination of pressure, sound, and light. The light, i don't know if there are lenses that can block that, but sound, somewhat. But then again, you run into the best way of dealing with a nest is longer range weapons, or something that can remove the being behind the gun, so they might be experienced in dealing with that. So sustained bursts at the entrance would still force someone back.
Eh, im likely thinking too much into this.
But an overall good presentation and very much fun to see this explained. I've seen it before, but good find on the diagrams.
Then there's the KRISS Vector. God I hate taking one apart.
God i love it when you do these blogs.
You could have at least showed the greatest recoil-operated MG in history:
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/BundeswehrMG3.jpg
(Sorta. I mean, come on, it mixes German ingenuity with American democracy 7.62s.)
Germans. Still even over half a century. Don't fix what ain't broke!
2353169
The best comment on that video is still an incredibly old one I can't find that went along the lines of, "For when killing your enemy isn't good enough, and you want to completely obliterate him."
I don't remember the exact comment, but it was pretty funny from what I remember.
if I recall, blowback reloading is how the AA-12 Automatic Shotguun reloads itself, thus eliminating the kickback associated with shotguns
so does that gun class as a machine gun,
i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/korik1/DreadnoughtProctologist.jpg
another thing orks are good for is dis.
and for those not in the ork know-
25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6othtwIxL1ql6zigo1_400.jpg
Vicker's HMG, .303 callibur. Water cooled and had an effective range of ~2000 yards. Due to this range, it was oftern used as "light artillery" dropping shots on important locatios behind the German trenches during the First World War. The Vicker's was widely used pre-First World War and used untill the 1950s due to the US.
One of the most important factors with the Vicker'sl, it's ammunition was the exact same as that of the Lee-Enfield rifles. Making supply & logists alot easier.
Modern British/NATO HGMs have only recently returned to the same effective range as that of the Vicker's due to the US forcing NATO countries to change their callibur
i.imgur.com/sq1Bv.jpg
2353026
You should do different types of ammo next. Reading this made me think of the experimental LSAT and G11 and their caseless ammunition.
Hey tnab, having met me what would you say if my favorite video game weapon was a heavy pistol?
2353152
world.guns.ru/userfiles/images/machine/usa/1329581620.jpg
Here's a top view. The bolt carrier moves back and forth. The master link travels in the master link slider. As the chain spins around the outside of the rectangle, the master link will slide back and forth on the short sides of the rectangle, but will push the bolt carrier back and forth on the long sides.
2353387
Greatest recoil-operated MG in history?
Did I not just point out the Browning M2?
2353409 It's actually gas operated. They claim that their special design is what makes the recoil low.
And yeah, it's fully automatic so I would say it's a machine gun.
2353467 Sounds like you're someone who prefers close in battle. A heavier pistol makes sense because if you aren't going to have the ability to fire fast and for a long time, you might as well make your shots count.
2353187
Harry Dresden is one of the heaviest-hitting wizards in the world (although he's far from the one with the most finesse), and his specialties are kinetic force, wind, fire, and shields (with a dabbling in earth spells, mostly magnetism). Dude needs a shield? Dude gots a shield. Even so, he nearly drained himself defending against the first gunman... and the second one was holding his fire, waiting for the first to run out of ammo.
Harry can never catch a break.
2353505 Ironically, i was just checking this page when you replied. But yeah, force specialist would cover it admirably. Given the volume of fire they can accurately deliver, coupled with a strong directed area of impact, its going to be darn nasty. But nice to see the book delivers on the smart enemies. Not mister stormtrooper school. Ah, competent folks, how rare are they in places? As hero's everywhere breathe easier.
Actually, and I'm not trying to be that guy, but the most common action you will see on MGs, and is the simplest type of action you will find, is the Open Bolt. It's similar to the Recoil action, except that Open Bolt is designed to fire continuously on full auto, without the need for the action to hit the firing pin. If you find a full auto Recoil Action, then you're going to have a firearm that's a great deal more complex than an Open Bolt.
The most notable case of the Open Bolt is the Sten, versions mkI - IV. The Sten was an Open Bolt, SMG, with a pipe receiver, solid, non telescoping Bolt, with a spring that could bring it back forward after it had shot the 9mm Luger round it was commonly chambered for. The gun was so simple to build, that during WW2, the British Parliament was having small machine shops crank them out by the tens, which was impressive considering these were bike shops, and mechanical shops, not factories outfitted to crank out hundreds of rifles, a day.
The Open Bolt action is also used in the MP40, the Thompson M1928, the MAC 10 and 11, and many other firearms, due to the sheer simplicity and ruggedness of it. Even the notable M249 uses the Open Bolt, though with the exception that it is also gas operated to help feed munition with the belts of 5.56 it fires. As does the LSAT project that is to be using Telescoping rounds, uses an Open Bolt to achieve automatic fire.
Blowback, as mentioned, was used in the German MG42V, specifically, it used the delayed roller blowback (I believe), commonly used in the CETME, and many of the G3 derivatives, and because of this, it was able to reach an insane ROF of around 1350 rounds per a minute, around 150 rounds higher than the MG42 it was based on.
Blowback is also used far more commonly in Assault Rifles, and Battle Rifles, due to the fact that the action can be made more complicated, and thus fill more roles. A Blowback based action has the ability to limit ROF, is able to fire a wider range of cartridges, and is able to achieve semi, burst, and full auto fire. With an Open Bolt, you are able to achieve non of this, due to the design of the action, even derivatives of the Open Bolt, like telescoping Open Bolt are unable to achieve this (to my knowledge), with the notable exception being the Closed Bolt, a semi automatic conversion of the Open bolt, only capable of achieving semi automatic firing (again, as far as I know, I don't have much experience with Open Bolt firearms because the ATF and thought police would break down my door if I had such an impure thought as to dabble with that sort of thing).
2353485
I concede.
My prefered weapon when in-game is a select-fire battle rifle outfitted with a low-power scope (4-6x) and an effective range of 400-600 yds. Where does that put me in?
That picture at the top is my turrets in borderlands 2.
2353518
Open bolt and closed bolt are two types of bolt. Blowback, gas, and recoil are what drives the bolt. We're talking about different things here.
As for open bolt not being able to fire semiauto, what about the Uzi and MAC-10? You don't see designs like this much because the ATF thinks open bolt is too easy to convert to full auto, but they certainly exist.
It's true that most machine guns are open bolt and that open bolts tend to be simpler. They also cool faster.
MG-42
Always a new interesting blog TNB
2353438
Someone has found Dell Conagher's toolbox.
On the picture, The Ork could've used rotary barrels and gotten more dakka. Or giant belts of stacked bullets to make a belt fed MetalStorm gun. I don't know.
2354057
s8.postimg.org/zfhis1vk5/Image2.jpg
The two things I noticed here that may or may not have been wrong:
I don't know of a single rotary barrel weapon that needs to spool up before firing like in the vidjia games.
And I'm pretty sure there was a prototype for the MS pistol. not 100% on that though.
Things you could have added:
How the different firing mechanisms work in GPMGs and LMGs.
(I personally have no idea what the difference in effect a breech block has to rotating bolt)
Maybe an offhanded mention that some LMGs (the C9 and I'm pretty sure the M249) can also be magazine fed in case of an emergency, albeit at a much shittier rate. And because of that, the C9's bolt looks really fucked up.
2359274 I don't think the spool up is as bad as in video games, but there's definitely some lag.
Say what you want about FPSRussia, this video shows a good illustration of what I'm talking about. About thirty five seconds into the video, he starts shooting. There's about half a second lag before the firing actually starts. It's certainly not instantaneous like most weapons.
2359311 Okay, that's not nearly a half second, but I guess the delay is notable...
Still not really anything that will throw you off.
hmm you know your stuff thanks for this man. (you military or just a fellow lover of all things Dakka?)
Still not nuff Dakka!
Is there ever enough dakka?
2354069 jqpublicblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/a-10-1.jpg
GLORIOUS CLOSE AIR SUPPORT
Would a 50 caliber machine gun do this kind of damage?