Maxim gun
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The Maxim gun was the first self-powered machine gun, invented by the American-born Briton Sir Hiram Maxim in 1883. The mechanism of the Maxim gun used the energy from the recoil force to eject each spent cartridge and insert the next one. This made it vastly more efficient and less manpower-demanding than previous machine guns, like the Gatling and Gardner guns, which were built on an entirely different principle, using crank handles and a multibarreled approach.
Trials showed, that the Maxim could fire 500 rounds per minute, equivalent to the firepower of about 30 contemporary breech-loading bolt-action rifles. Compared to modern machine guns, the Maxim was heavy, bulky and awkward. Even though one person could fire the gun, it was usually operated by a team of men. The cooling mechanism of the weapon needed a constant supply of water, in order to produce a continuous stream of fire, and several men were needed to move or shift its position.
A prototype of the Maxim gun was given by Hiram Maxim to and employed by the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition in 1886-1890, under the leadership of Henry Morton Stanley. This was as much a PR stunt as a military consideration, considering the general failure of Maxim's company to convince European governments, the British in particular, of the weapon's efficiency. Initially, the position of the Maxim was easily given away by the black clouds of smoke, produced by the constant firing of the gun. National and military authorities were therefore reluctant to adopt the weapon. The advent of smokeless powder, (made by Hiram's brother Hudson Maxim) was another invention which Maxim had his stakes in, helped to change this. The weapon was finally adopted, under the guidance of Sir Garnet Wolseley, by the British Army in 1888 - using the same .577/450 ammunition as their Martini-Henry rifles.
The Maxim gun was first used by Britain's colonial forces in the First Matabele War in 1893-1894. In one engagement, 50 soldiers fought off 5,000 warriors with just four Maxim guns. The gun played an important role in the swift European colonization of Africa in the late 19th century. The extreme lethality was employed to devastating effect against obsolete charging tactics, when native opponents could be lured into pitched battles in open terrain. As it was put in a well-known jingle by Hilaire Belloc,
- Whatever happens, we have got
- The Maxim gun, and they have not.
The Post Office Directory of trades in London of 1895 lists the Maxim Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company Limited office at 32 Victoria Street SW (London) on page 1579.
However, the importance and destructive power of the Maxim gun in colonial warfare has often been overplayed by popular myth. Modern historical accounts suggest, that while the weapon was effective in pitched-battle situations such as the Matabele war or the Battle of Omdurman (1898), its significance was as much due to its psychological, rather than physical impact, used in a number of less optimal situations, such as hilly or mountainous terrain or dense vegetation, with poor line of sight.
The design was purchased by several other European countries, setting off an arms and technology race. The Maxim gun first saw significant action in the Russo-Japanese War, where both sides bought vast numbers of Maxim's guns. Nearly 50 percent of all casualties in the entire conflict were derived from Maxim guns.
A larger calibre version of the Maxim, firing a one-pound shell, was built by Nordenfelt-Maxim. This was known in the Second Boer War as the Pom-Pom from the sound and was used on both sides.
The 1906 version of the book Small Wars<ref name="smallwars">Callwell, Colonel C.E. . Small Wars, a Tactical Textbook for Imperial Soldiers. 1990 Greenhill Books, London, Lionel Leventhal Ltd. ISBN 1-85367-071-5. 559pp. This is a reprint of the 1906 version.</ref> notes that the Maxim gun is significantly more reliable than other guns of the period, a key issue with pre-1900 machine guns. On page 440 the author notes: "The older forms are not suitable as a rule.... They jammed at Ulundi, they jammed at Dogali, they jammed at Abu Klea and Tofrek, in some cases with unfortunate results."
A later, lighter model of the five-man Maxim was ominously nicknamed the "Devil's Paintbrush" in reference to the sight of whole rows of charging soldiers being cut down in a line, and to the fact that the gun had a rate of fire in excess of 600 rounds/minute, alluding to the number of the Book of Revelation's Anti-Christ, '666'.
By World War I, many armies had moved on to improved machine guns. The British Vickers machine gun was an improved and redesigned Maxim (Vickers and Maxim having joined forces) introduced into the British Army in 1912 and remained in service until 1968. Production took place at Crayford in Kent and some models were fitted to early biplanes also fabricated there. The German Army's Maschinengewehr 08 and the Russian Pulemyot Maxima were both more or less direct copies of the Maxim. On the Western Front, 90 percent of bullet-related casualties were inflicted by Maxim-type guns.
The gun also saw use during the Russian Civil War which followed the Revolution in 1917. A picture of the period depicts a Maxim gun mounted on tachanka, a horse-drawn carriage along with the gunner, firing backwards at a pursuing White Army regiment. Some propaganda Socialist realist art even features Lenin as manning the gun himself, however it is very unlikely that he ever did so. Anarchists attribute this mobile setup to Makhno.
[edit] Maxim Guns, Maxim Clones, and Maxim Derivatives
- Maxim's first company to manufacture the gun had as its chairman Albert Vickers and would later be taken over by Vickers, leading first to the Maxim-Vickers then, after Vickers' redesign, the Vickers machine gun. Earlier Maxims had been chambered for earlier British service cartridges. The was produced for export available in most of the different calibres and cartridges used by countries around the world, and including a large caliber (.50 inch) as used on Royal Navy warships.
- Made by Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken (DWM)
- and derivatives (e.g. MG08/15)
- The Maxim gun also popularized tripods and belt-feed. Earlier machine guns were usually mounted on horse carriages like small artillery pieces and fed from a grasshopper.
[edit] References
[edit] See also
- Anon, Vickers, Sons and Maxim Limited: Their Works and Manufactures. (Reprinted from 'Engineering') London (1898). It gives plates showing the mechanism of the Vickers Maxim gun and numerous plates showing the variety of mounts available at the end of the nineteenth century. It also includes numerous plates of the factories in which they were made.
- Ferguson, Niall (2004). Empire. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-100754-0.
- McCallum, Iain : Blood Brothers. Hiram and Hudson Maxim : Pioneers of Modern Warfare, Chatham Publishing, London, 1999
| Weapons of the British Empire 1722-1965 | ||
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Anti-Tank Weapons
Field guns & Misc. weapons
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it:Mitragliatrice Maxim he:מכונת הירייה של מקסים pl:Karabin maszynowy Maxim zh:马克沁机枪
