A machine gun was a gun that in fired 400-600 small caliber rounds a minute. Rounds were fed into the gun by either a fabric or a metal strip. Sir Hiram Maxim invented the first true machine gun in 1884. This gun was recoil-operated, water cooled, and belt fed.
Impact and Consequences
of the Machine Gun
The machine gun was a very effective way of killing many soldiers in a short period of time, causing thousands of deaths in the first minutes of the Battle of the Somme.
The problem with the machine gun is that they would quickly overheat and become inoperable, even with firing in short bursts. In an attempt to solve this water and air cooled machine guns were invented. This only slowed the overheating by about a minute and jugs of water would have to be carried everywhere the machine gun went.
The British did not use machine guns right away because their officers thought it was an improper form of warfare. They eventually adopted it in 1915. The Germans started the war with about 100,000 of these guns, while the French and British had a few hundred.
By the end of the war each country had their own form of machine gun
The problem with the machine gun is that they would quickly overheat and become inoperable, even with firing in short bursts. In an attempt to solve this water and air cooled machine guns were invented. This only slowed the overheating by about a minute and jugs of water would have to be carried everywhere the machine gun went.
The British did not use machine guns right away because their officers thought it was an improper form of warfare. They eventually adopted it in 1915. The Germans started the war with about 100,000 of these guns, while the French and British had a few hundred.
By the end of the war each country had their own form of machine gun
Connections to Today
The modern day example of the machine guns used in WW1 is the Fabrique Nationale Mk 48 LWMG Light Weight Machine Gun invented in 2002, used by special operation forces in the US. It has improved since WW1 by making it light weight, extending the firing range, and raising the rate of fire.