The search for rapid fire weaponry

[fat tony]

Interesting reading here. I really liked the part on the manually operated 'machine guns' of the 19th century.

One of the most progressive types of firearms in the fourteenth century was a wrought iron single-shot breech-loading gun, the breech of which was wedged after being dropped into position. The principle was somewhat the same as the present-day system of locking. It is a curious fact that gunmakers should have developed so advanced a method of charging and then abandoned it in favor of the inferior muzzle loading.

Considering the crude work of the fourteenth century mechanic, the religious restrictions of the times, and the total ignorance of metallurgy in relation to powder pressure, the progress in firearms was comparatively rapid.

^ The search for a higher body count on the battlefield knows no bounds.


http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ref/MG/I/MG-1.html

'Barnes Machine gun' circa 1856

The United States Patent Office on 8 July 1856 issued patent number 15,315 to C. E. Barnes of Lowell, Mass., for a crank-operated machine cannon. This weapon had many original improvements, and was the forerunner of a series of crank-operated weapons. The gun's locking system employed a toggle joint arrangement that rammed a fixed charge home. The stiff linen cartridge was fed from a tray located on the left side of the breech end of the gun. A very clever method was used to place a percussion cap on the nipple mechanically after the weapon was safely locked. The cap was fired by a continued forward movement of the crank action which tripped a sear. The hammer, similar to a piston, was confined in a cylinder. A part of the force of the explosion in the chamber came back through the nipple and imparted enough energy against the head of the hammer to compress the firing pin spring allowing a sear to engage this

--24--
Barnes Machine Gun. Patented 1856.

part. This was a novel employment of gas pressure from the chamber for the purpose of cocking the piece.

The rate of fire depended solely upon the speed with which the crank could be turned. This weapon was far ahead of its time, and its development would have placed a reliable machine gun in the armed forces several years prior to the Civil War.

 

[smellie]

Barnes is an interesting precursor of the automatic gun.

About the only decent treatment I have found on it is in Volume 1 of Chinn's "The Machine Gun". You can download (free!!!!) all 5 volumes of this truly MASSIVE and exhaustive work over on milsurps dot com. Bring a fresh DVD; you'll need it.

Perhaps it is a good thing that people didn't take the Barnes more seriously. The American Civil War (or the War for Southern Secession, take your pick) killed more than half a million as it was. Property damage was astounding by any standard: Sherman burned a 50-mile-wide swath to nothing "from Atlanta to the Sea, As we go marching through Georgia!"
.

Excellent "what-if" book for the Civil War: Ward Moore's wonderful "Bring the Jubilee", available in paperback for over 40 years, still unremarked except by CW nuts, s/f freaks and serious social historians.

Also a neat s/f story (JACK FINNEY wrote it: download from Colliers', 1951), "Quit Zoomin' Them Hands Through the Air!". CW goes awry when the Wright Flyer is stolen from the Smithsonian and used as a bomber!
.

 

[Talquin]

Guns of the south is one I enjoyed reading. Most of turtledove's books are a great read.

 

[fat tony]

Barnes is an interesting precursor of the automatic gun.

About the only decent treatment I have found on it is in Volume 1 of Chinn's "The Machine Gun". You can download (free!!!!) all 5 volumes of this truly MASSIVE and exhaustive work over on milsurps dot com. Bring a fresh DVD; you'll need it.

Perhaps it is a good thing that people didn't take the Barnes more seriously. The American Civil War (or the War for Southern Secession, take your pick) killed more than half a million as it was. Property damage was astounding by any standard: Sherman burned a 50-mile-wide swath to nothing "from Atlanta to the Sea, As we go marching through Georgia!"
.

Excellent "what-if" book for the Civil War: Ward Moore's wonderful "Bring the Jubilee", available in paperback for over 40 years, still unremarked except by CW nuts, s/f freaks and serious social historians.

Also a neat s/f story (JACK FINNEY wrote it: download from Colliers', 1951), "Quit Zoomin' Them Hands Through the Air!". CW goes awry when the Wright Flyer is stolen from the Smithsonian and used as a bomber!
.

Indeed. As part of my research for a paper on William Hall, VC last year, I did a bit of reading on the Crimean War. I also noted that the killing machines of the Crimean War were probably an order of magnitude above and beyond those of the Napoleonic wars. The capacity of the new generation of weapons to kill completely outstripped the medical science of the day. British troops wounded in battle and sent to hospitals in Turkey were rotting away in their own filth until they died.