In
1885 the American inventor, Hiram Maxim,
demonstrated the world's first automatic portable machine-gun to the
British Army. Maxim used the energy of
each bullet's recoil force to eject the spent cartridge and insert
the next bullet. The Maxim Machine-Gun
would therefore fire until the entire belt of bullets was used up.
Trials showed that the machine-gun could fire 500 rounds per minute
and therefore had the firepower of about 100 rifles.
The
Maxim Machine-gun was adopted by the
British Army in 1889. The following year
the Austrian, German, Italian, Swiss and Russian armies also purchased
Maxim's gun. The gun was first used by Britain`s colonial forces in
the Matabele war in 1893-94. In one engagement, fifty soldiers fought
off 5,000 Matabele warriors with just four Maxim guns.
The success of the Maxim Machine-gun
inspired other inventors. The German Army's Maschinengewehr
was based on Maxim's invention. John Moses
Browning produced his first machine-gun in 1890 and five years
it was adopted by the US Navy.
By the outbreak of the First World War, the
British Army had adopted the Vickers
Machine-gun Fitted with interrupter
gear, the Vickers was also standard armament on all British and
French aircraft after 1916. During the war the British also used the
Lewis Gun. Easier to produce and far lighter
than the Vickers, it was used by soldiers on the Western
Front and on armoured cars and
aircraft.
In
the Second World War the British
Army used the extremely reliable Vickers
303. It was a recoil-operated machine gun, water cooled and belt
fed. It weighed 40lb without its tripod and fired the standard .303
British cartridge at about 450rpm.
During
the war the German
Army developed
the MG42 machine-gun. Its 1,000rpm could be extremely wasteful during
battle. The Red Army used the Maxim-Gun
at
the beginning of the war but later switched to the drum-fed and gas-operated
Degtyarev Model 1940. The United
States Army preferred
the Browning M2 that fired 100 round belts at 450 rpm.
The
Maxim-Gun
being used by the Red
Army in 1939.
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