What Was the Machine Gun and How Did It Work?
The Machine Gun was a heavy weapon that needed two to three men to operate, one man would fire the gun while the other would be feeding bullets into the gun. It was used for mostly defensive purposes in WWI, they would be positioned along the trenches so that in the case of an attack from the enemy they would be ready to take care of the attack much faster than an ordinary rifle could. When Hiram Maxim invented the machine gun in 1884 he utilized a simple concept that made the machine gun an effective weapon, this was that the gas made by an explosion of powder from each shell would cause some recoil which allowed the gun to continue shooting, no other powers were needed to make it fire. Maxim's first design of the machine gun was a belt fed and water cooled mechanism which theoretically allowed the weapon to shoot 600 rounds a minute, the downside to the weapon was its weight, coming in at about 62kg. or about 137 pounds.
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The Battle of Somme
The Battle of Somme was one of if not the largest battle in WWI, this battle lasted from November 1, to July 1, and many men were lost in this large battle. By the end of the battle the British had suffered about 420,000 casualties, the French suffered about 200,000 casualties, and the Germans suffered nearly 465,000 casualties. The two main weapons that made this battle so long and deadly was artillery, and the machine gun, the machine gun made many moments of the battle a stalemate because they would be lined up along the trenches making it extremely difficult to make an advance on the enemy, and causing many deaths in No Man's Land which was the area between the two fighting trenches that soldiers would have to make a run across to advance on the enemy. As the battle dragged on and became a battle of attrition the Germans became weakened to the point were they had to make a retreat, and the allies were victorious.
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Impact and Consequences of the Machine GunThe Machine Gun had a very large impact on how the first World War was actually fought, this is because it made trench warfare very common, and made the war based on defenses, thus increasing the total length of the war overall. The Machine Gun made life for a soldier much more difficult, this is because due to machine guns they had to live and fight in trenches which were in no way sanitary or comfortable, and when soldier would have to charge the enemy it was very difficult to survive because of the large amount of machine gun fire that would be fired at them making the war very deadly for soldiers. The machine gun affected the leaders of warring nations quiet heavily, this is because they had to change battle tactics that ad been long used in the military as well as try to develop better and more effective machine guns to combat the enemy.
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The Machine Gun: Pros and Cons
Pros:
Where The Minigun Was Used |
Cons:
Connections to TodayThe modern day equivalent to the WW1 machine gun of the early 1900's is the Mini Gun. The Mini gun is a massive improvement from the WW1 era machine gun in nearly every way, for one it was much lighter from 135 pounds of the WW1 machine gun the modern day mini gun weighs only 85 pounds and was developed in the 1960's and can fire about 4000 rounds per minute, a massive improvement from 600. The mini gun today is commonly used on vehicles such as tanks, helicopters, planes, and armored cars and trucks. The mini gun has been regularly used by the U.S. Army since the Vietnam war.
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