Early Machine Guns Generals in the American Civil War (1861 - 1865) often used the tactic of frontal attacks using large number of men to overwhelm the defenders, on the basis that it took time for each of the defenders to reload, and in that time, the surviving attackers could reach and grapple with the enemy. What the defenders needed was to increase the firing rate, and the critical issue was the time taken to reload.

The majority of troops in the Civil War were equipped with muzzle loading rifles, such as Springfields or Enfields, and under good conditions, a man could fire two or three shots every minute. To increase the firing rate would require a metallic cartridge, and these were not suitable for the millions of muzzle loading rifles manufactured during that war. However, some specialist machine guns were developed and tried out. The most notable was the Ager 'Coffee Mill' machine gun. This was a single barrelled gun with a hopper and a hand crank. The cartridges were simple steel tubes, open at one end and fitted with a percussion cap at the other, into which a standard.58 paper cartridge was loaded. The hopper was filled with these steel cartridges, and then by turning the crank, they could be driven into the breech, fired and then extracted. Download software h264visa 1.17 incl crack vokeon limit.

The fired cartridges would then be collected and reloaded. .58 rim-fire cartridge in chamber One of the drawbacks of a fast-firing weapon was the heating effect of the burning gunpowder, which caused the breech to expand and fail to seat properly. In order to solve this problem in 1862, Gatling took the idea of a preloaded steel cartridge-chamber and arranged for six barrels to rotate about a central spindle, with each barrel firing as it came to the 12 o'clock position in its travel, and for five-sixths of its life it was cooling between shots.

The Gatling gun was designed by the American inventor Dr. Gatling in 1861 and patented on November 4, 1862. [5] [6] Gatling wrote that he created it to reduce the size of armies and so reduce the number of deaths by combat and disease, and to show how futile war is. Mar 2, 2017 - Plans for the scale model Gatling Gun. I helped a friend build a 22LR version and I made a bunch of the steel chambers for a 1862.

The first six Gatling guns were built at the end of 1862 at the works of Miles Greenwood Foundry & Machine Works of Cincinnati, Ohio. Before they were delivered the factory, patterns and guns were destroyed by a fire. Production resumed at the Cincinnati Type Foundry in 1863. Thirteen Gatling guns (Second Model 1862) were manufactured, and 12 purchased by Major General Benjamin Butler (the last was bought by Admiral David Porter). The animation shows the first model of 1862, where the steel cartridge-chambers were loaded with the paper cartridges used by the.58 musket then in use.

These were cumbersome to load, and needed a percussion cap to be fitted to the rear of the chamber. However, when production resumed in 1863, Richard Gatling had recognised the value of the.58 rimfire metallic cartridge, and these bullets were fitted into the steel cartridge-chambers. General Butler (apparently) used his Gatling guns to good effect during the Union's siege of Petersburg, Virginia.

However, political issues intervened and Gatling did not sell any further guns during that conflict. By 1865, Gatling had completely redesigned his loading mechanism, to take advantage of the metallic cartridge. In his 1865 model the rimfire cartridge was loaded into a chamber in the rear of each barrel, dispensing with the steel cartridge-chambers. The basic principle of loading several barrels in sequence with a metallic cartridge has endured since 1865, and is still in use today. How it Worked The key to the 1862 Gatling gun was a steel cartridge-chamber which contained the force of the explosion of the gunpowder charge. Unlike the Ager cartridge, the Gatling cartridge chamber was not pushed into the rear of the barrel, instead cartridge-chamber had to be aligned and forced tightly against the rear of the barrel at the instant that the charge was ignited.

In the 1862 (First model) the steel cartridge-chambers used the same paper cartridge as used in the infantry Springfield and Enfield rifle muskets - a.58 Minie rifled bullet powered by 65 grains of gunpowder wrapped in a paper cartridge and ignited by a percussion cap that was fitted to the rear of the cartridge-chamber. With a good stock of pre-loaded cartridge-chambers, the gun could produce a high rate of fire. The fired cartridge-chambers would then be reloaded. The second model, which was used operationally by General Butler, used metallic cartridges which were easier to load into the cartridge-chamber tubes. The Gatling gun consists of an assembly of six barrels, a carrier, lock-cylinder and cog wheel all fixed to a central shaft so that they rotate together when a pinion wheel is turned by a hand crank on the right rear side of the gun. The lock-cylinder is bored to hold six locks that are free to move within the lock cylinder.