Machine guns are usually divided into light machine guns, heavy machine guns, general machine guns and large-caliber machine guns. According to the equipment objects, they are divided into field machine guns (including anti-aircraft machine guns), vehicle-mounted machine guns (including tank machine guns), aviation machine guns and ship-mounted machine guns.
Machine Gun
The light machine gun is equipped with a bipod, which is lightweight and easy to carry. It can shoot from a lying position on the shoulder, or from a standing position or while moving. The combat rate of fire is generally about 80 to 150 rounds per minute, and the effective range is 500 to 800 meters. The heavy machine gun is equipped with a stable gun frame, has good shooting accuracy, and can shoot continuously for a long time. The whole gun is heavy and can be disassembled for transportation. Its combat rate of fire is 200 to 300 rounds per minute, its effective range is 800 to 1,000 meters for horizontal fire, and 500 meters for high-altitude fire. General-purpose machine gun, also known as dual-purpose machine gun, can be used as a light machine gun when supported by a bipod, and can be used as a heavy machine gun when mounted on a gun frame. Large-caliber machine guns, generally with a caliber above 12 mm, can shoot at air targets, ground thin-walled armored targets and firepower points within 2,000 meters.
The world's first machine gun powered by gunpowder gas was invented by the British-American H.S. Maxim. In 1883, he successfully tested the short-recoil automatic principle of the barrel and applied this principle in 1884. The machine gun was patented. This is a major technological breakthrough in the history of firearms development. The theoretical rate of fire of this machine gun is about 600 rounds per minute, and the gun body weighs 27.2 kilograms. Later generations called it the Maxim heavy machine gun. It was first used during the British colonial war in South Africa (1893-1894). Since then, other countries have also developed various heavy machine guns. In the Battle of the Somme in World War I, the British army launched an attack on the German army on July 1, 1916. The German army used Maxim heavy machine guns and other weapons to fire fiercely and continuously at the dense formation of the British army. The British army suffered nearly 60,000 casualties in one day. This battle example is enough to illustrate the lethal effect of heavy machine gun firepower on the group's living targets. In order to enable the machine gun to closely accompany the infantry in combat, in 1902 the Danish W.O.H. Madsen designed a machine gun with a bipod and a butt that could be fired over the shoulder. The total gun weighed 9.98 kilograms, which was called a light machine gun. During World War I, the advent of military aircraft and tanks required infantry to have corresponding air defense and anti-armor capabilities. In order to improve the power of machine guns, large-caliber machine guns appeared. In 1918, the German army was first equipped with large-caliber machine guns, followed by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Military aircraft and tanks are also equipped with aviation machine guns and tank machine guns. Warships were equipped with ship-type machine guns when machine guns first appeared. After World War I, Germany designed the MG34 general-purpose machine gun. The gun body weighed 12 kilograms with a bipod. It was equipped with troops in 1934. It was equipped with a drum magazine and a bipod and could be used as a light machine gun. It was equipped with an ammunition chain and a tripod and could be used as a light machine gun. For heavy machine guns. After World War II, new general-purpose machine guns developed by many countries appeared one after another, such as the American M60 machine gun, the Soviet Union's ПΚΜ/ПΚΜС machine gun, and China's Type 67-2 machine gun.
The most common Gatling machine gun
The American Colt Company began exporting the much more advanced Gatling hand-cranked machine gun to China in 1872. It is the masterpiece of the famous American machinist Richard Gatlin. He welded 6-10 barrels onto a rotating cylinder. Each time the handle rotates, each barrel completes loading, shooting, shell ejection and other actions in sequence. A skilled shooter could fire 400 rounds of bullets in one minute, which was a miracle at the time. The Gatling gun was widely used in the American Civil War and the Western Frontier Movement, becoming a "killing machine" second only to the large-caliber howitzer. The arrival of the Gatling gun has made China feel like a treasure. The Qing government successively established production lines in Shanghai, Nanjing, Tianjin and other places to carry out large-scale imitation. Because this machine gun that instantly spits out a large amount of ammunition made a sound similar to that of an artillery piece, the Qing army simply called it a "cannon." During the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1894, the Japanese army was hit hard by Gatling guns carried by the Qing army many times. These scenes were recorded one by one by Japanese military reporters.
In addition, during the Boxer War in 1900, the Qing army and the Boxer Rebellion also used this rapid-fire weapon to defend Beijing and Tianjin. According to the memories of American soldiers who participated in the Eight-Nation Allied Forces: "A Gatling gun can block a wide street. Its killing effect is quite powerful... We must move forward against the rain of bullets fired by the Chinese."
Gatling gun
The American Colt Company began exporting the much more advanced Gatling hand-cranked machine gun to China in 1872. It is the masterpiece of the famous American machinist Richard Gatling. He welded 6-10 barrels onto a rotating cylinder. Each time the handle rotates, each barrel completes loading, shooting, shell ejection and other actions in sequence. A skilled shooter could fire 400 rounds of bullets in one minute, which was a miracle at the time. The Gatling gun was widely used in the American Civil War and the Western Frontier Movement, becoming a "killing machine" second only to the large-caliber howitzer. The arrival of the Gatling gun has made China feel like a treasure. The Qing government successively established production lines in Shanghai, Nanjing, Tianjin and other places to carry out large-scale imitation. Because this machine gun that instantly spits out a large amount of ammunition made a sound similar to that of an artillery piece, the Qing army simply called it a "cannon." During the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1894, the Japanese army was hit hard by Gatling guns carried by the Qing army many times. These scenes were recorded one by one by Japanese military reporters. In addition, during the Boxer War in 1900, the Qing army and the Boxer Rebellion also used this rapid-fire weapon to defend Beijing and Tianjin. According to the memories of American soldiers who participated in the Eight-Nation Allied Forces: "A Gatling gun can block a wide street. Its killing effect is quite powerful... We must move forward against the rain of bullets fired by the Chinese."
Maxim machine guns. In the First World War, no less than 200,000 people died from Maxim machine guns. In the Second Sino-Japanese War, about 500,000 people died.
Li Hongzhang once said, "Too fast and too expensive." In 1883, the British Maxim, an American, invented the world's first modern machine gun. It uses gunpowder gas pressure to replace the previous manpower, allowing the gun to automatically complete a series of actions such as unlocking, ejecting the shell, feeding ammunition, and re-locking, truly achieving the tactical effect of "pulling the trigger and bullets spurting out". In 1884, Maxim held a press conference for a new gun in London. Representatives from various countries attended, and China also sent its minister Li Hongzhang to attend. Maxim was performing rapid fire at that time. His machine gun fired 300 rounds in half a minute. The stunned Li Hongzhang shouted: "Too fast! Too fast!" When asked about the price again, the old official exclaimed: "Too expensive! Too expensive!" Although Li Hongzhang understood the power of the Maxim machine gun, due to the Qing government He was not given much available funds, so he could only buy one and go back to study it. In view of the high rate of fire of the gun, Li Hongzhang specially named it "Sports Gun". The Maxim machine gun first showed its power during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. The Russian army used it to teach the Japanese army, which was addicted to "meat bomb" tactics, a severe lesson. In a battle where the Japanese army besieged a Russian fortress, the Russian army used Maxim heavy machine guns to greet waves of screaming Japanese troops. The battle turned into a massacre. After a day of fighting, the Japanese army had suffered more than 4,000 casualties. When reporting the casualty figures, the superiors thought that there was an extra zero. The heavy casualties of the Japanese army finally made Chinese officials understand the value of the Maxim machine gun. It only took the Chinese military 10 years to popularize this weapon of mass destruction. During the Anti-Japanese War, Chinese army positions equipped with Maxim machine guns became the most troublesome target for the Japanese army. To this day, the Maxim machine gun is still the "treasure of the museum" in the Chinese Military Museum, and people can still experience its power on the open shooting range.
Czech ZB26 machine gun
In 1938, under an unknown highland in Shanxi, China, the Japanese army was advancing towards the Chinese army's position. A Japanese military officer was pointing his finger on a dirt road when he was suddenly fired upon by a burst of light machine gun fire. The officer was shot several times and lay in a pool of blood. The American "Life" magazine published this story and photos on November 14, 1938, and it was the ZB26 machine gun, the Chinese army's right-hand man in the Anti-Japanese War, that created this achievement.
This gun was produced by the Czech Republic, an industrial powerhouse in Central Europe. It was the most advanced light weapon in the 1930s and was exported to dozens of countries. China not only purchased a large number of ZB26 light machine guns, but also tried every means to imitate them, calling them "Czech" style machine guns. During the Anti-Japanese War, the gun was the most important source of firepower at the grassroots level of the Chinese army. Because the Chinese army is extremely short of artillery, it actually plays the role of artillery in the firepower configuration. The gun weighs only 9 kilograms and can be used with the Chinese army's standard rifle. This kind of machine gun can burst fire or strafe, and is very effective against large numbers of scattered enemies. At that time, the ZB26 machine gun group of the Chinese army caused great damage to the Japanese army. According to Japanese post-war documents: "The 7.92mm bullet fired by the ZB26 machine gun hits a person, and the trauma caused is 'small import, large export'."
Danish Artillery Captain U. O. H. Mai Desen, shortly after Maxim invented the heavy machine gun, began to develop a light machine gun. In the 1790s, Madsen designed and manufactured a machine gun that could use ordinary rifle bullets, named the Medellin light machine gun. The machine gun is equipped with a bipod and can be fired from the shoulder. The total weight is less than 10 kilograms. The performance of the Medellin machine gun was very reliable, and its caliber and structure were variable to adapt to different user requirements. Therefore, it was a hot item in the arms market at that time. In 1901, Italy's Gippi Pellino also developed a light machine gun with excellent performance, which was in a leading position in the world. The Italian authorities decided to keep it strictly confidential. In order to prevent the news from leaking out, they ordered the production of Pellino machine guns not to be allowed. Instead, they ordered a large number of heavy machine guns with inferior performance to Pellino machine guns from abroad to equip the Italian army. It was not until 1916, after the Italian army suffered from the lack of light machine guns in World War I, that it hurriedly put the Pellino machine gun into production and equipped the army. Light and heavy dual-purpose machine gun - The light and heavy dual-purpose machine gun is also called a general-purpose machine gun. It can be a light machine gun because it is flexible and can follow the infantry to provide fire support while on the move; it can also be a heavy machine gun, which has a long range and long continuous shooting time. . Germany was a defeated country in World War I. In this battle, the water-cooled heavy machine gun showed great power. Therefore, in the Versailles Peace Treaty imposed on Germany by the victorious powers such as the United States, Britain, and France in 1919, Germany was expressly prohibited from developing any water-cooled heavy machine guns. In the early days of establishing the Nazi regime in Germany, Hitler had to reorganize his armaments and develop new weapons, while also concealing his power from others and avoiding sanctions from the great powers. Therefore, Germany developed a new type of machine gun under the guise of developing a light machine gun. This type of gun is water-cooled instead of air-cooled. The barrel is very easy to load and unload. The barrel overheating problem caused by continuous shooting can be solved by replacing the barrel. The ammunition supply method can be either a chain or a drum, and it can be equipped with two A tripod can also be installed. This MG-34 machine gun is mounted on a bipod and equipped with a drum, it is a light machine gun (weighing 12 kilograms); mounted on a tripod and equipped with an ammunition chain, it is a heavy machine gun; if it is mounted on an anti-aircraft gun stand, it is Can be used as an anti-aircraft machine gun. And can also be installed on tanks and armored vehicles. This is the world's first light and heavy dual-purpose machine gun. It was later improved and developed into the MG─43 light and heavy dual-purpose machine gun. An automatic firearm equipped with a bipod, gun mount or gun base that can perform continuous shooting. Machine guns are mainly used to kill living targets. They can also shoot thin-walled armored targets on the ground, water or in the air, or suppress enemy fire points. Usually divided into light machine guns, heavy machine guns, general machine guns and large-caliber machine guns. According to the equipment objects, they are divided into field machine guns (including anti-aircraft machine guns), vehicle-mounted machine guns (including tank machine guns), aviation machine guns and ship-mounted machine guns. The light machine gun is equipped with a bipod, which is lightweight and easy to carry. The combat rate of fire is generally 80 to 150 rounds/minute, and the effective range is 500 to 800 meters. The heavy machine gun is equipped with a stable gun frame, has good shooting accuracy, and can shoot continuously for a long time. The combat rate of fire is 200 to 300 rounds per minute, and the effective range is 800 to 1000 meters for horizontal fire and 500 meters for high fire. General-purpose machine gun, also known as dual-purpose machine gun, can be used as a light machine gun when supported by a bipod, and can be used as a heavy machine gun when mounted on a gun frame. Large-caliber machine guns, generally with a caliber above 12 mm, can shoot at air targets, ground thin-walled armored targets and firepower points within 2,000 meters.