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 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."
Maxim machine gun
Li Hongzhang once said that it was "too fast and too expensive." In 1883, the British-American Maxim 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 military 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.
The Czech ZB26 machine gun
It goes in like an eye and flies out like a hole. In 1938, under an unknown highland in Shanxi, China, the Japanese army was advancing towards the Chinese army's position. A Japanese 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: “When the 7.92 mm bullet fired by the ZB26 machine gun hits a person, the trauma caused is ‘small at the entrance, large at the exit’.”