German arms designer Andreas Wilhelm Schwarzlose patented a basic design for a machine gun in 1902. He subsequently sold his patent rights to the Steyr arms factory in Austria, which produced the first guns of the Schwarzlose pattern in 1905. After two years of trials and development, the military forces of the Empire adopted the Schwarzlose machine gun in 1907; this gun was also later adopted in a range of calibers by the Netherlands and Sweden (who both manufactured Schwarzlose machine guns under licence until the 1930s), and by Greece, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey – all before the World War I. In 1912 it was modified with the introduction of stronger parts and slightly reshaped retarding levers (struts). The primary visible difference between original M1907 guns and modified M1907/12 guns is the lack of the gap between the hump on the receiver and the barrel jacket on the latter guns. Read the rest of this entry »

French army showed some advanced thinking in terms of small arms prior to and during World War One. For example, the French were among the first to adopt and mass-issue semi-automatic rifles. They also were among the first manufacturers of inexpensive, production-oriented squad automatic weapons, namely the infamous CSRG M1915, otherwise known as the Chauchat after the person who led the development commission (CSRG stands for Chauchat, Suterre, Ribeyrolle and Gladiator – the first three being the names of the designers and the last one being the name of the manufacturer, French bicycle-making company Établissements des Cycles “Clément-Gladiator”).
The entire gun was developed so its parts can be made in almost every mechanical workshop with generic lathe equipment, and with loose tolerances. This weapon was one of the lightest in its class, being about 2-3 kilograms lighter than the Lewis LMG; but it also was the least reliable, in part because of its complicated design and in part because of the crude machining and loose fitting of its operating parts, resulting in a wide variety of jams and stoppages. It was also prone to self-disassembly under prolonged firing, if parts became worn. Other sources of trouble were an open-side magazine which easily collected dirt and dust, and an outdated cartridge with a severe taper of the case combined with a large diameter rim.
In fact, the Chauchat light machine gun is often considered as the worst weapon of its class, ever produced in quantity. Nevertheless, the CSRG was produced in great numbers in spite of availability of better (and of course more expensive) weapons, such as the Hotchkiss Portative, Lewis or Madsen, and issued not only to French troops, but also to the American Expeditionary corps in Europe, first in the original French 8×50R chambering, and then in the .30-06 US chambering. Alongside the criticisms there are more favourable reports of its successful use and it is probably fair to say that, despite its problems, it was still better than nothing. Some sources claim that as many as 250,000 8mm M1915 plus almost 40,000.30-06 M1918 were built during the Great War. Several countries (such as Belgium, Greece and Poland) even used this weapon during the early 1920s, adapted to their domestic military ammunition. Read the rest of this entry »

Type 67 was the first Chinese general purpose machine gun, developed to replace earlier Type 53 and Type 57 7,62mm medium machine guns (license-built copies of Soviet SG-43 and SGM respectively). This weapon combined features borrowed from many other machine guns, and went through a number of variations, still serving with PLA (Chinese People’s Liberation Army). Development of a new medium machine gun commenced in 1959, with first prototypes tested in 1963. At that time the concept of a new weapon was broaden from medium to universal machine gun. Adopted in 1967, it was improved with the introduction of the Type 67-1 in 1978. In 1982 PLA has adopted the Type 67-2 GPMG, which was somewhat lighter and used a lighter tripod. Type 67-2 is so far a standard general purpose machine gun of PLA. It saw limited use during closing days of Vietnam war, and few guns of this type also found its way (through the Pakistan) into the hands of Afghanistan mujaheds that fought Soviet army during early 1980s. Read the rest of this entry »

The Minimi light machine gun was developed by the famous Belgian company FN Herstal, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mass production began in 1982 in Belgium, and at about the same time it has been adopted by the US Armed forces as the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW). Since its introduction Minimi has seen widespread service, and numerous variations have been developed. First, the Para (Paratroop) version came out, with shorter barrel and tubular telescoped butt. This gun traded off some of the range and firepower for compactness and maneuverability. Quite recently, an SPW version was developed, which featured a Para-type buttstock, a barrel of intermediate length (between standard and Para models), and a Picatinny-type rail mount, which allows a wide variety of sights and scopes to be mounted. To save weight, the magazine feed option of the standard and para models has been discarded. This version, in a slightly modified form, was adopted by the US Special Forces Command (US SOCOM) as the Mk.46 model 0 light machine gun.

The FN Minimi has an excellent reputation on reliability and firepower, and the latest reports on failures of M249 SAW weapons in Iraq are attributed to the age of the weapons used – most of the current issue M249 in US Army are more than 10 years old and quite worn out. Read the rest of this entry »

The history of Danish Machine guns is closely tied to one company and one name, although there were, in fact, far more names behind the whole story. The company in question was originally known as Dansk Rekyl Riffel Syndikat A/S, and the name that became a symbol of a Danish military industry was the Madsen. Vilhelm Herman Oluf Madsen was the War Minister of Denmark who, among other things, supported the development of domestic automatic arms. This development commenced circa 1890, when Jens Theodor Schouboe, a lieutenant in the Danish army, started development of a semi-automatic rifle. When this rifle was adopted by the Danish Marines in 1896, a new company was founded to produce this rifle and its derivatives for domestic use and export, and it was the aforementioned Dansk Rekyl Riffel Syndikat. Further development of the rifle continued under the leadership of Schouboe and the factory director Rasmussen, and by the 1902 the top-loading semiautomatic rifle evolved into a magazine-fed machine rifle, which in fact became the world’s first mass-produced light machine gun.
In a relatively short time Madsen machine rifles found their way into a number of European countries, being adopted or purchased in significant numbers by Austro-Hungary, France, Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, and a number of other powers. During the Great War, license manufacture was planned to be established in Russia and UK, although this did not happen in either country – in Russia because of the turmoil of the revolution of 1917 and in the UK because of financial disagreements. Nevertheless, large numbers of Madsen light machine guns (so named after the greatest promoter of the gun) were built and exported from Denmark from about 1905 and until about 1950, when mass production of this remarkable weapon ceased. It must be noted, however, that the Madsen LMG was offered through company catalogues up until mid-1960s, apparently on “made on order” basis, in ‘any military rifle caliber between 6.5 an 8 mm’, including then-new 7.62×51 NATO. Read the rest of this entry »

During the late 1920s Waffenfabrik Solothurn, a Swiss private business that emerged in the watch-making industry but later turned to the production of small-arms parts, was bought by the German concern Rheinmetall, to serve as a research and development facility away from the watchful eyes of the Allied Control Commission, established in 1918 as a result of Treaties of Versailles. In 1929 Waffenfabrik Solothurn brought out its first practical machine gun, known by the factory as the S2-100, and in export catalogs as the MG 29. Next year Solothurn announced an updated version, the S2-200, also known as the MG 30. It was, in essence, a typical light machine gun – recoil operated and magazine fed, although Solothurn also offered a complicated universal tripod for this gun. The Solothurn MG30 earned its place in history by being adopted by Austria in 1930 and Hungary in 1931 (in both cases chambered for 8×56R ammunition), and it also served as the starting point for several German machine guns, such as the MG 15 (aircraft) and MG 34. It is also must be noted that most of components of the MG30 were produced in Austria at the Steyr factory; Solothurn carried out the final assembly and test-firing. Read the rest of this entry »

The development of a large-caliber heavy machine gun in USA was initiated in 1918, at the direct request of General Pershing, the commander of the US expeditionary corps in Europe. He requested a heavy gun capable of destroying military aircraft and ground targets such as tanks and armored cars. The task of developing such a gun and ammunition was passed to John Browning (then based at Colt’s factory) and the Winchester Arms Co. respectively. The basic pattern of the new heavy machine gun was sealed in 1921. Officially adopted in 1923 as “machine gun, .50 calibre, M1921”, this water cooled, belt fed gun became the prime AA weapon for the infantry and the navy.
In the year 1930 US Army adopted a slightly modified .50 caliber M1921A1 machine gun, and further work on this gun concentrated on the development of a universal weapon suitable for most roles. The key design changes were made by Dr. Samuel G. Green, who redesigned the basic receiver so it could be used in conjunction with either water-cooled or air-cooled barrels, encased in a water jacket or short perforated sleeve respectively. He also developed a switchable left or right side belt-feeding unit. The US Army adopted the new, improved fifty-caliber machine gun as the M2, in a water-cooled anti-aircraft version, an air-cooled ground mount version and as an aircraft weapon. Since the original air-cooled barrels were too light to provide any degree of sustained fire in ground applications, heavier barrels were soon introduced for the ground-mounted guns, so this weapon became the “M2 Heavy Barrel” or M2HB for short. In 1938 the barrel of the M2HB was lengthened to provide more striking energy and longer range, and in this form the M2HB was made in great numbers during the Second World War. Read the rest of this entry »

In around 1921 the Czechoslovak army also started a quest for a light machine gun. Early trials included foreign designs such as Berthier, Browning BAR M1918, Darne, Hotchkiss, Madsen and St.Etienne, and several domestic designs. Of those, the most important was the Praha II LMG, a lightweight, belt fed weapon built at Česka Zbrojovka (CZ) Praha (Czech Arms factory in Prague) and designed by brothers Vaclav and Emmanuel Holek. In the following year the Holek brothers abandoned the belt feed in favour of a top-feeding box magazine, and the resulting weapon, known as the Praha I-23, was selected. Since CZ-Praha was a relatively small factory with limited industrial capabilities, it was decided to transfer the production of the new light machine gun to a more advanced arms factory in the city of Brno, known as Zbrojovka Brno, or ZB in short. This transfer resulted in a long series of court trials over royalties, between the owners of the design (CZ-Praha) and the manufacturer (ZB). Read the rest of this entry »