Widow Maker~Maxim

When it comes to the Maxim machine gun, what do people think of? The following interesting historical series will introduce you to relevant historical events.

Before the advent of machine guns, what were the armies of countries around the world like? That was an era where all military officers believed in spirit and courage. In fact, prior to World War I, military officers in continental European countries came from the landlord or aristocratic class, and they themselves were not aware of the changes in the mode of warfare brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Most officers' thinking still lingers on the infantry tactical concepts created by King Gustav II of Sweden during the Thirty Years' War in Europe. In their view, current rifles and cannons only have a longer range and greater power than previous rifles and cannons. The real factors that win the war are still the approach of infantry bayonets and the immediate charge of cavalry.

European and American officers ignored the immense power of machine guns and believed that they could not change the mode of war. During World War I, European armies still adhered to the tradition of launching intensive infantry charges. In the Battle of Somme, the British, led by noble officers, launched an infantry charge against the German army, resulting in 60000 deaths in one day and 615000 soldiers of the Anglo French coalition in the entire battle. In front of machine guns, the charge of European cavalry also turned into unilateral slaughter. In the first Battle of Mons, the British 9th Cavalry and 18th Light Cavalry were completely annihilated by German machine guns attempting to charge sideways. Traditional tactics are not worth mentioning in front of machine guns. It can be said that machine guns have changed the mode of human warfare.

From the emergence of machine guns to the Maxim machine gun

The earliest machine guns can be traced back to organ guns, which are weapons with barrels arranged in rows on carts. Its name comes from the fact that the barrels arranged side by side resemble the organ in a church. In fact, an organ gun is a collection of multiple front mounted guns, and its ammunition still needs to be loaded from the muzzle. The muzzle of a machine gun is too many, and it takes too much time to assemble one by one, which is also very cumbersome. In the rapidly changing battlefield, it is unlikely to be transported to urgently needed areas, so it is not very useful. Essentially, machine guns only increase the amount of ammunition fired, but cannot be fired continuously. But due to the need for strong firepower in war, continuous shooting and ammunition firing are required.

In 1663, the British man Palmer described the possibility of using recoil and escaping gas along the loading tube. This is the basic principle of machine guns, but unfortunately, it cannot be achieved with 17th century firearms development technology. In 1718, James Parker, an Englishman, invented the single barreled pistol and applied for a patent, but unfortunately it did not receive much attention. In 1834, Danish inventor Robnitz invented the full-size machine gun with a maximum firing rate of 80 rounds per minute, but it was abandoned due to its heavy weight. With the advancement of manufacturing technology, machine guns are also constantly being improved. In 1851, a Belgian engineer invented the machine gun, which was produced by Montini's factory and named the Montini machine gun. But this machine gun had many drawbacks and was not perfect enough, so it was used during the Franco Prussian War and later abandoned.

In 1861, American doctor Richard Jordan Gatling wanted to develop a new machine gun, so he manufactured the Gatling machine gun, which was the first machine gun widely used by the military. The Gatling machine gun consists of 6 to 10 barrels, which are turned into an electric motor as a power source by hand cranking the barrel. The barrel is rotated sequentially to complete shooting, ejection, loading, locking, and re firing. This makes the firing speed of the Gatling machine gun astonishing. When it was first developed, it could fire 200 bullets per minute. Afterwards, it was improved to a level of 1200 rounds per minute. But Gatling is too heavy and not easy to use, and automation has already been phased out before.

The Maxim heavy machine gun, invented by American Helen Stevens Maxim, truly made the machine gun to its peak. He came from a poor background and once started a company in the United States, but was excluded by Edison. Helpless, Maxim came to Europe to seek development. After investigating European preferences for weapons, Maxim devoted himself to weapon design. In 1883, Maxim successfully designed and completed an automatic weapon mechanism that utilizes the automatic circulation of gunpowder and gas energy to achieve automatic shooting. In order to solve the ammunition supply problem, Maxim invented the canvas ammunition supply chain. In order to solve the problem of high barrel temperature caused by continuous shooting, Maxim placed a water-cooled cooling cylinder filled with water around the barrel.

In 1884, the Maxim heavy machine gun was introduced, with a firing rate of 600 rounds per minute. It only requires one person to operate. So, Maxim heavy machine guns began to be equipped by the army one after another. After World War I, the enormous power of machine guns was demonstrated, and countries around the world purchased them one after another. The emergence of the Maxim heavy machine gun marked the end of cavalry and also led to the withdrawal of nomadic peoples from the historical stage around the world, causing the "sea of people tactic" to lose its rightful value. Only industrialized powers can establish themselves in the world.

The power of machine guns in war

When machine guns first appeared, not many people realized that machine guns would reform and promote the existing mode of war. The combat methods of European and American countries all originated from the formation combat mode of the breech gun era, mainly because the rifles used by soldiers have always been breech guns. From a matchline gun to a flint gun, in addition to improving the ignition method of the rifle, rifling has also been added, making the rifle's shooting accuracy higher and shooting distance longer. This is mainly to enhance the power of the breech gun, not a technological innovation. It was not until the Austro Prussian War in 1866 that the era of breech guns came to an end. Prussian soldiers were equipped with a breech mounted pistol. The technological advantage of this rifle enabled Prussia to sweep the Austrian army and achieve victory in the war.

The Austrian War did not significantly improve the world war pattern from the 19th century to the early 20th century. Infantry still implement formation tactics. Until the outbreak of the American Civil War, the infantry lineup was crushed to pieces by rifles, causing European and American countries to change their tactics. However, infantry charge is still seen as a symbol of courage. A brave charge can crush the enemy's attack, which is the spiritual honor of a noble officer. So collective charge still represents the spiritual value of the so-called army. The most typical example is the Japanese military's "meat bullet tactics" during the Lushun Offensive and Defense War in the Russo Japanese War of 1905. Japanese General Natsumi Hideyoshi attempted to demonstrate the bravery of the Japanese army to the Russian army and then destroy its morale. He launched a suicide attack on Heights 203. As a result, nearly 30000 Japanese soldiers were injured or killed within a week. At that time, machine guns were among the weapons of the Russian army.

However, the emergence of the Maxim machine gun completely destroyed the identity value system of officers, and its destructive power was first exposed in colonial conquest wars.

In the Rhodesian colonial war that broke out in 1893, British Rhodesian colonial police repelled a fierce attack by 5000 Zulu soldiers with four Maxim heavy machine guns, resulting in over 3000 deaths. The Zulu people once killed over 1600 British soldiers in hand to hand combat. In terms of brave British soldiers, they may not be as brave as the Zulu people, but in the face of heavy machine guns, personal bravery is useless. In 1881, the Mehdi Uprising occurred in Sudan, and in 1882, Britain controlled Egypt to deal with Mehdi. Afterwards, the English and Mahdi rebellions erupted in the Battle of Entuman, where 20000 soldiers were massacred by British aggressors, with approximately 11000 people lying on machine gun positions and only a few dozen British casualties. You should know that some members of the Mahdi Uprising were religious fanatics who launched a charge based on the ideals of holy war, but their brave and fearless ideas were ultimately defeated by Maxim's heavy machine guns. In 1890, the East African Company was established in Germany. In 1891, the German army clashed with the Hehe tribes in Africa. With the help of African indigenous soldiers, a German military doctor entered the earthen house with two machine guns and a large amount of ammunition for defense, killing over 1000 Hehe tribes. You should know that before that, the Hehe people had eliminated a German army through surprise attacks. The emergence of machine guns made Europeans invincible in Africa. A few people carrying several machine guns can even control an African colony. So it was extremely easy for European powers to maintain and conquer colonies. A small team of irregular troops can conquer a tribe or even a country with just a few machine guns. To maintain local order, there is no need to station a large number of national troops, only some irregular troops are needed. The cost of colonial rule decreased, exploitation continued to increase, and the profits of colonial rule by European powers became higher. So, the European powers began a frenzy of dividing the world. In 1884, European powers brazenly partitioned the entire African continent.

The military transformation brought about by machine guns

The First World War was a completely new mode of warfare, in which all participating countries participated in the war through a nationwide mobilization. Taking the size statistics of the military as an example:

The total population of Germany and its colonies is 79 million, with a mobilized army of up to 11 million. The total population of the Allied Austro Hungarian Empire was 50 million, and 6.5 million troops were mobilized. The total population of the Allied country France and its colonies was 81 million, and 8.5 million troops were mobilized. The total population of the Allied Kingdom and its colonies was 400 million, with approximately 8.654 million mobilized troops. The total population of the Allied Russia was 1.8, and 12 million troops were mobilized. Such a large number of armies were built on the production capacity, ruling ability, efficient centralized bureaucratic management, and national supply capacity of European powers. It can be said that the European powers have tapped into the potential of the entire country to engage in war, thereby creating intense wars on a global scale, taking the bloody and brutal nature of wars to a new level, and generally speaking, killing more efficiently.

In the early stages of World War I, the British did not value machine guns. Each battalion only has two machine guns. On October 22, 1915, the British army established the Independent Machine Gun Corps. By November 1918, the Machine Gun Corps had developed into a massive organization with 6432 officers and 124950 soldiers of various types. Moreover, the British army began deploying Lewis machine guns. In 1915, each battalion had only four Lewis machine guns. In December 1916, there was one machine gun in every four platoons, and in 1918, there was one machine gun in every two platoons. Due to the useless appearance of cavalry machine guns, many cavalry were adapted into vehicle mounted gunners. For example, in 1918, both the First Dragoon Cavalry Regiment and the Guard Cavalry Regiment were reorganized into vehicle mounted gunners and ordered by the headquarters to form the General Reserve. Many British officers were forced to accept the reality of changing the mode of war, and machine guns changed the war with their firepower.

The power of a machine gun lies in the fact that an ordinary person only needs simple training and can fire 600 bullets per minute by operating the machine gun alone. After training, most soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force can only fire 30 bullets per minute, and a new recruit cannot even fire 10 bullets per minute. The side without a machine gun cannot rely on the firepower of infantry and rifles to defeat the side with a machine gun. This is a unilateral massacre, not a military confrontation. So the First World War quickly turned into trench warfare. The soldiers dug trenches and then equipped themselves with weapons such as Maxim machine guns, cannons, and barbed wire to build an excellent defense system. Infantry cannot break through this defense system at all. So in World War I, the several large-scale battles launched by the Allied and Allied powers, although causing hundreds of thousands of casualties, could only advance a few kilometers, and the entire front seemed to remain unchanged.

In front of machine guns, the infantry, which has been the main force of land warfare since the formation era, has lost its former glory. They are no longer the dominant force in land warfare, but have become a thing of the past. Moreover, individualism in the military has become insignificant, as a machine gun can kill a battalion of soldiers in just three minutes, and even the bravest soldiers cannot resist the power of technology and machinery. Everyone becomes a screw in the war machine, a member of the war. The overall situation of war cannot be changed. War consumes a country's industrialization ability, and countries with strong industrial capabilities will inevitably rule over agricultural and nomadic countries, becoming world powers. Moreover, war is no longer romantic. In ancient legends, battlefield heroes no longer exist, only cold firepower roaring at fighting and killing machines. In addition, anyone can enlist in the military.

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The Maxim heavy machine gun demonstrated tremendous power during World War I, but after 1918, it did not make military headlines and lost its dominance on the battlefield. Due to the emergence of tanks, this steel giant became the main force in land warfare, and machine guns became the infantry weapon on the battlefield. However, machine guns have always existed on the battlefield because a battlefield without machine guns can no longer be called a battlefield. People need the firepower of machine guns, and machine guns have completely changed the mode of human combat.