1862 gatling Gatling machine gun has two different structures. The first type adopts an independent steel chamber (the chamber is separated from the cylinder), with a closed tail and an impact fire cap. The shooter drives the barrels evenly arranged along the circumference to rotate by shaking the crank, and the chamber full of ammunition enters the locking groove at the back of each barrel from the magazine. When the barrel turns to a certain position, the firing pin fires ammunition. When the barrel is turned to another position, the fired gun chamber exits the machine gun. The gun bore can be reused, and six rounds of ammunition can be loaded, fired and ejected with one rotation of the barrel, reaching the firing rate of 200 rounds per minute. However, there are some shortcomings such as the leakage of gunpowder gas, which is mainly because paper-shell bullets are the most popular, while metal casings have not been popularized. In order to solve this problem, gatling used the independent metal shell ammunition developed at that time. This ammunition structure was later adopted by all the designers of machine guns. Another structure uses 0.58 inch copper shell side-fired ammunition. In order to overcome the problem of how to make the independent bore coaxial with the gun bore, gatling adopted a cone-shaped gun bore with a larger rear diameter, which made it easier for the projectile to enter the barrel. So at the end of 19, it became an important weapon for European countries to control and expand their colonies; The highest firing rate of the improved Gatling machine gun reaches 1200 rounds per minute, which is an amazing number at 1882. However, it also has a problem: its biggest weakness is that as the distance from the enemy on the battlefield is getting closer and closer, the shooter is emotional and murderous, and he can't control himself. He will turn the handle faster and faster like a madman, causing the machine gun to overheat, jam or explode. 186/kloc-0 invented the Gatling machine gun, 1865 improved it, 1866 equipped the us army. Gatling machine gun is a pioneer of modern machine gun. /kloc-in the 0 th and 9 th centuries, the development of metal bullets gradually matured, and American inventors began to design manual guns. However, it was not until the American Civil War that machine guns were taken seriously by the military. During this period, various machine guns such as "Lepti", "Bartley" and "Clutton" which interested the military appeared one after another. But the inventor of this machine gun is not a gunner or mechanic, but Richard jordan Gatling, MD.
After 1865, Gatling machine guns were changed from 4 tubes to 6 tubes, and from 1867 to 1868, and began to be distributed to American border guards. 1870, the British government set up a factory in Britain to produce Gatling machine guns after comparative tests. At the same time, the Russian government also bought Gatling machine guns and renamed them Golov machine guns.
Since 1884, automatic weapons with automatic principles such as pipe shrinkage, air guide, free bolt and semi-free bolt have been invented one after another. Compared with these single-barrel automatic weapons, the advantages of gatling Gatling Gun no longer exist, but the disadvantages are more obvious. 1903 When Richard jordan Gatling's long life came to an end, the multi-barrel hand gun had basically disappeared. Most of the troops in the world turn to automatic weapons, such as tube-retreating Maxim machine guns, air-guided Browning machine guns and hutcheson machine guns. Many Gatling machine guns were completely destroyed as scrap metal, while others were buried in dusty warehouses or excavated for exhibitions in museums and private collections. There is a simple reason. First, the Gatling machine gun needs four people to operate, while the Maxim machine gun only needs 1 person to complete. The second is the firing rate. Although 200-400 rounds per minute is fast, other machine guns, such as Maxim machine guns, can fire up to 600 rounds per minute. Third, Gatling machine guns are much larger and heavier than other automatic guns, so most of them are erected on towering wheel frames to ensure the stability of shooting, which makes its maneuverability and concealment unable to compare with other machine guns.
In modern times, some people apply its principle to machine guns to obtain high firing rate; The most famous example is the 20mm M6 1 Vulcan gun used by the US Air Force. Gatling machine guns and machine guns after the 1960 s were nothing more than changing the power source of barrel rotation from manual to electric or using the power derived from propellant gas to drive barrel rotation. The former is called external energy (using American gatling guns) and the latter is called internal energy (using the Soviet Union). There is another 7.62mm six-barrel machine gun called Gatling machine gun, which is actually the M 134 rapid-fire machine gun of the US military. It was the first gatling-style light weapon after World War II, but it should not be called Gatling machine gun directly, which led many people to confuse it with the early manual Gatling machine gun. At the 20 15 National Defense and Security Expo held in London, Rheinmetall used four laser transmitters with power of 20 kW each to launch at the same time, and used a technology called "superposition" to combine a powerful beam with power of 80 kW. This is a powerful new laser "Gatling machine gun".
Gatling laser guns can hit drones at a distance of 500 meters. Laser can also detonate explosives and shells, disable sensors on other ships and even burn holes in smaller ships. The company claims that by combining each laser gun unit, they can release "unlimited" energy.