Vickers machine gunThe Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a water-cooled .303 British (7.7 mm) machine gun produced by Vickers Limited, originally for the British Army. The gun was operated by a three-man crew but typically required more men to move and operate it: one fired, one fed the ammunition, the others helped to carry the weapon, its ammunition, and spare parts. It was in service from before the First World War until the 1960s, with air-cooled versions of it on many Allied World War I fighter aircraft.
Heavy machine gunA heavy machine gun (HMG) is significantly larger than light, medium or general-purpose machine guns. HMGs are typically too heavy to be man-portable (carried by one person) and require mounting onto a weapons platform to be operably stable or tactically mobile, have more formidable firepower, and generally require a team of personnel for operation and maintenance.
Machine gunA machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled auto-loading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) are typically designed more for firing short bursts rather than continuous firepower and are not considered true machine guns. Submachine guns fire handgun cartridges rather than rifle cartridges, therefore they are not considered machine guns, while automatic firearms of caliber or more are classified as autocannons rather than machine guns.
ChauchatThe Chauchat ("show-sha", ʃoʃa) was the standard light machine gun or "machine rifle" of the French Army during World War I (1914–18). Its official designation was "Fusil Mitrailleur Modele 1915 CSRG" ("Machine Rifle Model 1915 CSRG"). Beginning in June 1916, it was placed into regular service with French infantry, where the troops called it the FM Chauchat, after Colonel Louis Chauchat, the main contributor to its design. The Chauchat in 8mm Lebel was also extensively used in 1917–18 by the American Expeditionary Forces (A.
MG 08The Maschinengewehr 08, or MG 08, was the German Army's standard machine gun in World War I and is an adaptation of Hiram S. Maxim's original 1884 Maxim gun. It was produced in a number of variants during the war. The MG 08 served during World War II as a heavy machine gun in many German infantry divisions, although by the end of the war it had mostly been relegated to second-rate fortress units. The Maschinengewehr 08 (or MG 08)—so-named after 1908, its year of adoption—was a development of the license made Maschinengewehr 01.
Belt (firearms)An ammunition belt is a firearm device used to package and feed cartridges, typically for rapid-firing automatic weapons such as machine guns. Belt-fed systems minimize the proportional weight of the ammunition apparatus to the entire weapon system, and allow high rates of continuous fire without needing frequent magazine changes. The capacity of belts and associated belt containers is typically a function of weight and bulk, and their size is limited by caliber and the combined portability of the weapon and ammunition.
RecoilRecoil (often called knockback, kickback or simply kick) is the rearward thrust generated when a gun is being discharged. In technical terms, the recoil is a result of conservation of momentum, as according to Newton's third law the force required to accelerate something will evoke an equal but opposite reactional force, which means the forward momentum gained by the projectile and exhaust gases (ejectae) will be mathematically balanced out by an equal and opposite momentum exerted back upon the gun.
Rate of fireRate of fire is the frequency at which a specific weapon can fire or launch its projectiles. This can be influenced by several factors, including operator training level, mechanical limitations, ammunition availability, and weapon condition. In modern weaponry, it is usually measured in rounds per minute (RPM or round/min) or rounds per second (RPS or round/s). There are three different measurements for the rate of fire: cyclic, sustained, and rapid.
Synchronization gearA synchronization gear (also known as a gun synchronizer or interrupter gear) was a device enabling a single-engine tractor configuration aircraft to fire its forward-firing armament through the arc of its spinning propeller without bullets striking the blades. This allowed the aircraft, rather than the gun, to be aimed at the target. There were many practical problems, mostly arising from the inherently imprecise nature of an automatic gun's firing, the great (and varying) velocity of the blades of a spinning propeller, and the very high speed at which any gear synchronizing the two had to operate.
World War IWorld War I or the First World War, often abbreviated as WWI or WW1, known contemporaneously as the Great War, was a major global conflict lasting from 1914 to 1918. It was fought between two coalitions, the Allies and the Central Powers. Fighting took place throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. The first decade of the 20th century saw increasing diplomatic tension between the European great powers.
