Maxim machine gun, American, English and Russian

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

In the finale of the classic Soviet movie Chapaev, the protagonist takes his last stand in the attic of a mansion surrounded by White Guards. The besiegers drive up an armored car with machine-gun turrets and press on from all sides. There is a clatter of broken glass, and a blunt-nosed stinger emerges from the mezzanine window, spewing deadly fire.

Here Vasily Ivanovich swims, awkwardly raking with his only surviving hand, and from the shore the Cossacks shoot at him, bursts, heaps and, as a result, accurately. What unites all these scenes is that both warring parties use the same type of rapid-fire automatic weapon - the Maxim machine gun.

Soviet people were convinced that he was of exclusively domestic origin, even his name sounds like a simple Russian name. Again, another movie comes to mind, Maxim's Youth. True, the famous Parisian restaurant is also named so. “Is it not in honor of the machine gun?” - guesses the proletarian.

Things are a little more complicated. Machine gun "Maxim" (with emphasis on the first syllable) was named in honor of its inventor, American Hiram Stevens Maxim. ATIn 1883, he offered his brainchild to the US Army, but was refused. A peaceful agricultural and industrial country at that time, separated from Europe by the ocean, did not need such a monstrous weapon of mass destruction.

Another thing is Britain with all its colonies, behind which an eye and an eye… Here they listened very carefully to the engineer-inventor and expressed a desire to issue a state order. Together with the Vickers brothers (sons), Hiram Stevens registered an enterprise whose main product was the Maxim machine gun, which was very useful in the Boer War.

Export deliveries have also begun. The technical data of the new sample were unique at that time. The lethal force was maintained at a kilometer distance, the rate of fire is the same as that of the modern Kalashnikov - 10 rounds per second.

The device of the machine gun "Maxim" was simple and reliable. Recoil energy was used to move the cartridge belt and cock the bolt, and the barrel was cooled with water, which should be poured into a cylindrical casing. The calculation was protected from enemy fire by an armored shield of a rational form. All parts were unified in order to facilitate repairs in the field. The movement of heavy weapons was facilitated by a wheeled or sledge chassis on which a frame was installed.

Such qualities have always been inherent in Russian weapons, so the machine gun "Maxim" immediately after the receipt of the first samples in the imperial army (1900) deserved a soldier'srespect. It cost a lot, 500 rubles, and in order to reduce military spending, in 1910 its production under license began in Russia.

Changes to which the prototype was subjected concerned the possibility of using not only water, but also snow for cooling, for this purpose the neck of the casing was expanded. To get away from dependence on the import of ammunition, the caliber of the Russian "Maxim" in Tula was converted to a standard three-line cartridge.

Like many masterpieces of weapon art, this machine gun was way ahead of its time. The Red Army and Navy widely used the Maxim machine gun during the Great Patriotic War. The ship's anti-aircraft guns, consisting of quad-barrels with a synchronized trigger, proved to be effective in the fight against German attack aircraft, and the infantry skillfully used this proven fire weapon in defense and offensive until 1944, when more advanced examples appeared.