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War
전쟁(戰爭)
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| The Technology of War |
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| 3 MODERN WEAPONS AND WEAPON SYSTEMS |
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Since the introduction of the flintlock musket
in the 17th century, military small arms have gone through a series of
significant changes. By employing different projectiles and successively
improved chemical propellants, the dual goal of most arms designers has been the
creation of man-portable weapons of greater firepower and reduced weight. But
the attainment of this goal has continually been hampered by an inescapable
physical relationship between the recoil forces
generated by gunpowder weapons and the mass and velocity of their projectiles.
In order to reduce the weight of a weapon, its recoil energy has to be reduced,
but reducing recoil also affects the killing power of the bullet.
Given the constraints of this relationship, military small arms may well have
reached a level where, within reasonable economic limits, significantly higher
performance cannot be obtained merely by improving existing gunpowder-based
technology. |
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Practical shoulder-fired small arms
started with the perfection of the flintlock ignition system in the mid-17th
century (see above Military technology
before the modern era: The gunpowder revolution, c.
1300-1650 ). Earlier gunpowder small
arms, based on the matchlock or wheel lock mechanisms, were generally too heavy,
too unreliable, or too expensive to allow for general issue to infantry forces.
Indeed, the first matchlock mosquetes
("muskets") fielded by Spanish infantry weighed as much as 25 pounds
(10 kilograms) and usually required a forked staff as a rest to enable a man of
normal strength to fire them accurately from the shoulder. Nevertheless, they
were capable of sending bullets through the best armour that could be worn by a
mobile soldier. Almost overnight, firepower from muskets became the dominant
force in war, and fully armoured soldiers almost disappeared from European
battlefields toward the end of the 16th century. With armour-piercing power no
longer necessary, muskets could be made smaller, and shoulder weapons without
rests became the norm. (see also muzzle-loading,
action) |
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The introduction of new ignition systems
did not immediately render older forms obsolete, however; all systems, in many
variations, existed side by side. Wheel locks and matchlocks, for example,
persisted into the 18th century, long after flintlocks had established their
primacy in Europe and America. |
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Flintlock small arms emerged at the
start of industrialization, with weapons production becoming one of the first
industrial sectors to exploit the transition from craft production to the
large-scale production of the Industrial Revolution. On the military side, these
weapons entered service at a time when the scale of ground forces employed in
battle was increasing. The ability to manufacture large numbers of muskets
enabled military leaders to equip these mass armies. |
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By the 1600s European military
authorities had begun moving toward greater uniformity in order to eliminate
mixed inventories of nonstandard weapons. England took the first steps toward
creating a national system of small-arms manufacture. For years, completed
muskets had been purchased from a variety of English, Irish, and Dutch
gunmakers, who subcontracted for components and arranged for final assembly.
Beginning in the early 1700s, ordnance officials, from their headquarters at the
Tower of London, divided the manufacture of firearms into locks, stocks,
barrels, ramrods, and furniture--all of which they sought to purchase directly
from subcontractors. Since different components for the same weapon were made in
different locations, Tower officials oversaw the establishment of "Sealed
Patterns" (sample firearms) to serve as exact models for gunmakers. |
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An Ordnance Office decree of 1722 led to
a standard army musket, called the "Long Land," which had a 46-inch
(1,168-millimetre) barrel and a calibre, or bore diameter, of .75 inch (19
millimetres). The Long Land became popularly known in America as the first model
Brown Bess musket. Fighting experience in the wilderness of North America during
the Seven Years' War, or French and Indian War (1756-63), suggested the utility
of lighter and shorter muskets, and in 1768 the Short Land musket, with a
42-inch barrel, became standard. Known as the second model Brown Bess, the Short
Land became one of the basic weapons used in the American Revolution (1775-83).
It was succeeded in 1797 by the "India Pattern," with a 39-inch
barrel. During the wars with Napoleon from 1804 to 1815, more than 1.6 million
of these muskets were assembled in Birmingham, and nearly 2.7 million muskets of
all types were "fitted up" in London and at the Lewisham Royal Armoury
Mills. In 1816 assembly work was divided between London and a new Royal Small
Arms Factory at Enfield Lock, Middlesex. |
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In France, standard-pattern muskets did
not exist prior to 1717, when the government specified a weapon with a 47-inch
barrel and a calibre of .69 inch. (This calibre remained standard until the 19th
century.) After the Seven Years' War, the French army introduced the Modèle
1763, with a stronger lock and shorter (45-inch) barrel--a length that remained
standard to century's end. The Modèle 1777 musket represented a major
step forward because of improved production techniques, with the French creating
a rigorous system of patterns and gauges that yielded muskets with nearly
interchangeable parts. This process was intended to produce less expensive
muskets that were easier to make and repair, but worker resistance delayed
large-scale manufacture of small arms using interchangeable parts until the
early 1800s. Had the program succeeded earlier, France would have been better
equipped to fight the Napoleonic Wars. As it was, French firms in such
provincial cities as Charleville, Maubeuge, Saint-Étienne, and Tulle
fabricated fewer than two million small arms. |
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The U.S. government created national
armouries at Springfield, Mass., and at Harpers Ferry, Va., in 1794; work at
Springfield commenced in 1795, and arms production began at Harpers Ferry in
1801. Both built an Americanized version of the French Modèle 1777 musket
(known as the Model 1795 in the United States). These armouries and their
private competitors later became important centres of technological innovation.
With the adoption of the .69-inch Model 1842, the U.S. military introduced the
large-scale assembly of weapons from uniform, interchangeable parts. By the
mid-1850s arms makers around the world were beginning to copy this
"American System" of manufacture, which contributed to the creation of
the modern military small arm--especially after the introduction of percussion
ignition and rifled barrels. |
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The Model 1842 was based on the Model
1840 flintlock, but it featured a switch to percussion ignition. This newer
system was based on the explosive property of potassium chlorate and fulminate
of mercury, both of which detonate when struck a small, sharp blow by a striker.
Several Germans experimented with detonating fulminates in the late 17th
century, and the French did likewise in the 18th century, but it was Alexander
John Forsyth, a Scottish clergyman, who successfully wedded priming
powders to the ignition of firearms in 1805, receiving a patent in April 1807.
Forsyth invented the "scent bottle" type of lock mechanism, so called
because rotating on a tapered steel plug at about the location of a flintlock
touchhole was a powder-filled container that looked like a perfume bottle.
Turning the bottle upside down released some detonator powder into a cavity at
the top of the plug, and turning the bottle back left the striker mechanism,
consisting of a hammer rather than the cock and jaws of the flintlock, free to
operate. When the trigger was pulled, the hammer fell, detonating the compound. |
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Subsequent inventors simplified the
percussion lock mechanism by using loose or pellet detonating powder. By 1830, percussion
caps (attributed to the Philadelphian Joshua Shaw in 1815) were becoming
the accepted system for igniting firearm powder charges. A percussion cap was a
truncated cone of metal (preferably copper) that contained a small amount of
fulminate of mercury inside its crown, protected by foil and shellac. This cap
was fitted onto a steel nipple mounted at the weapon's breech, and a small
channel in the nipple communicated the flash from the cap to the powder chamber.
In the final form of this mechanism, a hollow-nosed percussion hammer came down
over the percussion cap, thus eliminating the danger of flying copper when the
powder detonated. Percussion cap ignition was easily adapted to existing
flintlock muskets and pistols. |
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As killing machines, smoothbore infantry
muskets were relatively inefficient. Their heavy, round lead balls delivered
bone-crushing and tissue-destroying blows when they hit a human body, but beyond
75 yards even trained infantrymen found it difficult to hit an individual
adversary. Volley fire against massed troops delivered effective projectiles out
to 200 yards, but at 300 yards balls from muzzle-loaders lost most of their
lethality. Also, while well-trained soldiers could load and shoot their muskets
five times per minute, volley fire led to a collective rate of only two to three
shots per minute. |
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These ballistic shortcomings were a
product of the requirement that the projectile, in order to be quickly rammed
from muzzle to breech, had to fit loosely in the barrel. When discharged, it
wobbled down the barrel, contributing to erratic flight after it left the
muzzle. Rifled barrels, in which spiral grooves were cut into the bore, were
known to improve accuracy by imparting a gyroscopic spin to the projectile, but
reloading rifled weapons was slowed because the lead ball had to be driven into
the barrel's rifling. Greased cloth or leather patches eased the problem
somewhat, but the rate of fire of rifles was
still much lower than that of smoothbore muskets. (see also breech-loading) |
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One possible solution was the creation
of mechanisms that allowed the bullet to be loaded at the breech instead of the
muzzle. Many such ideas were tested during the 18th century, but, given the
craftsman-based manufacture of the day, none was suited to large-scale
production. Special army units in Europe and America used rifled muzzle-loaders,
such as the flintlock British Baker rifle, to harass the enemy at long ranges,
while most infantrymen continued to carry muzzle-loading smoothbores. For this
reason, inventors concentrated on adapting rifled barrels to muzzle-loaders. In
1826 Henri-Gustave Delvigne of France, seeking a
means of expanding the projectile without making it difficult to ram home,
created a narrow powder chamber at the breech end of the barrel against which a
loosely fitting lead ball came to rest. Ramrod blows expanded the soft lead at
the mouth of the chamber so that, when fired, the bullet fit the rifling
tightly. In 1844 another French officer, Louis-Étienne de Thouvenin,
introduced yet a better method for expanding bullets. His carabine
à tige embodied a post or pillar (tige)
at the breech against which the bullet was expanded. |
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These rifles worked better than earlier
types, but their deformed balls flew with reduced accuracy. Captain Claude-Étienne
Minié, inspired by Delvigne's later work with cylindrical bullets,
designed longer, smaller-diameter projectiles, which, having the same weight as
larger round balls, possessed greater cross-sectional density and therefore
retained their velocity better. Moreover, while the flat base of Minié's
projectile was deformed against the pillar as in Thouvenin's weapon, the rest of
the bullet maintained its shape and accuracy. The French army combined these
ideas in the Carabine Modèle 1846 à tige and the Fusil
d'Infanterie Modèle 1848 à tige. |
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In order to combat the tendency of
muzzle-loading rifles to become difficult to load as gunpowder residue collected
in the barrels, Minié suggested a major simplification--eliminating the
pillar and employing in its place a hollow-based bullet with an iron expander
plug that caused the projectile to engage the rifling when the weapon was fired.
This new projectile could be loaded into dirty rifles with ease, and, because it
was not deformed while loading, it had greater accuracy. |
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Officials in several countries, notably
Britain and the United States, saw the significance of Minié's invention.
In 1851 the Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield, embarked upon production of the
.702-inch Pattern 1851 Minié rifle. In the Crimean War (1854-56), Russian
troops armed with smoothbore muskets were no match for Britons shooting P/51
rifles. Massed formations were easy prey, as were cavalry and artillery units. A
correspondent for the Times of London
wrote: "The Minié is king of weapons . . . the volleys of the Minié
cleft [Russian soldiers] like the hand of the Destroying Angel." |
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Swiss experiments demonstrated that an
expander plug was not necessary when a bullet's side walls were thin enough, and
the British designed a smaller-calibre rifle using this type of Minié
bullet. The result was a .577-inch weapon firing "cylindro-conoidal"
projectiles--essentially a lead cylinder with a conical nose.
"Enfield" as a weapon name was first generally applied to these
Pattern 1853 rifles. Subsequent tests indicated that rifles with 33-inch barrels
could provide accuracy equal to the 39-inch P/53 barrels. When the resulting
P/53 Short Rifles were issued, there began a century-long trend toward shorter
weapons. |
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In the United States, experiments
undertaken in the late 1840s led to the adoption of a .58-inch Minié-type
bullet and a family of arms designed to use it. The Model 1855 rifled musket,
with a 40-inch barrel, produced a muzzle velocity of 950 feet (290 metres) per
second. All Model 1855 weapons used mechanically operated tape priming, intended
to eliminate the manual placement of percussion caps on the nipple, but this
system proved too fragile and was eliminated with the introduction of a
simplified Model 1861 rifled musket. During the American Civil War (1861-65),
the Union government purchased both Model 1861 and Model 1863 rifled muskets as
its basic infantry weapon. In the Confederacy, domestic production was
supplemented by purchases of Enfield P/53 rifles and other European weapons. |
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The Civil War clearly demonstrated the
deadly effect of rifled muskets, although many battlefield commanders only
slowly appreciated the changing nature of warfare. Individual soldiers could hit
their opposing numbers with accurate fire out to 250 yards, so that frontal
assaults, in which soldiers advanced in neat ranks across open fields, had to be
abandoned. By 1862 both sides were building field entrenchments and barricades
to provide protection from rifle and artillery fire. |
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The American Civil War also previewed
the importance of breech-loading rifles. For
more than a century, soldiers carrying muzzle-loaders had been issued paper cartridges
containing the musket ball and an appropriate powder charge. To use one of these
cartridges, they simply bit off the end of the paper tube, poured a little
powder into the pan (if the gun was a flintlock), dumped the rest down the
barrel, and then rammed the ball and paper down on top. Some early breechloaders
used slightly improved cartridges of nitrate-soaked paper or linen that
contained the powder and ball and were inserted into the opened breech as a
unit. The powder was set off when sparks from the flashpan ignited either the
flammable case itself or exposed powder at the end of the cartridge. Other
breechloaders employed metal cartridges that were pierced with holes or made
with ends of flammable paper, so that the powder could be ignited by a
percussion cap. But all of these systems, which relied upon externally mounted
flintlock or percussion ignition mechanisms, were prone to misfiring, and they
did little to prevent the leakage of gas and flame for which breechloaders were
notorious. Breech-loading rifles became practical only with the design of
cartridges that housed the primer as well as the propellant in a single case,
and that provided an effective seal when the weapon was fired. |
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The first such cartridge to be
successfully employed in war was of the rimfire type, in which a ring of
detonating fulminate was deposited in a hollow rim around the base of a thin
copper case. An external hammer crushed the rim in one spot, firing the round.
Unfortunately, some fulminate compounds detonated unpredictably, leading to both
misfires and premature explosions. Also, a cartridge case that was soft enough
to be crushed by a striker could not stand up to the heavy propellant charge
necessary for a full-power infantry rifle. For this reason, rimfire
cartridges were used most effectively in pistols or--during the American
Civil War--in smaller repeating carbines such as the .56-inch Spencer and the
.44-inch Henry. |
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In Europe, a milestone in the
development of breech-loading infantry weapons was achieved by Johann
Nikolaus Dreyse, a Prussian. His Zündnadelgewehr
("needle-fired gun"), introduced in 1838, used a paper cartridge with
a priming pellet located at the base of a solid egg-shaped bullet. A long,
needle-shaped firing pin, shot forward by a spring, pierced the cartridge and
powder charge to detonate the primer. This needle was housed in a steel cylinder
called the bolt, which slid forward in the frame of the receiver until it was
locked firmly against the base of the cartridge in the chamber. Once the weapon
was fired, the soldier released a latch with his thumb, grasped a knob at the
end of a handle projecting from the bolt, turned it until locking lugs on the
bolt were disengaged from slots in the receiver, and slid the bolt back to open
the chamber for reloading. This bolt action, simple in concept and yet requiring
precise workmanship, constituted a revolution in small-arms design. |
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The first Dreyse rifles were adopted by
the Prussian army in 1843 and were used in campaigns in 1849 and 1864. In 1866,
notably at the Battle of Königgrätz during the Seven Weeks' War,
Prussian soldiers lying prone were able to fire six shots from their
15.43-millimetre (.607-inch) Zündnadelgewehr Modell 1862 for every one
discharged from their Austrian opponents' muzzle-loading rifles. |
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Prussia's success encouraged other
European states to adopt bolt-action breechloaders. The French employed
Antoine-Alphonse Chassepot's 11-millimetre Fusil d'Infanterie Modèle 1866
to devastating effect in such battles of the Franco-German War (1870-71) as
Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte. Close-order troop formations disappeared from the
European scene as a result of these fights, and the cavalry charge was relegated
to the past. The Chassepot rifle employed a shorter firing pin than the Dreyse,
because its cartridge was fitted with a detonating cap at the very base. About
1.03 million of these weapons were in hand when the war began, and Prussia had
some 1.15 million Dreyse needle rifles--a quantity that demonstrated the value
of machine production of weapons with interchangeable parts. |
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Needle rifles offered a faster rate of
fire, but their paper cartridges provided a poor seal at the breech, and their
long firing pins warped or broke under heavy use. One solution was the metallic
centre-fire cartridge with a percussion cap centred in the base of a hard brass
or copper case. A shorter, sturdier firing pin was sufficient to detonate the
primer, and a metallic case that was strong enough to withstand a powerful
propellant charge also provided effective closure of the breech. Adopting
centre-fire cartridges, France transformed its Chassepots into the 11-millimetre
Modèle 1866/67 and 1874 rifles, which were named after their designer,
Basile Gras. Germany went to rifles designed by Peter Paul Mauser, first the
11-millimetre Modell 1871 Gewehr and then the Modell 1871/84
Infanterie-Repetier-Gewehr. The latter was a 10-shot repeater that ejected the
spent case as the bolt was pulled back and fed a fresh cartridge into the
chamber from a tubular magazine beneath the barrel as the bolt was pushed
forward. |
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All other European countries soon
adopted cartridge breech-loading rifles, usually by converting existing
muzzle-loaders and then by purchasing purpose-built breechloaders. Many did not
feature bolt action. For example, beginning in 1866, Britain converted its P/53
Enfields simply by hinging the top of the breech so that it could be opened
sideways, the spent case extracted, and a fresh cartridge inserted. In 1871 the
British went to new Martini-Henry breechloaders of .45-inch calibre. In these
rifles, pushing down a lever attached to the trigger guard lowered the entire
breechblock, exposing the chamber, and raised the breechblock back to firing
position when it was pulled back. Russia adopted two new 10-millimetre
breechloaders, the Model 1868 Berdan No. 1 and then the bolt-action Model 1870
Berdan No. 2, both of which were largely the work of American Civil War officer
Hiram Berdan. The U.S.-made Remington Rolling Block Rifle, in which the
breechblock was cocked back on a hinge like the hammer, was bought by a number
of countries around the world. The United States itself adopted a series of
single-shot rifles employing a hinged-breech "trap-door" mechanism,
developed by Erskine S. Allin at the Springfield Armory, in which the top of the
breech was flipped forward along the top of the barrel. The first Model 1866 was
a converted .58-inch musket, the second Model
1866 was a new rifle in .50-inch calibre, and subsequent versions were built in
.45-inch calibre. These weapons, born of postwar starvation budgets, continued
to use components introduced with the Model 1855 muzzle-loaders. |
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All early breechloaders used black
powder as their source of propellant energy, but in the early 1880s more
powerful and cleaner-burning nitrocellulose-based propellants were perfected.
Whereas black powder produced a large quantity of solid material upon
combustion, quickly fouling barrels and pouring out huge clouds of smoke, nitrocellulose
produced mostly gas and was therefore labeled "smokeless powder."
Also, it produced three times the energy of black powder and burned at a more
controllable rate. Such characteristics made possible a shift to longer and
smaller-diameter projectiles. Bore diameters were again reduced, this time to
calibres of about .30 inch, or 7.5 to 8 millimetres. Muzzle velocities ranged
from 2,000 to 2,800 feet per second, and accurate range extended to 1,000 yards
and beyond. Because lead projectiles were too soft to be used at such increased
power and velocity, they were sheathed in harder metal. In 1881 a Swiss officer,
Eduard Alexander Rubin, was the first to perfect a full-length, copper-jacketed
bullet. |
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France was the first country to issue a
small-bore, high-velocity repeating rifle, the
Modèle 1886 Lebel, which fired an 8-millimetre, smokeless-powder round.
The tubular magazine of this rifle soon became obsolete, however. In 1885 Ferdinand
Mannlicher of Austria had introduced a boxlike magazine fitted into the
bottom of the rifle in front of the trigger guard. This magazine was easily
loaded by a device called a clip, a light metal openwork box that held five
cartridges and fed them up into the chamber through the action of a spring as
each spent case was ejected. Other magazine rifles, such as the Mauser, used a
different loading device, called a charger. This was simply a flat strip of
metal with its edges curled to hook over the rims or grooves of a row of
cartridges (also usually five). To load his rifle, a soldier drew back the bolt,
slipped the charger into position above the opened receiver, and pushed the
cartridges down into the magazine, where they were held in tension against a
spring. The efficiency of the box magazine was quickly recognized, as was its
special compatibility with the bolt action, and all European states made the
conversion. For example, Germany adopted the 8-millimetre Model 1888 Commission
rifle, Belgium the 7.65-millimetre Model 1889 Mauser, Turkey the Model 1890
Mauser, and Russia the 7.62-millimetre Model 1891 Mosin-Nagant. In 1892 Britain
abandoned movable-block action and went to the .303-inch, bolt-action
Lee-Metford, and the United States began to purchase the .30-inch Model 1892
Krag-Jørgensen, a Danish design. In 1906 Japan adopted the 6.5-millimetre Year
38 Arisaka rifle. (see also Mauser rifle) |
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By World War I (1914-18) all major
powers adopted smokeless-powder, bolt-action, magazine-fed repeating rifles, and
some had shifted to a second generation. Austria, for example, issued the Modell
1895 Mannlicher, firing an 8-millimetre round, and German troops carried the
7.92-millimetre Modell 1898, designed by Mauser.
For durability, safety, and efficiency, the 1898 Mauser was probably the epitome
of bolt-action military rifles. It was sold and copied around the world. In the
United States the Mauser was only slightly altered and issued as the .30-inch
M1903 Springfield. |
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Also following Germany's lead in the
design of ammunition, all armies replaced their blunt-nosed projectiles with
aerodynamically superior pointed bullets (in German, Spitzgeschossen). Barrel lengths continued to decrease, partly in
response to more efficient propellants and partly to make rifles easier to use
in the field. The British .303-inch Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield rifle, known as
the SMLE, had a 25-inch barrel, while the M1903 Springfield's barrel measured
just over 23.75 inches. |
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During the Great War, huge quantities of
rifles were built. British factories made more than 3.9 million rifles, German
sources produced about 5 million, and Russian factories built more than 9
million. Still, most armies suffered from shortages. Factories in the United
States made 1.24 million rifles for the British and 280,000 for the Russians;
for U.S. forces they produced 2.4 million between May 1917 and December 1918
alone. |
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The
self-loading rifle. Magazine-fed rifles provided a
radical increase in rate of fire. Indeed, by 1914 many British riflemen could
fire 15 aimed shots per minute, and some very skillful individuals could exceed
30 shots per minute. Nevertheless, in order to transcend the limits imposed by
manual operation, gun designers such as Mannlicher and the American Hiram Maxim
came up with experimental self-loading, or semiautomatic,
rifles, which used the energy generated by a fired round to load a fresh
round into the chamber. However, only a handful of these weapons were adopted in
very small numbers by the major armies, whose interest in automatic fire from
the 1880s through World War I was directed primarily toward heavier
infantry-support weapons (see below Machine
guns ). |
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After the war, all nations having an
arms industry sought to produce a semiautomatic rifle, but only the United
States was successful in developing and manufacturing a battle-worthy weapon.
Adopted in 1936, the U.S. Rifle, Caliber .30 M1, designed by John C. Garand, was
a technological tour de force. A small hole or gas port on the underside of its
barrel near the muzzle directed part of the propellant gases into a small
cylinder holding a piston that was connected to the bolt. As gas pressure forced
back the piston and bolt, the empty cartridge case was ejected and the hammer
was cocked. A spring then forced the bolt forward. As it moved forward, the bolt
stripped the top cartridge from an eight-round, clip-loaded magazine within the
receiver and seated it in the chamber, ready to fire. Gas pressure thus
performed automatically the reloading task formerly done by hand. (see also Garand
rifle) |
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As the only semiautomatic rifle to
become a standard-issue infantry weapon, the M1 was extremely durable and
reliable in combat. Between 1937 and 1945, the Springfield Armory and the
Winchester Repeating Arms Company produced 4.04 million of these rifles. Still,
the infantry units of most other belligerents during World War II (1939-45) were
armed with bolt-action rifles of the World War I era as their standard weapons. |
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The ballistic performance of infantry
rifles was tailored to the long-range requirements of a bygone era when foot
soldiers demanded weapons that could reach out to halt the dreaded cavalry
charge. Beginning early in World War I, however, battlefields became
no-man's-lands pockmarked by shell craters and crisscrossed by miles of
barbed-wire entanglements, and machine guns dominated the 1,000 or more yards
between trench lines. While rifles were shot at those extreme ranges, they could
not equal the destructive power of artillery and machine guns, and they were too
cumbersome and powerful for offensive assaults on enemy trenches. A generation
later, in World War II, the greater mobility of troops accompanying armoured
vehicles reinforced the need for lighter, more portable weapons of improved
effectiveness at close quarters. |
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Such changing conditions led to
experiments with automatic weapons firing rounds of lower velocity or lighter
weight. One result, which saw its first use in World War I, was a new weapon
called the machine carbine or submachine gun. Derived from the semiautomatic
pistol and firing pistol-calibre ammunition with muzzle velocities of only about
1,000 feet per second, submachine guns were fitted with shoulder stocks (and
sometimes forward hand grips). Such weapons offered easier handling than rifles
while providing greater accuracy and more rapid fire than most handguns. |
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The first successful weapon of this type
was the Maschinen Pistole 1918 Bergmann,
designed by Hugo Schmeisser and employed by the Germans during the last few
months of the war. The barrel of the MP18 was less than eight inches long, and
it was chambered for nine-millimetre rounds introduced in 1908 for Parabellum,
or Luger, pistols. It operated under a principle called blowback, in which the
spent cartridge case, blown backward out of the chamber by the gases generated
by the firing of the round, forced the bolt back against a spring and tripped
the mechanism that ejected the case from the gun. The spring then forced the
bolt forward as a fresh cartridge was fed into the chamber. If the trigger was
kept depressed, the new round would be fired automatically, and the cycle would
continue until the trigger was released or the ammunition was exhausted. In
blowback actions, the bolt had to be quite heavy, or it had to be subjected to
various devices that retarded its backward motion, in order to keep the
mechanism from operating faster than was desired. In the MP18, a heavy bolt and
spring limited the weapon's rate of fire to about 400 rounds per minute. |
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After the war, Vasily Degtyarev of the
Soviet Union incorporated Schmeisser's principles into his own designs,
culminating in the Pistolet Pulemyot Degtyarova of 1940. The PPD was fed by a
drum-shaped magazine containing 71 7.62-millimetre cartridges, and it fired at a
rate of 900 rounds per minute--far too fast for accuracy. In the United States,
John T. Thompson's submachine gun, chambered for
the .45-inch Colt pistol cartridge, was adopted by the army in 1928. Popularly
called the "tommy gun," the M1928 was effective, but its blowback
operation was modified by a complex retarding mechanism that was deleted from
later versions, when its large drum magazine was also replaced by a box
magazine. |
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Under the pressures of World War II, the
major powers used millions of submachine guns. These included a second
generation of simplified weapons that, being fabricated partly from sheet-metal
stampings, could be produced in quantity almost anywhere and at little expense.
The Germans led the way with the MP38 and MP40. Known to the Allies as
"burp guns," these weapons operated at 450 to 550 rounds per minute,
the optimal rate for controlled fire. Also, they were fed by a box magazine,
which did not jam as often as a drum, and had a wire shoulder stock that could
be folded against the receiver. Meanwhile, the Soviets issued en masse the PPSh
of 1941 and the PPS of 1943. The latter closely resembled the new German guns,
as did the United States' M3, called the
"grease gun" for its resemblance to a mechanic's grease dispenser. The
British Sten gun, extremely simple and
inexpensive yet very effective, was issued to paratroops and commandos beginning
in 1941 and was also smuggled to partisans in Europe. |
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After the war, almost all new submachine
guns, such as the British Sterling and West German MP5, were chambered for
nine-millimetre cartridges. As a class of weapon, they received a new lease on
life with the telescoping bolt, pioneered by Václav Holek in the
Czechoslovak Model 23 of 1948. This involved a hollowed-out bolt that slid
partially over the barrel when a round was chambered, resulting in a much
shorter weapon. A prominent example of this type was the Israeli Uzi, designed
by Uziel Gal, which was only 25 inches long with its shoulder stock extended.
The Uzi was adopted around the world as a police and counterterrorist weapon.
Indeed, aside from arming special forces, the submachine
gun lost importance as a military weapon. With an effective range limited
to about 200 yards, it could not fill the broad gap between the low-power pistol
cartridge and the full-power rifle cartridge. This gap, which constituted the
ground upon which modern infantrymen found themselves fighting, had to be filled
by another new weapon, which would fire a cartridge of intermediate power. |
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A hint at this new weapon had been given
during World War I, when Vladimir Grigorevich Fyodorov, father of Russian
automatic weapons, married the 6.5-millimetre cartridge of the Japanese Arisaka
rifle to an automatic rifle. In 1916 he unveiled his new weapon, the Avtomat
Fyodorova. Owing to the turmoil of the Russian Revolution of 1917, only about
3,200 of Fyodorov's weapons were delivered. Nevertheless, they pointed the way
to future infantry weapon design. |
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During World War II, Hugo Schmeisser
designed a light rifle to fire the Germans' 7.92-millimetre Kurz, or
"Short," cartridge, which was of the same calibre as the Mauser rifle
cartridge but was lighter and shorter and was therefore of a less potent,
"intermediate" power. The weapon, known variously as the MP43, MP44,
or Sturmgewehr ("Assault Rifle") 44, was loaded by a curved box
magazine holding 30 rounds and was designed for most effective fire at about 300
yards. Only 425,000 to 440,000 of these rifles were built--too few and too late
for the German war effort--but they were based on a concept that would dominate
infantry weapons for the rest of the century. |
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Late in the war the Soviets also began a
search for a rifle to shoot their 7.62-millimetre intermediate cartridge, which
produced a muzzle velocity of 2,330 feet per second. Historical evidence
suggests that they were influenced by the Sturmgewehr, but to what extent
remains uncertain. In 1947 they adopted a weapon designed by Mikhail
Timofeyevich Kalashnikov, naming it the Avtomat
Kalashnikova. Like the German weapon, the AK-47 was operated by diverting
some of the propellant gases into a cylinder above the barrel; this drove a
piston that forced the bolt back against its spring and cocked the hammer for
the next round. At the turn of a selector switch, the action could be changed
from semiautomatic to fully automatic, firing at a rate of 600 rounds per
minute. The AK-47 was made of forged and milled steel, giving it a weight of
10.6 pounds (4.8 kilograms) with a loaded 30-round magazine. The receiver of the
AKM version, introduced in 1959, was made of lighter sheet metal, reducing the
weight to 8.3 pounds, and the AK-74 version, following later trends in the West,
switched to a 5.45-millimetre cartridge. |
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Kalashnikov's assault rifles became the
most significant infantry weapons of the post-World War II era. In many
variants, they were adopted and made by countries all over the world. Between 30
and 50 million AKs were produced within four decades of the series'
introduction, more than any other firearm in history. |
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The development of Western small arms
proceeded more slowly, mainly because the United States insisted upon
maintaining a power level comparable to the M1. As a result, in 1953 the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) reluctantly agreed to standardize on a
7.62-millimetre cartridge that was a half-inch shorter than the M1 cartridge but
of the same calibre and power. To fire this new round, the United States
produced an improved version of the M1 rifle, featuring a 20-round detachable
magazine and being capable of selective fire. Called the U.S. Rifle 7.62mm M14,
it replaced the M1, beginning in 1957. As a self-loading rifle the M14 performed
well, but it was too heavy as a close-quarters weapon, and the extreme recoil
generated by the NATO round caused it to be totally unmanageable as an automatic
rifle. |
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Other NATO armies adopted more
satisfactory 7.62-millimetre rifles, although even these were employed as
advanced self-loaders rather than automatics. Most commonly, they were either
the gas-operated Fusil Automatique Léger (FAL), introduced by the Belgian
Fabrique Nationale d'Armes de Guerre in 1957, or the blowback-operated Gewehr 3
(G3), produced in West Germany by the firm Heckler & Koch, beginning in
1959. Millions of these weapons were sold to many countries. |
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After the Korean War (1950-53), U.S.
military researchers dissatisfied with rifle-power ammunition began to test a
.22-inch (5.56-millimetre) cartridge that propelled a lighter projectile at a
much higher muzzle velocity of 3,000 feet per second. To fire this
"small-calibre, high-velocity" round, in 1958 they chose the AR-15
rifle, designed by Eugene M. Stoner for the ArmaLite Division of Fairchild
Engine and Airplane Corporation. The AR-15 was gas-operated, but it eliminated
the piston in favour of a tube that directed propellant gases directly into an
expansion chamber between the bolt and bolt carrier. By reducing the number of
working parts and chambering the rifle for a smaller cartridge, Stoner had come
up with a lightweight weapon that, even on automatic fire, produced a manageable
recoil and yet was capable of inflicting fatal wounds at 300 yards and beyond.
In 1961 the air force purchased the AR-15, renaming it the M16. Six years later,
with units in Vietnam finding the weapon very effective under the close
conditions of jungle warfare, the army adopted it as the M16A1. |
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After U.S. troops in Europe were issued
the M16, a series of trials ensued that ended with the decision, in 1980, to
adopt a standard 5.56-millimetre NATO cartridge. This fired a brass-jacketed
projectile that, having a heavier lead core and steel nose, was lethal at longer
ranges than the original AR-15 bullet. The M16A2 was rifled to fire this round,
and other NATO armies switched over. West Germany introduced the G41, a
5.56-millimetre version of the G3, and Belgium replaced the FAL with the FNC.
The British and French armies developed new assault rifles
with compact "bullpup" designs, in which the bolt, receiver, and
magazine were behind the handgrip and trigger and much of the shoulder stock was
occupied by the operating mechanism. This permitted a much shorter weapon than
orthodox designs, in which the magazine and receiver were ahead of the trigger.
As a result, the French FA MAS and British L85A1 were only some 30 to 31 inches
long--compared with the M16, which was 39 inches overall. Many of the newer
models were built with lightweight plastic shoulder stocks and magazines, as
well as receivers made of aluminum. (E.C.E.) |
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The search for greater firepower has not
been limited to shoulder firearms. In addition to personal-defense weapons, a
variety of infantry-support weapons classed as machine guns have been subjected
to intense experimentation. |
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During the flintlock era a number of
heavy guns were developed that could fire several bullets either serially or in
volley, but it was not until the mid-19th century, with the spread of
centre-fire cartridge ammunition and better manufacturing techniques, that such
weapons could be put to effective military use. The best known were the Gatling
gun, invented by the American Richard J. Gatling,
and the mitrailleuse, produced by the Belgian firm of Christophe & Montigny. |
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Gatling guns
had several barrels (usually 6 or 10) mounted around a central axle and revolved
by means of a hand crank. After a barrel fired a round, it went through
successive unlocking, extracting, ejecting, reloading, and relocking. In the
most successful Gatling guns, stacks of rounds could be fed by means of a feed
device to give continuous fire for long periods. Gatling weapons were made to
take a variety of ammunition, up to a full inch in calibre. A few were used by
U.S. forces in Cuba in 1898 and in minor military operations around the world. |
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The French mitrailleuse was also a
multibarreled weapon, but it used a loading plate that contained a cartridge for
each of its 25 barrels. The barrels and the loading plate remained fixed, and a
mechanism (operated by a crank) struck individual firing pins simultaneously or
in succession. The mitrailleuse issued to the French army fired 11-millimetre
Chassepot rifle ammunition. Weighing more than 2,000 pounds, it was mounted on a
wheeled carriage and was usually employed in volley fire, all barrels
discharging at once. French forces in the Franco-German
War endeavoured to use it in a manner similar to artillery, but it was no
match for breech-loading cannon firing explosive shells. |
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Self-actuated machine guns, which
operated under energy generated by a fired round, became militarily effective
after the introduction of nitrocellulose propellants. These burned at a more
controlled rate than did the older black-powder propellants, generating
pressures that built up over a longer time. The first automatic weapons to take
advantage of this were heavy guns firing the new, high-velocity rifle
cartridges. |
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The first successful automatic machine
gun was invented by Hiram Stevens Maxim, an
American working in Europe. Beginning about 1884, he produced a number of
weapons in which the bullet's recoil energy was
employed to unlock the breechblock from the barrel, to extract and eject the
fired case from the gun, and to store sufficient energy in a main spring to push
the bolt forward, pick up a fresh round, load the chamber, and lock the piece.
Both barrel and breechblock, locked together, recoiled a short distance to the
rear; then the barrel was stopped and the block continued back alone. If the
trigger was held in firing position, the weapon would continue to fire until it
expended all of its ammunition. Rounds were fed to the gun on belts, which could
be clipped together to provide continuous fire, and overheating was solved by
surrounding the barrel in a metal jacket in which water was circulated from a
separate container. (see also Maxim machine gun) |
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Maxim's salesmen provided armies with
guns in any calibre, usually matching their current rifle cartridge. In Britain,
Maxim guns were first chambered for the .45-inch Martini-Henry cartridge, but,
as issued in 1891, they fired the .303-inch smokeless-powder round of the
Lee-Metford rifle. During the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), the Russians used
English-made Maxim guns chambered for their 7.62-millimetre Mosin-Nagant round.
Their Model 1910 weighed about 160 pounds, including mount, water-cooling
apparatus, and a protective steel shield for the gunner. The German Model 1908,
chambered for the 7.92-millimetre Mauser cartridge, weighed 100 pounds with its
sled mount. Such light weights, made possible because the cartridge was the sole
source of power, allowed these weapons to be operated by special infantry units. |
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Machine guns of the Maxim type had a
destructive power never seen before in warfare. In the 1890s, British infantry
units used Maxim guns, fabricated under contract by Vickers Sons, to cut down
hordes of poorly armed rebels in Africa and Afghanistan. In World War I, a few
of them could cause thousands of casualties. Their defensive fire so limited the
offensive power of infantry that the entire Western Front, from the Swiss border
to the English Channel, became one vast siege operation. |
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Not all the early heavy machine guns
were of the recoil-operated Maxim type. Gas
operation was also employed. In this system a piston located in a cylinder below
the barrel was driven to the rear by gas diverted from the barrel through a
port. The piston unlocked the breechblock and sent the bolt back against the
main spring; a new round was then picked up, moved into the chamber, and fired
on the forward stroke. |
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The best-known gas-operated heavy
machine gun was the Hotchkiss, introduced in France in 1892 and modified several
times until the definitive version of 1914. It was air-cooled, but the barrel
itself was heavy and provided with metal fins to increase heat radiation. A
slower method of feeding ammunition by short strips instead of long belts also
helped to keep the weapon from overheating. The Japanese used Hotchkiss guns
chambered for their 6.5-millimetre round against Russia in 1904-05. In World War
I, two French Hotchkiss guns firing 8-millimetre Lebel cartridges were said to
have fired 75,000 rounds each in the defense of Verdun and to have remained
serviceable. |
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A third principle of machine-gun
operation was often called blowback. In this,
the action and barrel were never locked rigidly together; the barrel did not
move, nor was there a gas cylinder and piston. To prevent the breech from
opening so early that propellant gases would rupture the spent cartridge case,
the block was heavy and the main spring strong. Also, there was usually a
linkage of parts not quite on centre to delay the actual opening. Finally, the
barrel was shorter than usual, allowing the bullet and gases to leave the barrel
quickly. |
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The Austrian Schwarzlose of 1907/12,
firing eight-millimetre Mannlicher rounds, operated by delayed blowback. It was
entirely satisfactory in combat during World War I. |
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Heavy machine guns were satisfactory for
defensive roles but were not really portable. A number of lighter machine guns
(frequently called machine rifles or automatic rifles)
began to be used in 1915. These included the British Lewis gun (invented in
America but manufactured and improved in Great Britain), the French Chauchat,
several German weapons, and the U.S. M1918 Browning
automatic rifle (known as the BAR). Most, but not all, of these light
weapons were gas-operated. Almost all were air-cooled. Generally, they fired
from magazines rather than belts of ammunition because detachable magazines were
more convenient and more easily transported. Weighing as little as 15 pounds,
they were light enough to be carried by one man and fired rifle-fashion or from
a prone position. (see also Lewis machine gun) |
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After World War I, light machine guns
virtually took over the functions of their heavier counterparts, although the
older weapons continued in service around the world through World War II and for
decades thereafter. In Germany, where heavy, water-cooled Maxim-type guns had
been forbidden by the victorious Allies, an entirely new generation of light
machine guns was introduced by the Maschinengewehr 1934 and 1942.
Recoil-operated and fed 7.92-millimetre rifle ammunition on belts, these were
equally effective when fired from bipods or when mounted on tripods for
sustained fire. Firing at an extremely high rate (as high as 1,000 rounds per
minute), they dealt with the overheating problem by being built with barrels
that could be changed in seconds. The MG34 pioneered the quick-change mechanism,
while the MG42, being fabricated largely of
stamped sheet-metal parts welded and riveted together, could be made cheaply and
quickly even in factories designed for automobile manufacture. |
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The Soviets began to issue their
Degtyarev Pekhotny (DP) in 1933 and supplied it to Loyalist forces in the
Spanish Civil War. In 1944 it was modified into the DPM. British infantry units
fought World War II with the Bren, a .303-inch version of a weapon designed by
the Czech weapons maker Václav Holek, and U.S. troops relied on the BAR.
All were gas-operated and magazine-fed and weighed from slightly over 20 pounds
to more than 30 pounds loaded. They fired slowly enough to deliver accurate
bursts from their bipods, 350-600 rounds per minute. |
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After the war, with assault-rifle
cartridges becoming standard issue, terms such as automatic rifle, light machine
gun, and medium machine gun gave way to
general-purpose machine gun (GPMG) and squad automatic weapon (SAW). Most GPMGs
were chambered for the intermediate-size 7.62-millimetre cartridges of NATO and
the Soviet Union, while SAWs fired small-calibre, high-velocity rounds such as
the 5.56-millimetre NATO or the 5.45-millimetre Kalashnikov. Significant
belt-fed GPMGs included the West German MG3, a modernized version of the MG42;
the Mitrailleuse d'Appui Général (MAG), built by Fabrique
Nationale of Belgium; the U.S.-made M60; and the Soviet Pulemyot Kalashnikova
(PK). Of the SAWs, the most prominent were the belt- or magazine-fed Minimi,
built by Fabrique Nationale, and the magazine-fed Ruchnoy Pulemyot Kalashnikova
(RPK). |
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With the eclipse of the early
water-cooled machine guns, the term heavy was applied to machine guns firing
cartridges of several times rifle calibre--most often .50 inch or 12.7
millimetres. (see also heavy machine gun) |
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Even before World War I, fully automatic
weapons were used with ammunition more powerful than rifle cartridges, but such
ammunition was not necessary for infantry missions until foot soldiers
encountered armoured vehicles. During the 1930s, many higher-powered weapons
were adopted, although only two had outstanding success. One was the United
States' M2 Heavy Barrel Browning. Essentially a .50-inch version of the .30-inch
M1917 Browning (a Maxim-type machine gun produced too late to see much fighting
in World War I), the M2 was still widely used throughout the noncommunist world
decades after World War II. Its cartridge delivered bullets of various weights
and types at high muzzle velocities, with roughly five to seven times the energy
of full rifle-power ammunition. The weapon was recoil-operated and air-cooled,
and it fired at about 450 rounds per minute. The Soviet 12.7-millimetre weapon,
the Degtyarov-Shpagin Krupnokaliberny 1938 (DShK-38), was similar, but it was
gas-operated. It went into wide use in Soviet-supplied countries. Both of these
weapons, as well as their successors (such as the Soviets'
Nikitin-Sokolov-Volkov, or NSV, machine gun), were used by infantry units on
wheeled or tripod mounts, but they were also mounted on tanks to provide
defensive fire against ground vehicles or aircraft. |
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After 1945, several superheavy machine
guns (more than .50 inch) were developed, mostly for antiaircraft use. The
single most important was a 14.5-millimetre weapon first introduced by the
Soviets for use in armoured vehicles. It was recoil-operated and belt-fed and
had a barrel that could be changed quickly. Later it was fielded on a variety of
wheeled carriages and was known as the Zenitnaya Protivovozdushnaya Ustanovka.
The ZPU-4, a four-barreled version towed on a trailer, shot down many U.S.
aircraft during that nation's involvement in the Vietnam War (1965-73) and
remained in service throughout the Third World long afterward. (J.We./
J.F.G./E.C.E.) |
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Since the 16th century, soldiers have
carried handguns to supplement their basic shoulder weapons. However, because
the firepower of pistols must be kept low in order to reduce them to manageable
weight, and because only skilled soldiers can shoot them accurately beyond 10
yards, they have never been satisfactory military weapons. By World War II,
pistols were issued principally to officers as a badge of rank and as a
defensive weapon of last resort. Currently, they are most frequently carried by
military police and other security personnel. |
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Until the mid-1840s most pistols were
single-shot muzzle-loaders fired by wheel lock, flintlock, and percussion
ignition systems. In 1835 Samuel Colt patented
the first successful percussion revolver. In the frame of this weapon was a
revolving cylinder drilled with several chambers (usually five or six), into
which powder and ball (or combustible paper cartridges containing powder and
ball) were loaded from the front. In the rear of each chamber a percussion cap
was placed over a hollow nipple that directed the jet of flame to the powder
when the cap was struck by the hammer. This type of revolver was eventually
called "cap-and-ball." Where earlier revolvers required the shooter to
line up a chamber with the barrel and cock the hammer in separate steps, Colt
devised a single-action mechanical linkage that rotated the cylinder as the
hammer was cocked with the thumb. |
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Colt dominated the manufacture of
revolvers until the expiration of his U.S. patent in 1857. At that time two
other Americans, Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson, produced the first cartridge
revolver, based on a design purchased from Rollin White. Using rim-fire copper
cartridges and eliminating the percussion-cap nipple, this weapon could be
quickly loaded from the rear. |
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When the Smith & Wesson patent
expired in 1872, a host of new revolver designs appeared in the United States
and Europe. The most important innovations were quick ejection of spent
cartridges and double-action cocking. By linking the trigger to the
hammer-cocking and cylinder-revolving mechanisms, double action permitted a
pistol to be fired with a simple pull of the trigger. This mechanism was first
introduced on a cap-and-ball revolver, the English Beaumont-Adams of 1855, but
it was quickly adapted to cartridge revolvers. There were several mechanisms for
removing spent cartridge cases. In the 1870s Smith & Wesson produced
revolvers with hinged frames. When such a revolver was "broken
open"--that is, when the barrel and cylinder were tipped on the hinge away
from the hammer and handgrip--an ejector rod, located in the middle of the
cylinder but having a star-shaped head that radiated into each chamber, pushed
out all the cartridges simultaneously. In the 1890s some Colt revolvers were
made with solid frames but with cylinders that swung out to the side, where
pushing an ejector rod forced out the cartridges. |
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By the end of the 19th century the
revolver had reached its definitive form and its highest possible effectiveness
as a military weapon. Indeed, from the 1880s through World War II, British
officers carried such revolvers as the .45-inch Webley and the .38-inch Enfield,
both of which were the hinged-frame design. The U.S. military adopted various
revolvers, usually Colts or Smith & Wessons of .38-inch or .45-inch calibre,
until 1911, when it switched to autoloading pistols. |
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A high rate of fire was especially
crucial to last-ditch, close-quarters defense, and, with handguns as well as
shoulder arms, this meant automatic loading. Following Hiram Maxim's experiments
with self-loading weapons (see above Machine
guns ), automatic-pistol
designs appeared in the last years of the 19th century. |
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In 1893 Ludwig Loewe & Company
(later known as Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken) introduced the first
commercially viable self-loading pistol. Designed by an American, Hugo
Borchardt, this 7.63-millimetre weapon operated on the principle of recoil. When
the gun was fired, the barrel and breechblock, locked together by a
"toggle-link" mechanism, slid back together along the top of the
frame. The toggle, essentially a two-piece arm hinged in the middle but lying
flat behind the breechblock, also recoiled for a short distance before it was
forced to buckle upward at its hinge. This unlocked the breechblock from the
barrel and allowed it to slide back on its own, extracting and ejecting the
spent case, cocking the hammer, and compressing a coiled spring in the rear of
the gun. The spring then pushed the breechblock forward, stripping a fresh
cartridge from a magazine in the handgrip, and the toggle locked the breechblock
once more against the barrel. |
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Borchardt's toggle and spring mechanisms
were improved by a German, Georg Luger, who came up with the 7.65-millimetre
(later 9-millimetre) Parabellum pistol. This was
adopted by the German army in 1908. |
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In the United States and many parts of
Europe, John M. Browning's handgun designs
dominated the first half of the 20th century. In his .45-inch pistol,
manufactured by Colt and adopted by the U.S. military in 1911, the barrel and
breechblock were covered and locked together by a housing called the slide. When
the gun was fired, the recoiling slide pulled the barrel back a short distance
until the barrel was disengaged and returned to its forward position by a
spring. The unlocked slide and breechblock continued back, ejecting the spent
case and cocking the hammer, until a spring forced them forward while a fresh
cartridge was picked up from a seven-round magazine in the grip. The M1911 Colt
did not begin being replaced until 1987. Its successor, the nine-millimetre
Italian Beretta, given the NATO designation M9, reflected post-1970 trends such
as large-capacity magazines (15 shots in the Beretta), double-action triggers
(which could snap the hammer without its having to be cocked manually or
automatically), and ambidextrous safety levers. |
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Soldiers have always favoured grenades
for the killing and stunning effect of their explosive power, but the
effectiveness of hand grenades has always been limited to the distance they can
be thrown. Extending the range of grenades requires that they be launched by
some sort of infantry weapon. |
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During World War I, most armies
developed attachments for standard service rifles that permitted the launching
of "rifle" grenades. However, although range was increased with these
devices, accuracy remained poor. An effective answer was a shoulder-fired
grenade launcher developed in the 1950s by the Springfield Armory. Resembling a
single-shot, break-open, sawed-off shotgun, the M79 lobbed a 40-millimetre,
6-ounce (176-gram) high-explosive fragmentation grenade at a velocity of 250
feet per second to a maximum range of 400 yards. This covered the area between
the longest range of hand-thrown grenades (30 to 40 yards) and the middle range
of 60-millimetre mortars (300-400 yards). |
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The M79 employed a "high-low
pressure system" developed by Germany during World War II. This involved an
aluminum cartridge case with a sealed propellant chamber in front of the primer.
The propellant chamber was perforated by a number of partially completed,
carefully sized holes leading into a separate expansion chamber within the
cartridge case. Upon firing, the high pressures created inside the propellant
chamber flowed into the expansion chamber through the previously prepared holes.
The resulting moderated gas pressure produced a low impulse that launched the
grenade at an adequate velocity and with an acceptable recoil impulse. |
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M79 grenade launchers were made from
1961 to 1971 and saw a great deal of action in Vietnam. Production was
terminated in favour of a launcher attachment for the M16 rifle. |
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Grenade-launching machine guns also
appeared during the Vietnam War. Instead of the thin-walled projectiles fired by
the M79, these shot higher-velocity cartridges. The weapons were first mounted
on helicopters but afterward appeared on tripods and armoured vehicles. On these
mounts, grenade-launching machine guns such as the U.S. Mark 19, firing
40-millimetre rounds, and the Soviet AGS-17, shooting 30-millimetre projectiles,
frequently replaced or supplemented .50-inch heavy machine guns. (see also action) |
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Upon their introduction in World War I,
tanks posed a very serious problem for foot soldiers. The Germans quickly
reacted by introducing the 13-millimetre Tankgewehr ("Antitank
Rifle"), a very large-scale single-shot version of the Mauser bolt-action
rifle. British designers created the magazine-fed, bolt-action .55-inch Boys
antitank rifle in the late 1930s, and the Soviets introduced 14.5-millimetre
bolt-action and self-loading antitank rifles during World War II. The increasing
thickness of tank armour soon made all of these infantry weapons obsolete, since
kinetic-energy weapons that could penetrate tank armour became too heavy and
produced too much recoil to be fired from the shoulder. |
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The search for a shoulder-fired antitank
weapon took another turn with the application of a principle discovered in the
1880s by an American inventor, Charles E. Munroe. Munroe found that a hollow
cone of explosive material, when detonated with its open end a few inches from
metal plate, produced a jet of white-hot gases and molten steel that could
penetrate many inches of the best armour. Utilizing the Munroe principle,
various "shaped-charge" projectiles were first delivered during World
War II by low-velocity, shoulder-held rocket launchers such as the bazooka (see
below Rockets and
missile systems ) or by recoilless
devices such as the German Panzerfaust ("Tank Fist," or "Tank
Puncher"). Issued in the latter half of the war, the German weapon was a
30-inch-long, 1.75-inch-diameter tube containing a charge of gunpowder. A
six-inch-diameter bomb, mounted on a stick with collapsible fins, was inserted
into the front end, and the weapon, held over the shoulder or under the arm, was
fired by a simple firing pin and percussion cap on the outside of the tube. The
propellant gases blew a cap off of the rear of the tube, in effect canceling the
recoil forces generated by the launching of the bomb, which could be lobbed to
ranges of 30 to 100 yards. Its powerful shaped charge of RDX and TNT could
penetrate any tank armour. |
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Following World War II, the Soviet
military perfected the Panzerfaust-type recoilless launch mechanism in their
Ruchnoy Protivotankovy Granatomet 2 (RPG-2), a "Light Antitank Grenade
Launcher" featuring a reusable launcher that lobbed an 82-millimetre
shaped-charge warhead more than 150 yards. After 1962, with their RPG-7, they
combined recoilless launch with a rocket sustainer to deliver a five-pound
warhead to targets beyond 500 yards. The Soviet RPGs became powerful weapons in
the hands of guerrillas and irregular fighters in conflict against more
conventionally armed and heavily armoured forces. As such, they were used by the
Viet Cong to destroy U.S. armoured vehicles in Vietnam and by militiamen in the
protracted conflicts of the Middle East. |
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Other countries also developed small,
shoulder-held recoilless launchers firing shaped-charge warheads. Some of them,
such as the Swedish Miniman, came preloaded and were designed to be discarded
after firing. (E.C.E.) (see also bullet) |
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