WAR
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Pilot and observer/gunner in<br />
Halberstadt CL II, the observer armed<br />
with Parabellum. Empty cartridge tape is<br />
seen dangling from left side of gun.<br />
Twin Lewis gun armament<br />
for observer in an R.E.8.<br />
French pilots chauffeuring armed observers in such handy machines as the<br />
Morane-Saulnier parasol had created a serious problem for the Germans, forcing<br />
the establishment of a new class of machine—the "C" two-seater. This new class<br />
was basically the same as the "B" class, but there were three significant improvements.<br />
The horsepower was upped to a rating of at least 150, the pilot and<br />
passenger traded seats, and a Parabellum machine gun was made standard equipment.<br />
The pilot, now seated in the front, enjoyed an improved view uninterrupted<br />
by the observer's form, and the latter, in the rear, had some room to swing his<br />
Parabellum about.<br />
c=E<br />
=tf<br />
Hotchkiss<br />
Lewis (shown with<br />
and without water jacket).<br />
A word here about that terrifying American invention, the machine gun.<br />
Richard Jordan Gatling of North Carolina developed his famous "Gatling gun"<br />
in 1862. It saw some use in the Civil War. Its action depended on a hand crank,<br />
so it was not a true machine gun, but it was the first successful rapid-fire weapon<br />
to use a self-contained metallic cartridge. The modern machine gun utilizes the<br />
energy of the expanding combustion gas in the barrel—the "kick." It remained<br />
for Benjamin Hotchkiss (1826-1885) of Connecticut, Hiram Maxim (1840-1916)<br />
of Maine, John Moses Browning (1855—1926) of Utah, and Isaac Newton Lewis,<br />
West Point class of '84, to develop guns in which the recoil energy was harnessed<br />
and made to do the job of reloading and firing again in a fully automatic fashion.<br />
Most standard machine guns were either designed by these men or based on<br />
their<br />
designs.<br />
The Hotchkiss was a smallish weapon, not much larger than a rifle,<br />
and was<br />
part of the regular equipment of the French and Belgian infantries. It was fed<br />
from a rigid spring-loaded clip holding 25 cartridges. It was the first machine<br />
gun in the air, being used by Frantz and Quenault and by Roland Garros in the<br />
first armed single-seater.<br />
The Browning weapons were used mostly by the infantry<br />
and had only a very limited application in the air service.<br />
From the point of view of the development of fighter aviation the major<br />
weapons are the Lewis and the Maxim. Colonel Lewis patented the<br />
gas-operated<br />
gun that bears his name in 1911. It was fed from a round, flat drum that rotated<br />
as the gun was fired.<br />
The cartridges arranged radially inside the drum were driven<br />
into the firing chamber by spring-action. It was a light-weight, reliable weapon.<br />
In 1916 its capacity was doubled by the development of a larger drum. The Lewis,<br />
like most machine guns, was amenable to the attachment of muzzle dampers that<br />
retarded the escape of combustion gas and so speeded up the rate of fire.<br />
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