- This topic has 2 voices and 4 replies.
-
Posts
-
Since we have started doing pictorial quizzes I thought I would throw another one out there. Can anyone identify this piece of equipment?
The Mitrailleuse was the first Machine-gun developed, although the not the first used in combat, that was the Gatling Gun. The Mitrailluese was first developed starting in the 1850's under extreme secrecy by the French. In fact, it was so secret that many in the French Army leadership did not know about it until after the Franco-Prussian War started. They used it in batteries like artillery where it was fairly ineffective because of its lack of range.The barrels are stacked in 6 rows of 6 and it was fired by a crank handle. firing from bottom across to the top. Needless to say, it was taken out of service after it's poor performance in 1870-1871 and is now nothing but a curiosity much like the Prussian needle-gun of the same time period.
The barrels are stacked in 6 rows of 6 and it was fired by a crank handle. firing from bottom across to the top. Needless to say, it was taken out of service after it's poor performance in 1870-1871 and is now nothing but a curiosity much like the Prussian needle-gun of the same time period.
I think you mean 5x5, not 6x6. I bring this up because that's the only way I narrowed it down to the Reffye type of mitrailleuse. The chart on wikipedia mentions the barrel arrangements of some of the variants of mitrailleuse guns. Looks like they tried a few different approaches to mitrailleuse barrels throughout the 1860s.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrailleuse#Design
