Posted on 11/05/2014 6:19:24 AM PST by C19fan
During the early morning of Oct. 25, 1893, a column of 700 soldiers from the British South African Police camped in a defensive position next to the Shangani River.
While they slept, the Matabele king Lobengula ordered an attack on the column, sending a force of up to 6,000 men—some armed with spears, but many with Martini-Henry rifles.
Among its weapons, the column possessed several Maxim machine guns. Once a bugler sounded the alert, the Maxims spun into action—and the results were horrific.
The Maxim gunners mowed down more than 1,600 of the attacking Matabele tribesman. As for the British column, it suffered four casualties.
(Excerpt) Read more at medium.com ...
Har, ain’t that the truth!
The machine gun played a significant role in the spread of liberalism.
Robert Pirsig, in his book LILA, makes the point that WWI destroyed the Victorians and The Victorian Age. It was Victorian leaders who convinced the Soldiers to crawl out of the trenches and into the carnage of machine gun bullets. The survivors of WWI went home and revolted against everything Victorian. Here in the US, we had The Roaring 20s.
It was not the Victorian “prudishness” that caused the deaths on the battlefield. The Doughboys didn’t charge the Germans because the Germans were too risqué. They charged because of the Groupthink of their leaders. It is a problem the US admirals and generals still suffer from.
A machine gun will butcher untrained combatants. So will rapid fire, breech-loading artillery firing exploding shells. So will chemical weapons. So will airplanes delivering weapons from above.
It is critical to take away the right lessons learned from history. “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” The lesson from WWI isn’t that Maxim was a dirty war profiteer. If he hadn’t done it, somebody else would have. The lesson wasn’t that Victorian values caused slaughter.
I miss Birdman Weapons Systems. Such a great web site back in the day.
I remember his stuff! ‘Unfriendly products for an unfriendly world.’ His birdman.org is still up and says it’ll be back, but it’s been awhile...
The gun was a select fire (adjustable cyclic rate in the prototype; auto only in the production model). belt fed. recoil operated weapon. The majority of maxim's ground guns were water-cooled; guns adapted for aircraft were air-cooled. Maximum rate of fire was 666 rounds per minute.
Prior to World War I, the water-cooled Maxim was adopted by many of the major combatants:
United States as the Vickers M1916 in .30 cal. (Vickers was a modified Maxim design).
British Commonwealth (UK, Canada, Australia) as the Vickers heavy machine gun in .303 cal.
Germany as the Spandau in caliber 7.92x57.
Russia as the Maxim M1910 in 7.62x54R.
When he was 60 years old, Maxim became a British citizen in 1900. He died in 1916, two years before WW1 ended. The British Army only declared its Vickers HMG obsolete in 1957. It was, in many respects, “the Devil's paintbrush”.
“...the machine gun’s inventor, Hiram Maxim, was the father of Hiram Percy Maxim (W1AW), who in turn invented the silencer for firearms.”
What about his brother, Hudson Maxim, who invented smokeless powder?
If you can, read his book “Defenseless America” written in 1915. If, for some reason, I had to get rid of all my 3000+ books, his would be the very last one to go.
I miss the old days, when as Hillair Belloc put it " Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not. "
ping for later read
“Makes ya wonder... “
They’re still doing it. War story from Rhodesia about the terrs setting the sights on RPGs to maximum thinking it made the round go farther/faster. Results same: clean miss.
“the Devil’s paintbrush”.
At 666 rounds per minute, I guess so.
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