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 ...
And this is imperial military conflict. Even any kind of full auto weapon is seldom seen on anyone not government within the United States.
I guess the lesson here is don’t attack a trained machine gun group on horseback and without cover.
Sit back, use the rifles the way the Boer War guerilla did: Hide behind cover, shoot one and two at a time, move, shoot again. Use the long range of the rifle...
But that doesn’t match their tribal warfare macho-macho style of counting coup and being a single hero in front of the “braves” - just like in the US western wars.
Millions really in WWI.
A lesson the Brits forgot on 1 July 1916.
They didn’t even bring their horses on that date.
Here’s the real lesson: Place your maxims in flanking positions with interlocking fields of fire. That gives you a chance for the full 6000.
What the article doesn’t mention is that the machine gun’s inventor, Hiram Maxim, was the father of Hiram Percy Maxim (W1AW), who in turn invented the silencer for firearms.
People Utilizing Maxim’s Machine Gun Slaughtered Hundreds of Thousands of People
I read that Maxim considered the machine gun so terrible a weapon that it would prevent wars. So much for that thought.
Horrific scene in War Horse with a calvary charge mowed down with a machine gun.
A lesson Poland obviously missed when Germany attacked.
Wow, it sounds like psychopath. I hope they gave it the chair!
Come to think of it, how many people did the chair kill?
Wrong, Paul Richard Huard, you mewling little homo liberal.
MILLIONS were slaughtered. BILLIONS even, Mercilessly. Often they were only 2 month old infants. And they held kittens, who were also slaughtered, and there were hummingbirds on the kittens shoulders, who also were slaughtered. The hummingbirds attracted butterflys, who were also ripped asunder by the terrible Maxim bullet, which is designed to cause maximum pain before death.
And the red-hot spent shells would rain down on some beautiful roses and daffodils, which instantly withered.
And the horrible men who would fire these evil weapons simply laughed, uproariously, and praised Satan for their death-dealing powers.
“I read that Maxim considered the machine gun so terrible a weapon that it would prevent wars. So much for that thought.”
Henry Shrapnel and Alfred Nobel had similar hopes for their creations.
What about the grass?
Guns don’t kill people... bullets do.
What an appalling level of slaughter! FOUR Brits! Horrors!
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