The Gatling Gun

The Gatling Gun: The First Practical “Machine Gun”

 

Here at Select Fire, we’ve recently begun ‘Rapid Fire’ days, where you can come in and try the very quick-firing binary trigger system that we wrote about in a previous article… so we thought that in today’s article, we’d discuss the Gatling gun, which was the first truly practical rapid firing weapon, and the forerunner to the modern machine.

The Gatling gun, named after its inventor Dr. Richard J. Gatling, was developed in the mid 1800’s; Gatling received a patent for his invention in November 1862. Gatling is said to have developed the rapid firing weapon to show the futility of war, and therefore to reduce casualties… while his gun was successful, he certainly failed in the effort to reduce casualties.

The Gatling gun (as seen in the image to the right) was built on the concept of a rotating series of six barrels; the mechanism was designed so that at one point in the rotation, a spent cartridge was extracted, while in succeeding points in the rotation a fresh cartridge was loaded, the firing mechanism was cocked (with one for each barrel), and the weapon was fired. In his original version, the power to rotate the system was supplied through a hand crank, though about 80 years later, electric motors were added when the design was modernized. The system also used self-contained cartridges, in which a single cartridge held powder, a bullet, and a primer. This was in contrast to the way in which ammo was loaded into most contemporary rifles, where powder and projectile were loaded separately (and usually through the muzzle), with an external priming cap to initiate firing. Early versions of the Gatling gun used paper cartridges, but these were later replaced with metal cartridge casings to improve reliability and survivability of the ammunition. Early Gatling guns could fire up to several hundred rounds per minute, which was massively faster than any other weapon system of the day. With later improvements to the loading systems, its rate of fire was increased to 400 rounds per minute.

While early versions of the gun were prone to jamming, modifications to the feed system, along with the previously mentioned changeover to metal cartridge casings largely solved these issues. The Gatling saw limited action during the Civil War, due to a number of factors including the expense of the weapon and its early tendencies to jam. However, its adoption into mainstream military use was also initially limited due its novelty: tactics for the implementation and use of rapid-fire weapons had not yet been developed, and military leaders were uncertain what to do with it. In fact, Gatlings were initially considered part of artillery units; this was in part due to their significant weight (they were generally mounted on wheeled mounts, like artillery pieces), but also due to the lack of understanding of what massed rapid fire could do for infantry. There were also concerns about what the massive rate of fire would do to the Army’s logistics systems; if the gun was fired at such high rates, ammunition would need to be supplied at high rates to keep it in action. All of these factors kept the Gatling from becoming a major factor in the American Civil War, though a small handful did see limited action. While not a significant factor in the Civil War, its development was a foreshadowing of things to come.

While Gatling guns saw significant sales in the years shortly following the Civil War, they saw only limited combat before other technologies overtook them. One battle where Gatlings were notable for their absence was the famous Battle of Little Bighorn, in which George Custer met his fate at the hands of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians. Custer elected not to bring his unit’s Gatling guns with him, probably due to concerns about their mobility (as a cavalry officer, Custer valued mobility over firepower). Had they had those weapons with them, that battle may have ended differently.

One notable and famous battle that the Gatling did participate in was the Battle of San Juan Hill in the Spanish American War. At that engagement, a battery of four Gatlings supported the infantry charge up San Juan and Kettle Hills, firing (collectively) about 18,000 rounds in eight minutes and doing massive damage to the Spanish defenders and their positions.

However, the Gatling’s moment in the sun was brief. The hand-crank action and heavy weight of the gun meant that it was soon overshadowed by the first true machine gun, the Maxim. Invented by Hiram Maxim in 1884 (and subsequently licensed around the world), the Maxim was lighter and fully automatic, with a higher rate of fire. By 1911, the US Army had declared the Gatling gun to be obsolete and removed them from service.

The basic concept of the Gatling lives on today, in electrically powered rotating weapons such as the M61 Vulcan 20mm cannon used on fighter planes, the 7.62mm ‘Minigun’ made famous in the movie “Predator” (named a ‘minigun’ since it is a smaller version of the M61), and the massive GAU-8 Avenger 30mm cannon used in the A-10 ground attack fighter. With electric power, these weapon systems can fire between 3,000 to 6,000 rounds per minute; sustaining such high rates of fire requires a rotating barrel system, which allows the barrels to cool down between rounds. The true genius of Richard Gatling’s concept is now fully utilized and continues to affect the modern battlefield to this day.