>compared to XIX century rifles and revolvers, Maxim was like UFO compared to a car
>Maxim is the oldest gun still used by militaries
>M2 Browning is the oldest gun still used by militaries with no shame
Why were heavy machine guns so much ahead of their times?
Is that a DP-28 in the background?
The belt fed version I think
>Belt-fed version
Look at the knees of the gunner, He is reloading the pans
Also there is another DP-28 further back.
It's absolutely insane that Maxim was invented before the early pistols or blowback submachine guns.
Oh, and some people were still trying to change from a belt-feed to a strip feed or God forbid, those stupid clip-fed hoppers like in the Jap LMG. Or the clip-fed mag like the Breda 30.
Because you don't really need to care too much about it becoming too heavy or making it super rugged, it's not hard to keep adding good design elements like a high caliber round, mounted bipod for recoil, water-cooling for heat etc.
It's just a very specialized and much easier design brief.
They're overbuilt as frick and their use case hasn't really changed in that they're still used for static emplacements/vehicles are strong enough to drive around with them now
The first machine guns just happened to be heavy because of the technology of the day. It's the "machine" part which was important. And it was just as revolutionary as any other important machine, the same way that things like power looms, steam engines, railroads, etc, were. Let the machine do the work and a lot more work can be done.
Making a larger machine run well is easier than making a small machine run well. Think tuning an engine vs a watch. A single grain of sand in your engine is not good but not going to stop it, the same grain can ruin the internals of a watch
is the oldest gun still used by militaries
Wrong.
Tell us Anon, what's on your mind?
took the small arms concept, which at heart is extremely simple, mechanically and otherwise, and bedrock reliable, and dialed it up to light weapons. nothing more was needed
I think a huge part of it is that they're much easier to design mechanically. You don't need to do any weird clever jank shit that's barely understood at the time, don't need special cuts or reliefs cut into the receiver or body, you can just rivet that shit on.
You are relatively unconstrained in physical dimensions, you just need something that works the same way every time.
Once people start wrapping their heads around automatic feeding systems, the imagination can take off and people start experimenting.
Most new concepts start off as the largeish version of whatever <thing> is.
>M2 Browning is the oldest gun still used by militaries with no shame
There is some shame in it. FN tried to replace them with a 15mm machinegun during the cold war to have an equivalent to the russian 14.5mm (which is wrongly thought as a 12.7 equivalent while power of penetration wise it's closer to a 20-25mm)
But then there is the part where the damn thing work and we have already stockpiles of parts and the entire manufacturing process on lock.
Inertia by bean counters is the worst thing to happens to weapon development.
For exemple we could have electrically actuated AR with basically no internal movement firing 2mm caselless alluminium rounds.
And then we have the AR-15 that does the job ok, is already in use with people already trained on them with an entire supply infrastructure.
It's like how the french still used 1886 Lebels in WWII despite being the country spending the most on their military from 1920 to 1938.
It didn't make the job worse than the german k98... but both were thoroughly outdated.
People think that technology accelerate in time of war while really it's just catching back as fast as it can.
>caselless alluminium rounds
>alluminium rounds
A fricking beer can?
>AR-15
A FRICKING BEER GUN?
Nice post. Made me wonder, could militaries today play catch up during a fullscale war like they used to in the past? Now adays you can't even get a ball bearing or a specific screw for your manufacturer without crossing half of the globe for it, everything is so internationally standardized and co-dependent that I think the parties involved would have a hard time developing and manufacturing new stuff, just look at how Russia has to rely on tanks/apc's made almost 80 years ago to keep the bare minimum amount of vehicles in the field.
It's only like that because an environment of low shipping costs, specialization, high start-up costs and economies of scale etc mean that things trend to one single company to take care of the world's needs. There will be a long spin-up time and the results would be costlier, but there's no reason why a country determined to have self-sufficiency in e.g. ball bearings and other technological goods can't do it. It will just simply be unable to make a profit on the global market.
Modern GPMGs are compromises for weight and mobility. Once a maxim like this is in place it is just as deadly as any modern gun AND will be significantly better at sustained fire than any modern air-cooled changeable barrel gun.
the REAL reason that russian maxims see use in these post-soviet wars is because the 7.62x54r is still in use. Its a tremendously outdated cartridge but is still used through sheer momentum. Not only is the cartridge still in use, the maxims can use modern belts since the rimmed case requires a pull-back system. This was a problem with the M2-M3 "upgrade".
Both sides can pull these relics out of storage and will have fully functional machine guns without the volkssturm-tier logistics. Compare to the STG-44s we saw in Syria, those quickly disappeared as whatever ammo they found with them dried up.
Heres a challenge- what other guns is this true for? (beyond pistol cartidges like 9para or 45acp) They would mostly be russian guns because of the cartridge. Perhaps german guns- but only because Yugoslavia standardized on 8mm mauser and I think they've since moved on. Try this with western guns and you can only go back as far as NATO standardization, with the exception of the M2, but thats still in service.
>M2 Browning is the oldest gun still used by militaries with no shame
That's not because it was ahead of its time, that's because the US is really good at finding new uses for it when it becomes obsolete in its current role.