10m 31s | 3973 view | 16 rating

more at http://quickfound.net/links/military_news_and_links.html 'TRAINING FILM: On the use of machine gun in defensive positions. Reel 1demonstrates how to select and prepare defensive machine gun position. Reel 2 continues with preparation. Fields of fire are set and range cards are made. Trenches dug and barbed wire strung. R.3: shows gun crew under attack. A tank attacks. "Enemy" attacks again and is repulsed. National Archives identifier: 36295.' US Army Training Film TF-29 Public domain film from the Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_gun The Gatling gun, patented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling, was the first to offer controlled, sequential fire with automatic loading. The design's key features were machine loading of prepared cartridges and a hand-operated crank for sequential high-speed firing. It first saw very limited action in the American Civil War; it was subsequently improved and used in the Franco-Prussian war and North-West Rebellion. Many were sold to other armies in the late 19th century and continued to be used into the early 20th century, until they were gradually supplanted by Maxim guns. Early multi-barrel guns were approximately the size and weight of contemporary artillery pieces, and were often perceived as a replacement for cannon firing grapeshot or canister shot. The large wheels required to move these guns around required a high firing position which increased the vulnerability of their crews. Sustained firing of gunpowder cartridges generated a cloud of smoke making concealment impossible until smokeless powder became available in the late 19th century. Gatling guns were targeted by artillery they could not reach and their crews were targeted by snipers they could not see.[9] The Gatling gun was used most successfully to expand European colonial empires by killing warriors of non-industrialized societies... The first self-powered machine gun was invented in 1884 by Sir Hiram Maxim. The "Maxim gun" used the recoil power of the previously fired bullet to reload rather than being hand-powered, enabling a much higher rate of fire than was possible using earlier designs such as the Nordenfelt and Gatling weapons. Maxim also introduced the use of water cooling, via a water jacket around the barrel, to reduce overheating. Maxim's gun was widely adopted and derivative designs were used on all sides during the First World War. The design required fewer crew and was lighter and more usable than the Nordenfelt and Gatling guns. First World War combat experience greatly increased the importance of the machine gun. The United States Army issued four machine guns per regiment in 1912, but that allowance increased to 336 machine guns per regiment by 1919.[11] Heavy guns based on the Maxim such as the Vickers machine gun were joined by many other machine weapons, which mostly had their start in the early 20th century such as the Hotchkiss machine gun. Submachine guns (e.g., the German MP18) as well as lighter machine guns (the Chauchat, for example) saw their first major use in World War I, along with heavy use of large-caliber machine guns. The biggest single cause of casualties in World War I was actually artillery, but combined with wire entanglements, machine guns earned a fearsome reputation. The automatic mechanisms of machine guns were applied to handguns, giving rise to automatic pistols (and eventually machine pistols) such as the Borchardt (1890s) and later submachine guns (such as the Beretta 1918)... During the interwar years, many new designs were developed, such as the Browning M2 and the Thompson sub-machine gun, which, along with others, were used in World War II. The trend toward automatic rifles, light machine guns, and more powerful sub-machine guns resulted in a wide variety of firearms that combined characteristics of ordinary rifles and machine guns. The Cei-Rigotti (20th century), Fedorov Avtomat (1910s), AVS-36 Simonov (1930s), MP44, M2 Carbine, AK-47, and M16 have come to be known as assault rifles (after the German term sturmgewehr)... Germany developed during the interwar years the first widely used and successful general-purpose machine gun, the Maschinengewehr 34. The Maschinengewehr 42 was developed from it and was much cheaper to produce. The current GPMG of the German Army, the MG3, is a direct evolution of the MG42. Many other modern machine guns, including the US M60 and the FN MAG borrow elements of the design of the MG42...