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MACHINE GUN St. Martin's Press N.Y. 2002 |
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The now ubiquitous machine gun had been a goal of inventors for hundreds of years. It was not until the American Civil War that a reliable machine-gun was developed, and another fifty years, and a world war, before armies learned what to do with them. The author traces the primary developers and their guns up through WW I. The development of ammunition components is discussed in some detail. This may seem somewhat basic, however, the best machine gun is only a bullet launcher and requires reliable ammunition. The author accepts Colt's revolver as the first reliable repeater. The author concentrates on the work of Colt, Gatling, Maxim, Lewis, and Browning; giving a brief biography of each man. Each man was a mechanical genius with a talent for marketing, even showmanship. The author traces the use of machine guns in various colonial wars. The guns, allowed small groups of regulars to annihilate, colonial hordes. Despite discipline, organization, and heroism the tribes were unable to adjust their tactics to the new weapon. The tribes may be forgiven their tactical inflexibility. European armies had no real idea of what to do with machine-guns either. The author discusses the resistance of European armies to the machine gun and decides that it was not considered heroic or gallant to send a thousand bullets at a foe. This despite the history of artillery with its shrapnel and grapeshot designed for the same general purpose. The author makes a good case for the proposition; on the eve of WW I lances were issued to British cavalry as a "terror weapon", but machine guns were not. Where accepted, machine guns were considered a species of artillery rather than an infantry weapon. The German army took the opposite view, employing as many machine guns as could be produced. The author credits this to institutionalized German military genius for innovation. It took some time in the trenches of WW I for opposing armies to realize this German genius. The book has some editorial faults. The dust jacket contains a glaring grammatical error. At one point the work has Samuel Colt marrying a wealthy man. The author tends to go off on tangents. His remarks on the military organization of the colonial forces contrast with the efficiency of opposing machine-guns, however are unnecessarily detailed. His comments on the development of aircraft and tanks as machine gun platforms are important to the work, but again overly detailed. His comments on poison gas are unnecessary. Early inventors thought that their weapons would make war impossible, as the carnage would be unthinkable. WW I marked the acceptance of the machine gun, and realization that the carnage was thinkable. The author has traced the men and weapons which led to the age of the machine-gun. |
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