MACHINE GUNS

Britains

Machine guns inflicted appalling casualties on both war fronts in World War One. Men who went over-the-top in trenches stood little chance when the enemy opened up with their machine guns. Machine guns were one of the main killers in the war and accounted for many thousands of deaths.

Crude machine guns had first been used in the American Civil War (1861 to 1865). However, tactics from this war to 1914 had not changed to fit in with this new weapon. Machine guns could shoot hundreds of rounds of ammunition a minute and the standard military tactic of World War One was the infantry charge. Casualties were huge. Many soldiers barely got out of their trench before they were cut down.

The M2 Machine Gun, Browning .50 Caliber Machine Gun, or "Ma Deuce" is a heavy machine gun designed towards the end of World War I by John Browning. The M2 uses the .50 BMG cartridge, and is the source of its name (BMG standing for Browning Machine Gun). The M2 was nicknamed Ma Deuce by U.S. Military personnel or simply called "fifty-cal." in reference to its caliber. The design has had many specific designations; the official designation for the current infantry type is Browning Machine Gun, Cal. .50, M2, HB, Flexible. It is effective against infantry, unarmored or lightly-armored vehicles and boats, light fortifications, and low-flying aircraft.

The Browning .50 caliber machine gun has been used extensively as a vehicle weapon and for aircraft armament by the United States from the 1920s to the present day. It was heavily used during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, as well as during operations in Iraq in the 1990s and 2000s. It is the primary heavy machine gun of NATO countries, and has been used by many other countries as well. It is still in use today, with only a few modern improvements. The M2 has been in use longer than any other small arm in U.S. inventory. It was very similar in design to the smaller Browning Model 1919 machine gun. The M2 is currently manufactured by General Dynamics and Fabrique Nationale (FN) for the United States government. FN has been the manufacturer since John Browning worked for them in the 1910s and '20s to develop the machine gun.

The Mle 1914 Hotchkiss machine gun became the standard machine gun of the French Army during World War I. It was manufactured by the French arms company Hotchkiss et Cie, which had been established in the 1860s by American industrialist Benjamin B. Hotchkiss. The Hotchkiss system, essentially formulated in 1895, clearly is the conceptual precursor to most gas actuated machine gun designs to this day.

The Mle 1914 was the last version of a series of nearly identical Hotchkiss designs : the Mle 1897, Mle 1900 and the Mle 1908. The heavy Mle 1914 Hotchkiss is not to be confused with the lighter Hotchkiss M1909 (the U.S. "Benet-Mercie" or the British Hotchkiss Mark I). At the beginning of World War I, the St. Étienne Mle 1907 was the standard machine gun of French infantry. However, due to inferior field performance by the St. Etienne, the Hotchkiss Mle 1914 became the French infantry standard in late 1917. The American Expeditionary Forces (A.E.F.) in France also used the Mle 1914 Hotchkiss extensively in 1917 and 1918. Hotchkiss heavy machine guns, some being of earlier types, were also used in combat by Japan, Mexico, Spain, Belgium and Poland.

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 Crew members of ? Japanese medium machinegun of Type 92 (a copy of 7 7mm French machmegun Hotchkiss) are firing at positions of Soviet border troops. Soviet-Manchurian

and the Hotchkiss machine gun, a sturdy and reliable weapon, remained in active service with the French army until the early 1940s. By the end of 1918, 47,000 Hotchkiss machine guns had been delivered to the French army alone

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