Belt fed ammo questions

Ammunition feeding for machine guns is a fascinating study in itself. Besides the various box and drum systems, may things have been tried, with varying degrees of success.

The Lewis gun, and the Soviet Degtaryev (sp?) use a flat "pan" that looks like a drum, but isn't, even though its often called such.

Some Hotchkiss designs (and their Japanese clones) used a feed strip, a long (usually) brass "frame" holding the rounds. Fed in one side of the gun, and exiting out the other when empty. Some guns even put the empties back in the feed strip!

One Japanese design used a hopper, with the standard rifle 5rnd stripper clips stacked in it. (for a variety of reasons, not very successful).

Early designs from Maxim and Browning used cloth belts, and the Browning designs successfully adapted to metal disintegrating link belts. In these guns, rounds are pulled rearwards from the belt, then fed forward into the chamber.

The German MG34 &MG 42 use non-disintegrating metal links belts. Rounds are pushed forward through the belt link into the chamber. The links stay fastened together.

More modern designs generally use metal disintegrating link belts, with rounds being fed forward through the links into the chamber.

As long as not damaged, both the cloth belts and metal links are reusable for a while. Belts can be made up by hand, but using a linking machine is much better (and easier).

Don't know the specifics on the HK belt system, sorry.

The US legal definition of anything that fires more than one shot with a single trigger pull is "machine gun". No matter what else it does, or doesn't do.

The commonly used definitions in the firearms community are:
Submachine gun: full auto firing handgun ammo (can be handheld or shoulder fired, or even mounted-which is extremely rare)

Automatic Rifle / light machinegun: Shoulder or bipod fired, uses full size rifle ammo, usually magazine fed. These designs place greater emphasis on portability than on sustained fire.

Light/medium machinegun:
Full size rifle round, belt fed, maybe fired off bipod or tripod.

Medium or General Purpose machinegun:
may be the same gun as the light machine gun, but usually tripod mounted and better adapted to sustained fire.

Heavy Machine gun:
either intended for sustained fire (such as water cooled) or classed as heavy due to caliber size (.50 BMG, etc.)

These are rough guidelines, and many guns have considerable overlap in use and features.
 
True that the Lewis magazine is a "pan" but I have never heard anyone call it other than a Lewis "drum", same with the Thompson "drum" magazines.

Sorry, Mike and 44 Amp, but many SMG's are full auto only, including the U.S. M3 and M3A1, the German MP. 28, MP. 38 and MP. 40, the French Modele 38, etc. Aside from SMG designs converted to semi-auto for one reason or another, like the Model 1927 Thompson, there have been a few pistol caliber semi-auto carbines, one notable one being the S&W Model 40 (and wouldn't I love to have one of those!).

Trivia item of the week: Did you know that the model letter for the Thompson SMG magazines, XX, XXX, L, and C indicates the capacity in Roman numerals?

Jim
 
"Sorry, Mike and 44 Amp, but many SMG's are full auto only"

Uhm... yeah, that's exactly what I was saying. Actually, I was saying MOST designs are full-auto only, but there have been some that are select-fire.

Probably the most notable select-fire submachine guns made were the pre-WW II Beretta M1935 and M1938/A.

At least one variant of the Sten was designed and saw limited production with select fire capability.

The Reising M50 was also a select fire weapon.

There are others, as well.
 
"Did you know that the model letter for the Thompson SMG magazines, XX, XXX, L, and C indicates the capacity in Roman numerals?"

Yes.

In old FBI inventory records, the 100-round capacity drums are noted as being CEE drums.


"One Japanese design used a hopper, with the standard rifle 5rnd stripper clips stacked in it. (for a variety of reasons, not very successful)."

The primary reason it wasn't very successful is that Kinjiro Nambu was a nutsack who could never get it through his head the need for a primary extraction cycle that would ease the case free of the chamber instead of just ripping the head off and leaving the body as a jam.
 
Yes, I knew that about Thompson drums. Did you know the 10round drum (required by the 94AWB) was called the "X"?

Japanese machinegun design was ..interesting. Quite a fair example of how NOT to do things. I understand that several of the different machine guns required either lower pressure ammo than the standard rifle cartridge, and/or lubricated ammunition.

And since the ammo was apparently all dimensionally the same (approx.) it must have been quite a fun time for the logistics people.

Also know that the majority of SMG designs fire from the open bolt, and fire full auto only. Very few exceptions, and only one that I know of currently in production (and its a very popular exception) is the H&K MP5.

The MP 5 fires from a closed bolt, and is selective fire. This makes it both much more mechanically complicated and expensive than the simplest SMGs, such as the Sten and the M3/M3A1Grease gun. And that is about the only bad things you can say about the MP5, which has proven itself to be a world class act for many years now.
 
I suppose that feeding a machinegun with rifle clips wasn't a BAD idea in that it eliminated the need for a different packaging. But as someone once pointed out (in the Garand vs. Johnson debate), if a country cannot supply ammunition in any packaging its rifle requires, it had better just surrender at the start of the war and save a lot of cost and trouble.

Jim
 
Five months and two weeks and counting.
Click to expand...

My dealer told me earlier today that he was told by ATF to expect transfers to take 9 months now.

I have a can in transfer (check cashed first week of January) and still no stamp.
 
"Japanese machinegun design was ..interesting. Quite a fair example of how NOT to do things. I understand that several of the different machine guns required either lower pressure ammo than the standard rifle cartridge, and/or lubricated ammunition."

Oiled ammunition was a requirement on every Japanese machine gun up to the Type 99, which finally recognized the need for primary extraction to keep from ripping the head off the cartridge.

The Type 11 was the hopper-fed gun. It was intended to provide a weapon that could support an infantry unit. The hopper feed was supposed to allow the gunner to grab ammo from infantry if he ran out.

Unfortunately, full-power 6.5 ammunition caused the gun to cycle too quickly and also magnified the lack of primary extraction.

Seems that the logical response would be to redesign the gun to allow for its use with the more powerful rifle ammunition and get away from oiled cartridges, but that wasn't the case. The Japanese simply loaded a reduced power round on stripper clips and issued those to the machine gunners.

Ammunition interchangeability, you're not happening today.

The early Japanese heavy machine guns were based liberally on the French Hotchkiss design. Had the Japanese simply copied the Hotchkiss, they would have been much better off, but Col. Nambu and his merry band of idiots tinkered with the gun just enough to make it less reliable and remove the primary extraction. Hence the need for oilers.

Depending on the mode gun, the Japanese employed 4 methods of oiling cartridges.

1. A small pump on the gun that would actually shoot a squirt of oil into the chamber as a round was being chambered.

2. A small reservoir that would drip oil onto pads or brushes what would coat the cartridge as it was chambered.

3. Pads in the magazine (or magazine loading tool, not sure which it was) that would coat the cartridges as they were loaded into the magazine.

4. Hand oiling cartridges as they are loaded into the magazine.

The Italians also never really caught on to the need for primary extraction. All of their guns needed oiled cartridges.

Speaking of guns and magazines, the Fiat-Revelli had a most unique feeding mechanism. It was a box that was essentially 10 five-round magazines side by side. The box was loaded into the gun, fired, and upon the last round chambering, was indexed to the right.
 
Mike,

That post just sent me down a rabbit hole of antiquated experimental guns. I had things to do today, but I thank you for showing me a better way to spend my morning.
 
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