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Show New Machine Gun Can Shoot 1,200 a Minute Improved Back Plate, New Type of Recoil Mechanism, Solve Knotty Problems A new, ultra-speed .50 caliber machine ma-chine gun has been perfected by the engineering department of Frigi-daire Frigi-daire division of General Motors corporation, cor-poration, in collaboration with the office of the chief of ordnance, U. S. army. The new gun, already tested In combat, spews out .50 caliber slugs at the exceptionally high rate of 1,200 a minute, 20 shots a second. This is 50 per cent faster than the .50 caliber guns now in use. This ultra-rapid fire literally "sprays" bullets from a single gun. But there Is nothing "spray-like" in the way these bullets hit. Some idea of this can be had from the fact that, if the A A kUilUCl guild Vll CI UU111U- er were of this new type, it could shoot 280 of them in a short burst of one second. The present .50 caliber gun, now In use all over the world, is the basic weapon of the air corps. Gen. H. H. Arnold has said, "The very low mortality rate among our bombers bomb-ers can be largely credited to this gun." MaJ. Gen. L. H. Campbell Jr., of army ordnance, has stated that ".50 caliber machine guns account for over 90 per cent of all aircraft fire-power." From this it is quickly understandable what this increased firing rate will mean in annihilating Japs; destroying their aircraft and damaging railyards, supply dumps, factories of all kinds, and oil and gasoline storage depots. Development Began In 1918. As the First World war neared Its close, the need became apparent for a machine gun having more striking strik-ing power than the .30 caliber guns then in general use. At that time, the development of a .50 caliber machine ma-chine gun was started. In August, 1918, the first .50 . caliber machine gun was completed. This gun fired at the then considered fast rate of 500 rounds per minute. By June, 1923, a .50 caliber machine gun acceptable accept-able to the army was finally produced pro-duced and 'standardized. These guns were used by the army on tanks, armored cars and other heavy, mobile mo-bile field equipment. They were also used as anti-aircraft weapons. And Above, side view of the new model .50 caliber machine gun for aircraft. air-craft. It can fire at the rate of 1,200 bullets a minute, or 20 per second. Below shows the nose of a B-25 bomber, armed with eight .50 caliber machine guns. Crewmen are inserting the long bands of ammunition. to some extent they were used as armament on airplanes. Later Improvements Im-provements in this gun raised the firing rate to 600 rounds per minute. min-ute. Then came the present war and the use of the .50 caliber gun on combat airplanes in ever-increasing numbers. And, just as we thought we. had the answer, the speed and performance of the aircraft started climbing at a tremendous rate, and the 600 rounds per minute gun was not the whole answer any more. We needed guns to hit with more bullets In that split-second of time when the gunner had the enemy in his gun-sight. gun-sight. Ordnance answered the need by stepping up the .50 caliber machine ma-chine gun to more than 800 rounds per minute. Here then, after years of development, was a .50 caliber machine gun to delight the heart of any gunner. But was this enough? Evidently not. The United States army knew that eventually the enemy would produce a weapon equal to and maybe may-be even superior to the now famous "50." What did they tnink would be needed? Why, an even faster-firing .50 caliber, of course! Success At Last. First experiments on the new project proj-ect were just like all others . . . very disheartening. The old, immutable im-mutable laws of physics, force, friction, fric-tion, weight and thrust, laughed at the haggard engineers. It just couldn't be done. Nature would not be defied. But one man, still working work-ing on the improvement of the standard stand-ard .50 caliber, discovered a new way to design and attach the back plate. This was found to be exactly what was needed to withstand the pounding of the recoil 1,200 times a minute for the new gun. Another man, looking for a better method of cushioning the recoil, tried Belleville spring washers and found that they improved the shock absorption ab-sorption so well that they, too, were exactly what was needed for the new gun. And they completely eliminated the bug-a-boo of an oil cylinder shock - absorber which, while standard, was always troublesome. trouble-some. So, if nothing else happened, the present ".50" already had been greatly improved and some measure of progress on the new gun had been made. But the real test would come in the "innards" where more than 200 parts would have to take, and stand up under, 20 explosions per second. In August of 1944, Just 15 months later, two ultra-speed .50 caliber machine ma-chine guns were ready for testing. They worked. Immediately more guns were made. They too worked. The army was elated, for this new gun provided an increase in fire-power equivalent to adding half again as many fighter planes. Surely, Hirohito is going to need more than a white horse, and the Japanese war lord will have to dream up something more potent than Fourth-of-July balloons to compete com-pete with this kind of Yankee ingenuity. |