As long as there have been human beings, there has been war. What started as small-scale conflicts over resources, mates or land evolved into massive country and globe-spanning wars that took millions of lives and years or decades to recover from. We started by killing each other with rocks and sticks and evolved to firearms and atomic bombs.
One of the biggest turning points in military strategy and the history of war was the introduction of the Gatling gun. This automatic weapon changed the way we look at combat as a whole and military strategy in particular. Dylan Berger explains.
The British Army with Gatling Guns during the Second Anglo-Afghan War.
Introducing the Gatling Gun
Most of the weapons used during the U.S. Civil War were single-shot rifles and handguns. Even skilled and practiced soldiers couldn’t fire more than two to three shots every minute. Repeating rifles helped alleviate some of those problems, but they were still limited to the number of internal rounds each gun could hold.
Handguns became more popular, but their accuracy was limited to about 50 yards. Modern handgun accuracy, with drills and practice, has a much farther range.
In 1861, Richard Jordan Gatling invented the first rapid-firing multiple-barrel rifle, which now bears his name. The first versions operated using a hand crank and were capable of firing up to 450 rounds a minute. The first incarnation of this automatic rifle only had one barrel that was prone to overheating. Gatling solved this problem by incorporating first six and then 10 rotating barrels that moved around a central axis.
The first Gatling gun — or rather, the first 12 Gatling guns — were used during the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia, between June 1864 and April 1865. Eight more were fitted on gunboats, but the U.S. Army didn’t start utilizing them until 1866, after they were demonstrated to be effective in combat. They weren’t used much during the Civil War because operators and military experts worried about wasting too much ammo, which was already in short supply.
After their introduction, the Gatling gun was used worldwide, including by the British Army during its various wars in Africa and by U.S. forces during the Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars. They were also used during the 1870s, to devastating effect, against Native American populations in the Midwest. This mechanical monstrosity, at the time, spelled utter destruction for those unprepared or who didn’t match its technology or speed.
The crank-operated Gatling gun was replaced by the Maxim gun, a recoil-operated machine gun, in 1884. Like its predecessor, the Maxim gun is named for its inventor — Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim.
New Strategies Became Necessary
When you’re facing off against an opponent attacking with single-shot or even repeating rifles, the strategies are fairly straightforward. Opponents that suddenly bring to bear a gun that can fire 450 rounds per minute requires a change in your plan. Clustering soldiers in tight formations that could rotate as needed to reload and fire was no longer a viable strategy because a Gatling gun could decimate such a group in seconds.
Military commanders did not learn how to counter these weapons until well into World War I. The standard military tactic of the Great War was the infantry charge. This was effective against rifles and armed infantrymen, but once machine guns hit the field, soldiers were cut down as soon as they left their trenches. The introduction of these automatic weapons led to a four-year stalemate and finally broke the deadlock in 1918 that led to the end of the war.
Automatic Weapons Have Evolved
We’ve come a long way since Gatling first introduced his coffee-grinder gun, and automatic weapons have evolved. Many of the design elements of those early examples were incorporated into modern weapons. The Vulcan minigun, often colloquially known as “Puff the Magic Dragon,” is a helicopter-mounted version of the original Gatling gun. It is belt-fed and is capable of firing a whopping 6,000 rounds per minute. A larger version that shoots 20 mm rounds is used as a tool for anti-aircraft defense.
The Vulcan minigun is still used today, often as a tool for counterinsurgency missions in Central America. In many ways, pitting the population of a Central American village against a Vulcan minigun is not much different than what the U.S. and Britain did with Gatling’s original design against native and tribal populations in the late 1800s.
The Future of Military Strategy
Military strategy has often been slow to evolve when new technology is adopted. The tendency to order infantry charges in the face of machine guns during World War I is proof of that. If a new game-changing weapon takes the field, only time will tell what the future of military strategy might look like.
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