Weapons & The First World War - Gardner Machine Gun

Hello and welcome back to our Weapons & The First World War series, where today we are talking about the Gardner machine gun. Inspired by the Gatling gun design produced in 1861, the Gardner gun was first seen in public in 1879. 

The gun itself consisted of two barrels that would simultaneously fire their round. The gun also had a feeder line where boxes of cartridges could be slid onto and then removed again once empty. This enabled constant firing of the gun, much like the Gatling gun. 

During a public testing, the Gardner gun fired an impressive 10,000 rounds within 27 minutes. Just over a year later, the British Army subsequently put in an order for a large quantity of the guns, which were used in conflicts including the first world war. 

Weapons & The First World War - Machine Guns

Welcome back to our Weapons & The First World War series where today we are thinking all about machine guns. Now the idea behind the machine gun was to allow a steady stream of constant fire so that you could continually use it against the enemy without having to stop to reload it after each shot was fired. 

The main difference with a machine gun was the self powered coil that was built into the design so that you could concentrate on the firing and keeping clean of the gun rather than the mechanical side of constantly firing a weapon. Again there is different variations of the machine gun which we will look into as the series unfolds. 

Life AT War - Day by Day

9th September 1914

The creation of the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade has become the first fully mechanized unit in the British Army.