#2747
Post
by The Edge » 17 Aug 2012, 00:38
Machine gun used by US Marines during the Siege of the Legations during the Boxer Rebellion was:
COLT-BROWNING MACHINE GUN MODEL 1895 (in 6x60mm Lee Navy caliber)
From Springfield Armory National Historic Site:
On June 14, 1895, John Moses Browning came to the Springfield Armory to demonstrate his machine gun. The board who examined the gun wrote the following: "The mechanical (Gatling) machine is preferred over the automatic (Browning) machine gun....The Browning machine gun is not suitable for ordinary service and has no place in land armament." Browning, like some many others before him, took his ideas to Europe.
Not surprisingly, and not for the first time, the U.S. Navy disagreed with the Ordnance Department. They ordered fifty Colt machine guns in 6mm in 1896. Two years later the Marines acquired 150 more Brownings.
The Colt Model 1895 was originally produced in 6mm (0.236-inch) calibre, for the US Navy, and first saw action with the US Marines during the landings at Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, in 1898. It was subsequently sold to the US Army and to a number of overseas customers in a variety of calibres....
In 1899, the "Army and Navy Journal" reported that 500 Colt machine guns in service in the Navy, but a report from Samoa indicated that the Colts were largely worthless. A later article stated that the guns jammed due to difficulties with the 6mm cartridge.
How this gun became a “Marlin Machine gun Model 1917" (in .30-06 caliber) is another story…
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