Machine Guns
by Aidan Healy
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The weapon I decided to research is the machine gun. The way it works is a belt of cartridges held in either fabric or metal belts is fed into the gun by a team of four to six men. How it fired was the explosion from one bullet would power the next bullet down the barrel. The gun at first was able to fire between 400 and 600 rounds per minute but this number almost doubled by the end of the war. Many times it would get overheated because it shot so fast so the crew would cool it down with either water or air. The gun was created by Hiram Maxim in London in 1884. The gun was invented in order to have a higher rate of fire and be able to take out more troops on the battlefield.
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Impact And Consequences
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The machine gun had a major impact on the war. It had a major impact as a defensive weapon because it would be set up along enemy attack routes and it would cause major casualties to the attacker. It couldn't really be used as an offensive weapon because it was too heavy. Attempts were made to make it offensive but none of them really worked until about 1918. The gun was still too heavy and would run out of bullets quickly.
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The machine gun would affect the different population groups in many ways. It would affect the soldiers near the front lines because they would be afraid of o attack the enemy because they knew there was a good chance they would get shot. It would affect the leaders of the countries because they would be reluctant to send their troops to where there were machine guns because then there would probably be lots of casualties. Finally it would affect the citizens near the front lines because stray bullets from machine guns could hit their houses and injure or kill them.
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There are many positive and negative effects of the machine gun on World War One. One positive effect would be that if you were being attacked then you could fend off the attack easier. A negative effect would be that a lot more people were killed because of it.
Connections To Today
Today every country in the world has machine guns to fight wars because they are so effective. One example of a machine gun would be the M2 Browning machine gun. It has improved from the WW1 machine gun because it fires faster, it's more accurate, it's stronger, and it doesn't get overheated as easily. The M2 is used today on vehicles and for aircraft armament. The Untied states has used it in many wars including the Iraq war from 2003-2011.
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