Six-barreled volcano. Aircraft gun M61A1 Vulcan (USA)

For decades, one of the few examples of rapid-fire weapons was the . This cumbersome multi-barreled system with manually operated automatics was used with varying success in various wars of the second half of the 19th century, and was quickly superseded by the Maxim machine guns.

But the Gatling system was revived already in the middle of the 20th century, when it became necessary to create ultra-high rate of fire aviation and anti-aircraft guns. One of the first "Gatlings" of the new generation was the 20mm gun M61 "Volcano". For more than 50 years, it has remained the weapon of most American combat aircraft.

History of creation

The first jet fighters of the US Air Force retained the weapon system characteristic of American piston aircraft - a battery of six 12.7mm Browning machine guns. The experience of the war, however, showed that "cannon" aircraft can hit the enemy from a greater range. At that time, the only aircraft gun in the United States was a licensed copy of the 20mm HS.404 weapon, and its rate of fire was insufficient for promising aircraft.

One of the options for solving the problem of creating a rapid-fire automatic gun was a revolving scheme. Another option involved the revival of the seemingly irrevocably outdated Gatling system. Although Dr. Gatling himself pointed out the prospects for the development of his offspring, who patented a version of a machine gun in 1893, in which the barrels rotated with the help of an electric motor.

At that time, it was possible to find a source of electricity to power weapons only on ships, but in the middle of the 20th century this was no longer a problem.

Work on the "Vulcan project" began in 1946.

The caliber was originally supposed to be increased slightly - up to 15mm. It was believed that the high initial speed and rate of fire would provide sufficient efficiency even with this caliber. The first firing using the 15mm prototype "Volcano" (under the symbol T45) took place in 1949, and the rate of 2500 rounds per minute was developed.

In 1950, the figure rose to 4,000 shots. But then the task changed - they decided that the 15mm caliber would no longer be enough, and decided to increase it. By 1952, the T171 and T150 were prepared - guns of 20 and 27 mm caliber, respectively. As a result, the 20mm cannon was recognized as more balanced.

The first aircraft to carry the T171 cannon, later renamed the M61, was the F-104 Starfighter. And already in the course of trial operation, the unreliability of the power supply was revealed. The links of the cartridge belt thrown out could damage the aircraft, and the delivery of a shot into the chamber was accompanied by failures. The modernized cannon with a linkless feed of shots received the M61A1 index and found application not only on fighters.

Construction and modifications

M61 - multi-barrel gun with a rotating block of barrels. The design of the gun, despite the number of barrels, is quite simple. Each of the six barrels of the "Volcano" has its own shutter and chamber.

During a full turn of the block, the barrel has time to go through a cycle that includes a shot, ejection of a spent cartridge case and sending a new projectile.

The shutters move with the help of rollers attached to them, which move along a special groove in receiver.

Locking trunks - by turning the shutter larvae. The ignition of the sleeve is electrical. The automation of the basic modification of the "Volcano" works due to an external drive from the hydraulic system of the carrier aircraft. On other versions, the barrel block could be spun by an electric motor from the on-board network.

Modifications

The barrel drive system may vary depending on the modification, but in most cases it is external, hydraulic.

М61А2 is a lighter version that can be installed on later F/A-18s. Due to thinner barrels and replacement of metal parts, the mass of the gun was reduced to 92 kg.

M130 (GAU-4) - "Volcano" that does not require external power. The block of barrels is rotated by the discharged powder gases. This modification was used for installation in suspended cannon gondolas.

M197 - three-barreled "Volcano" with a rate of fire reduced to 1500 rounds per minute. It was intended to arm the AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters.

M195 - Designed for installation on helicopters, a variant with six shortened barrels. As a result, it was not accepted into service.

XM301 - the most lightweight "Volcano" with two trunks, which was supposed to arm helicopters.

M168 - gun for anti-aircraft artillery mounts.

Even more famous than the above variants of the "Volcano" is the six-barreled machine gun M134 "Minigan" caliber 7.62mm, designed to arm helicopters. This is, in fact, a smaller version of the M61 gun.

Ammunition

Initially, two types of projectiles were developed for the Vulkan gun - the armor-piercing incendiary M53 and the high-explosive fragmentation M56. The first is the simplest steel blank with an aluminum ballistic tip, weighing 100 grams. The incendiary composition is located between the steel body and the aluminum tip. Initial speed - 1030 m / s. The high-explosive fragmentation projectile is equipped with 10 grams of explosive (“composition B”), the damage radius is estimated at 2 meters.

For anti-aircraft guns, the M246 projectile was developed. It is distinguished by the presence of a self-liquidator. Since the end of 1980, “semi-armor-piercing” shells of the PGU-28 or M940 type began to spread. Their difference is the case made of heat-strengthened steel and the absence of a fuse, as such.

When a cannon projectile hits the target, the incendiary composition ignites, and its flash detonates an explosive charge. Due to the slow action of this process and the strong body, the projectile bursts inside the target. Armor penetration - about 12 mm at a distance of 500 meters.

Specialized shells with high armor penetration were developed for naval anti-aircraft "Volcanoes".

Projectile Mk.149 - sub-caliber, with a detachable pallet. The core was originally made from depleted uranium. Later, tungsten carbide was used for this purpose. The Mk.244 projectile has an increased core weight.

Application

The first aircraft armed with the M61 Vulkan cannon entered service in the late 1950s. They were the F-104 fighter, the F-105 fighter-bomber, the cannon appeared on the B-52 and B-58 bombers as defensive weapons. And then the higher ranks of the Air Force considered that the rapid development of guided missiles would make guns unnecessary, and new aircraft were designed without built-in weapons.

The Vietnam War showed the erroneousness of such conclusions. The F-105 armed with the Vulcan, even after firing all the missiles, could successfully fight off the North Vietnamese MiG-17s.

But the newest "Phantoms" in such situations turned out to be helpless. As a temporary solution to this problem, the Phantoms developed a SUU-16 / Ac hanging container with an M61 cannon and 1200 shells. The rotor of the gun in it was spun by the oncoming air flow. An improved model with a cannon without external power was designated SUU-23/A. Sometimes up to 5 such containers were hung on the Phantoms.

Late model Phantoms and next-generation fighters again received a built-in Volcano.

During the Vietnam War, 39 North Vietnamese fighters were shot down using M61 guns.

In 1967, they adopted anti-aircraft installation M167, armed with "Volcano", and in 1969 - self-propelled anti-aircraft gun M163 on the chassis of the BTR M113. Both anti-aircraft guns were considered a temporary measure, however, failures in the development of a more advanced system led to the fact that the anti-aircraft "Volcanoes" were delayed in service until the 90s, and are still used locally.

In 1980, the US Navy received the Phalanx anti-aircraft system, armed with the M61 gun and designed to protect ships, mainly from anti-ship missiles. In 2004, its ground-based version of the Centurion appeared, which shoots down shells and mortars with cannon fire.

Specifications

Let's compare Vulkan with some of its "contemporaries" - the Soviet gun GSh-23 and the British ADEN.

The British, when developing a new air gun, relied on the power of a single projectile. The relatively low rate of fire was compensated by the installation of several guns. The Soviet cannon is inferior to the M61 in terms of rate of fire and muzzle velocity, but somewhat superior in its mass.

As the main weapon of fighters, unlike the "Volcano", competitors did not stay long - later Soviet aircraft received guns of 30mm caliber, and in Europe the Mauser gun of 27mm caliber became widespread. Interestingly, all three guns are made according to different schemes. The ADEN system is built according to the revolving scheme, and the GSh-23 uses the Gast scheme, in which one barrel is reloaded at the moment the second is fired.

Without any record-breaking or simply impressive characteristics, the M61 Vulcan gun turned out to be a very successful model, coping with its tasks even 60 years after its appearance.

And she also managed to demonstrate that the weapon design with a rotating block of barrels is not at all outdated and can compete on equal terms with more modern developments.

Video

Aviation gun GSh-6-23 remains unsurpassed for more than 40 years

“You lower the nose of the car a little, carefully turn it on the target so that it is easily caught in the mark of the sight. You press the trigger for a fraction of a second and you get the feeling that a giant is shaking the plane, but you can clearly see how a fiery tornado flies to the ground. At this moment, you won’t envy the enemy located there, albeit conditional, ”shared with“ Military industrial courier» his impressions of the use of the six-barreled aircraft gun GSh-6-23 pilot of the Russian Air Force.

GSh-6-23M caliber 23 mm with a rate of fire of 10,000 rounds per minute was developed by two great Russian gunsmiths Arkady Shipunov and Vasily Gryazev back in the early 70s. Since the adoption of the “six-barreled GSh” into service in 1974, the legendary Su-24 front-line bombers and the no less famous Mig-31 supersonic heavy interceptors have become its carriers.

From "card-case" to "Volcano"

In the mid-50s, when the first homing fighters, such as the American AIM-9 Sidewinder, began to enter service with fighters, aviation experts started talking about the fact that machine guns and cannons on combat aircraft would soon have to be abandoned. In many respects, such conclusions were based on the experience of the past Korean War, where jet fighters fought en masse for the first time. On the one hand, these were Soviet MiG-15s, on the other, American F-86 Sabers, F9F Panthers, etc. MiGs armed with three guns often lacked rate of fire, and Sabrams lacked firing range, sometimes also the power of the six 12.7 mm machine guns they had.

"The idea of ​​Shipunov and Gryazev provided a much more compact placement of the gun and ammunition, which is especially important for aviation technology where designers fight for every centimeter”

It is noteworthy that the latest American F-4B Phantom-2 carrier-based fighter at that time had only missile weapons, including the ultra-modern medium-range AIM-7 Sparrow. Cannons were also not installed on F-4Cs adapted for the needs of the US Air Force. True, in Vietnam, the Phantoms were initially opposed by the Soviet MiG-17s, which had only cannon weapons, on which the Vietnamese pilots sought to conduct close air combat so as not to be hit by guided missiles.

In "dog fights", as such battles are called in Western aviation slang, the American aces were not always helped by the AIM-9 short-range missiles with a thermal homing head, which were considered the best at that time. Therefore, the command of the air force, as well as the aviation of the Navy and the Corps marines I had to urgently develop new tactical methods of combating Vietnamese fighters, first of all, to equip the Phantoms with suspended cannon containers with 20-mm six-barreled M61 Vulcan aircraft guns. And soon the F-4E fighter entered the US Air Force. One of the main differences of the new model was the six-barreled "Volcano" that was regularly installed in the bow.

A number of recently published studies on the air war in Vietnam argue that the decision to equip the Phantom-2 with a cannon was not caused by the need to fight the Vietnamese MiGs, but by the desire to make the fighter more suitable for strikes against ground targets. For an impartial assessment, it is worth referring to the numbers. According to the Pentagon, from 39 to 45 Vietnamese fighters, including the supersonic MiG-19 and MiG-21, were shot down by cannon armament of American fighters during the entire period of the war in Southeast Asia. In total, according to the calculations of American military historians, North Vietnam lost 131 MiGs, so that aircraft guns account for 35-40 percent of the total number of vehicles shot down by US pilots.

Whatever it was, it was with the appearance in the ranks of the F-4E "Phantom-2" that the cannon armament, rejected in the late 50s, began to return to the arsenal of fighters, fighter-bombers, reconnaissance aircraft and other vehicles.

One of the most massive in the arsenal of the Western Air Force was the already mentioned M61 "Volcano". It is noteworthy that the fifth-generation American fighter F-22 Lightning is also armed with this six-barreled gun, albeit a specially modernized one.

The American company General Electric, which developed and produced the Vulcan, had never dealt with small arms before. Moreover, the main activity of the company has always been electrical equipment. But immediately after the Second World War, the US Air Force opened a promising topic for the creation of aircraft cannons and machine guns, the rate of fire of which was to be at least 4000 rounds per minute, while the samples were required to have sufficient range and high accuracy when hitting air targets.

In traditional schemes of small arms, it was quite problematic to implement such customer requests. Here I had to choose: either high accuracy, firing range and accuracy, or rate of fire. As one of the solutions, the developers proposed adapting the so-called Gatling gun, which was used in the United States during their Civil War, to modern requirements. This design was based on the 10-barrel rotary block developed by Dr. Richard Gatling already in 1862.

Surprisingly, despite the participation of eminent developers and arms manufacturers in the competition, the victory went to General Electric. When implementing the Gatling scheme, it became clear that the most main part new installation - an external electric drive that rotates the block of barrels, and with its development, having a wealth of experience, General Electric coped better than its competitors.

In June 1946, the company, having defended the project before a special commission of the US Air Force, received a contract to implement its scheme in hardware. This was already the second stage in the creation of new aviation rifle systems, where Colt and Browning were also to take part.

In the course of research, testing and development work, the company had to experiment with the number of trunks (in different time it varied from 10 to 6), as well as with calibers (15.4 mm, 20 mm and 27 mm). As a result, the military was offered a six-barreled aircraft gun of 20 mm caliber, with a maximum rate of fire of 6000 rounds per minute, releasing 110-gram projectiles at a speed of over 1030 meters per second.

A number of Western researchers argue that the choice in favor of a caliber of 20 millimeters was due to the requirement of the customer, the US Air Force, that arose in the early 50s, who considered that the gun should be quite versatile, equally suitable for aimed fire at both air and ground goals.

27-mm shells were well suited for firing at the ground, but when they were used, the rate of fire dropped sharply and the recoil increased, and later tests showed the relatively low accuracy of a gun of this caliber when firing at air targets.

Shells of 15.4 mm caliber had too low power against the intended enemy on the ground, but a gun with such ammunition provided a good rate of fire, however, with insufficient range for air combat. So the developers from General Electric settled on a compromise caliber.

The six barrels of the M61 Vulkan cannon, adopted in 1956, together with the breechblocks, were concentrically assembled into a single block located in a common housing, rotating clockwise. For one revolution, each barrel was sequentially reloaded, and a shot was fired from the barrel at the top at that moment. The entire system was powered by an external electric drive with a power of 26 kW.

True, the military was not entirely satisfied with the fact that the mass of the gun in the end turned out to be almost 115 kilograms. The fight for weight loss continues long years, and as a result of the introduction of new materials, the M61A2 model installed on the F-22 Raptor weighs just over 90 kilograms.

It is noteworthy that at present in the English-language literature all shooting systems with a rotary block of barrels are called Gatling-gun - "Gatling gun (gun)."

In the USSR, work on the creation of multi-barreled aircraft guns was going on even before the Great Patriotic War. True, they ended in vain. The Soviet gunsmiths came up with the idea of ​​a system with barrels combined into one block, which would be rotated by an electric motor, at the same time as the American designers, but here we failed.

In 1959, Arkady Shipunov and Vasily Gryazev, who worked at the Klimovsky Research Institute-61, joined the work. As it turned out, the work had to start virtually from scratch. The designers had information that the Vulcan was being created in the USA, but at the same time not only the technical solutions used by the Americans, but also performance characteristics the new Western system remained secret.

True, Arkady Shipunov himself later admitted that even if he and Vasily Gryazev had then become aware of American technical solutions, they would still hardly have been able to apply them in the USSR. As already mentioned, the designers of General Electric connected an external electric drive with a power of 26 kW to the Vulcan, while Soviet aircraft manufacturers could only offer, as Vasily Gryazev himself put it, "24 volts and not a gram more." Therefore, it was necessary to create a system that does not work from an external source, but using the internal energy of the shot.

It is noteworthy that similar schemes were proposed at one time by other American firms - participants in the competition to create a promising aircraft gun. True, Western designers could not implement such a solution. In contrast to them, Arkady Shipunov and Vasily Gryazev created the so-called gas exhaust engine, which, according to the second member of the tandem, worked like an internal combustion engine - it took part of the powder gas from the barrels when fired.

But, despite the elegant solution, another problem arose: how to make the first shot, because the gas engine, and therefore the gun mechanism itself, did not work yet. For the initial impulse, a starter was required, after using which the gun would run on its own gas from the first shot. Later, two versions of the starter were proposed: pneumatic and pyrotechnic (with a special squib).

In his memoirs, Arkady Shipunov recalls that even at the beginning of work on a new aircraft gun, he was able to see one of the few photographs of the American Vulcan being prepared for testing, where he was struck by the fact that a tape filled with ammunition was spreading along the floor, ceiling and walls of the compartment, but was not consolidated into a single cartridge box. Later it became clear that with a rate of fire of 6000 rounds per minute in ammo box in a matter of seconds, a void is formed and the tape begins to “walk”. In this case, the ammunition falls out, and the tape itself is torn. Shipunov and Gryazev developed a special pneumatic belt lifter that does not allow the belt to move. Unlike the American solution, this idea provided a much more compact placement of the gun and ammunition, which is especially important for aviation technology, where designers are fighting for every centimeter.

On target, but not immediately

Despite the fact that the product, which received the AO-19 index, was practically ready, in the Soviet Air force oh, there was no place for him, since the military themselves believed: small arms are a relic of the past, and the future belongs to missiles. Shortly before the refusal of the Air Force from the new gun, Vasily Gryazev was transferred to another enterprise. It would seem that AO-19, despite all the unique technical solutions, will remain unclaimed.

But in 1966, after summarizing the experience of the operations of the North Vietnamese and American Air Forces in the USSR, it was decided to resume work on the creation of advanced aircraft guns. True, by that time almost all enterprises and design bureaus that had previously worked on this topic had already reoriented to other areas. Moreover, there were no people willing to return to this area of ​​work in the military-industrial sector!

Surprisingly, despite all the difficulties, Arkady Shipunov, who had headed TsKB-14 by this time, decided to revive the cannon theme at his enterprise. After approval Military Industrial Commission of this decision, its management agreed to return Vasily Gryazev to the Tula enterprise, as well as several other specialists who took part in the work on the “AO-19 product”.

As Arkady Shipunov recalled, the problem with the resumption of work on cannon aircraft weapons arose not only in the USSR, but also in the West. In fact, at that time, of the multi-barreled guns in the world, there was only the American one - the Volcano.

It is worth noting that, despite the rejection of the “AO-19 facility” of the Air Force, the Navy was interested in the product, for which several cannon systems were developed.

By the beginning of the 70s, the KBP offered two six-barreled guns: the 30 mm AO-18, which used the AO-18 cartridge, and the AO-19, chambered for 23 mm AM-23 ammunition. It is noteworthy that the products differed not only in the shells used, but also in the starters for the preliminary acceleration of the barrel block. On AO-18 there was a pneumatic one, and on AO-19 - a pyrotechnic one with 10 squibs.

Initially, to the AO-19, representatives of the Air Force, who considered the new gun as weapons promising fighters and fighter-bombers, made increased demands for firing ammunition - at least 500 shells in one burst. I had to seriously work on the survivability of the gun. The most loaded part, the gas rod, was made of special heat-resistant materials. Changed the design. The gas engine was modified, where the so-called floating pistons were installed.

The preliminary tests carried out showed that the modified AO-19 can show much best performance than originally stated. As a result of the work carried out at the KBP, the 23-mm gun was able to fire at a rate of 10-12 thousand rounds per minute. And the mass of AO-19 after all the refinements was just over 70 kilograms.

For comparison: the American Vulkan, modified by this time, which received the M61A1 index, weighed 136 kilograms, fired 6000 rounds per minute, the salvo was almost 2.5 times less than that of the AO-19, while American aircraft designers also needed to place on board the aircraft also has a 25-kilowatt external electric drive.

And even on the M61A2 aboard the fifth-generation F-22 fighter, American designers, with a smaller caliber and rate of fire of their guns, could not achieve those unique weight and compactness indicators like the gun developed by Vasily Gryazev and Arkady Shipunov.

Birth of a legend

The first customer of the new AO-19 gun was the Sukhoi Experimental Design Bureau, which at that time was headed by Pavel Osipovich himself. The Sukhoi planned that the new cannon would become a weapon for the T-6, a promising front-line bomber with variable wing geometry, which later became the legendary Su-24, they were developing at that time.

Terms of work for new car were quite compressed: having made its first flight on January 17, 1970 in the summer of 1973, the T-6 was already ready for transfer to military testers. When fine-tuning the AO-19 to the requirements of aircraft manufacturers, certain difficulties arose. Shooting well on the stand, the gun could not fire more than 150 shots - the barrels overheated, they needed to be cooled, which often took about 10-15 minutes, depending on the ambient temperature.

Another problem was that the gun did not want, as the designers of the Tula Instrument Design Bureau joked, to “stop firing.” Already after releasing the start button, the AO-19 managed to spontaneously release three or four projectiles. But within the allotted time, all the shortcomings and technical problems were eliminated, and the T-6 was presented to the GLITs VVS for testing with a cannon fully integrated into the new front-line bomber.

In the course of the tests that began in Akhtubinsk, the product was fired, which by that time had received the index GSh (Gryazev - Shipunov) -6-23, at various targets. With the control application of the latest system in less than one second, the pilot was able to completely cover all the targets, firing about 200 shells!

Pavel Sukhoi was so satisfied with the GSh-6-23 that, along with the standard Su-24, the so-called SPPU-6 cannon containers with movable cannon mounts GSh-6-23M, capable of deviating horizontally and vertically by 45 degrees, were included in the ammunition load. . It was assumed that with such weapons, and only front-line bomber it was planned to place two such installations, he would be able to completely disable the runway in one go, as well as destroy a column of motorized infantry in combat vehicles up to one kilometer long.

Developed at the Dzerzhinets plant, the SPPU-6 has become one of the largest mobile gun mounts. Its length exceeded five meters, and its mass with ammunition load of 400 shells was 525 kilograms. The tests carried out showed that when firing new installation for every linear meter there was at least one shell hit.

It is noteworthy that immediately after Sukhoi, the Mikoyan Design Bureau became interested in the cannon, which intended to use the GSh-6-23 on the latest MiG-31 supersonic interceptor. Despite his big sizes, aircraft manufacturers needed a fairly small-sized gun with a high rate of fire, since the MiG-31 was supposed to destroy supersonic targets. The KBP helped the Mikoyan by developing a unique lightweight, chainless, linkless power supply system, thanks to which the mass of the gun was reduced by a few more kilograms and gained additional centimeters of space on board the interceptor.

Developed by outstanding gunsmiths Arkady Shipunov and Vasily Gryazev, the GSH-6-23 automatic aircraft gun is still in service with the Russian Air Force. Moreover, in many respects its characteristics, despite more than 40 years of service life, remain unique.

Today we have another Hollywood bestseller on review - six-barreled machine gun Gatling M-134 or "Magic Dragon". In general, this machine gun has many names, it is called both “Jolly Sam” and “Meat Grinder”, but the most appropriate nickname is still “Magic Dragon”, received by the machine gun not only for its characteristic “roar”, but also for its strong fiery flash when firing.

For the first time, an order for this type of weapon for the infantry was received in 1959 from the US armed forces, since the machine guns of that time did not allow creating a high density of fire at distances over 500 meters. The General Electric company, which already has a decent experience in creating systems of this kind, undertakes to fulfill the order. In 1960, the company began to develop the first prototype of a multi-barreled machine gun system for a caliber of 7.62 mm. The six-barreled 20-millimeter Vulkan M-61 air gun, which this company had previously created by order of the US Air Force, was taken as the basis.

Initially, the order indicated a caliber of 12.5 millimeters, but the recoil with a power of more than 500 kgf at 6000 rounds per minute brought the idea to naught. The first tests are being carried out in Vietnam on the AC-47 Spooky fire support aircraft (the predecessor of the "Finger of God" - the Lockheed AC-130 aircraft). The machine gun turned out to be so good that a couple of months later it was put into service and began to be massively installed on the UH-1 Iroquois and AH-1 Cobra.

Ability to switch the rate of fire and light weight allowed to install the M-124 even in sparks, when firing, this led to the fact that the target at which they fired was covered with lead. These machine guns terrified the North Vietnamese rebels for a very long time, when fired from which the "green" simply mowed down another hundred meters. By the 1970s, more than 10,000 machine guns had been produced, the lion's share of which was used by transport and attack helicopters, as well as by light ships and ships as a means of combating low-flying targets and boats.

For some time, M-134 machine guns were installed on cars, but in the event of a car engine failure from the battery, the machine gun worked for no more than three minutes until it was completely discharged. By the mid-seventies "Magic Dragon" becomes popular among the civilian population, especially in the "armed" states such as Texas, he sold more than a thousand copies. The machine gun was used on infantry bipods with a box for a thousand rounds, firing required a constant power source of 24 volts and consumes about three thousand kilowatts per hour at six thousand per minute.

For the defense of stationary structures, this was acceptable, but as an offensive weapon it was useless. The weight of the machine gun itself is about 30 kilograms with a battery, and the weight of the ammunition load of 1500 rounds is almost 60 kilograms, this amount of rounds is enough for a minute of battle. The optimal ammunition load is 4,500 rounds (weighing 136 kg) or 10,000 rounds (290 kilograms).

The operation of the machine gun mechanisms is extremely interesting: the M-134 uses automation with an external drive mechanism from an electric motor direct current. Through three gears and a worm shaft, an electric motor drives a block of six barrels. The cycle of loading, firing and unloading is divided into several operations performed in various places connection of the block of trunks with the receiver.

When the barrel moves up in a circle, the spent cartridge case is removed and ejected. The locking of the barrel is carried out by turning the combat larva of the shutter, the movement of the shutters is controlled by a closed curved groove on the inner surface of the machine gun casing, along which the rollers placed on each shutter move. Food is produced in two ways: the first is by means of a mechanism without a link supply of cartridges or by means of a tape.

The block is used to control the rate of fire. electronic control fire, having a rate of fire switch, a fuse, a button for starting the rotation of the block of barrels and a button for opening fire, placed on the handle. The modern version of the M134D machine gun has only two firing options - 2000 and 4000 rounds per minute. The recoil when firing is directed only backwards, no tossing of the barrel or pulling to the side.

The machine gun also has diopter sights, which, in general, are not needed when using tracer cartridges in the tape for adjustment, when firing from a machine gun there is a pronounced tracer trace, more like a stream of fire.

I want to note that the M-134 machine gun has never been used in films, the huge weight and very strong recoil just knocks a person down when trying to shoot from the hip. For the filming of some cult films ("Predator", "Terminator", "Matrix"), an experimental XM214 machine gun of 5.45 mm caliber and having a return of 100 kilograms was used. Despite its relatively small size and “weak” recoil, its rate of fire of 10,000 rounds per minute was simply not acceptable for the army, and the machine gun did not go into series, although it was actively advertised until the nineties of the last century.

/Alexander Martynov, especially for "Army Bulletin"/

Since the advent of firearms, the military has been concerned with increasing its rate of fire. Starting from the 15th century, gunsmiths tried to achieve this in the only way available at that time - by increasing the number of barrels.

Such multi-barreled guns were called organs or ribodekens. However, the name "quick-firing" did not suit such systems much: although it was possible to fire a volley from a large number of barrels at the same time, further reloading required a lot of time. And with the advent of buckshot, multi-barreled guns completely lost their meaning. But in the 19th century they revived again - thanks to a man who, out of the best of intentions, wanted to reduce combat losses.

In the second half of the 19th century, the military was extremely puzzled by the declining effectiveness of artillery against infantry. For the usual shot with buckshot, it was necessary to let the enemy in at 500-700 m, and the new long-range rifles that entered service with the infantry simply did not allow this. However, the invention of a unitary cartridge marked a new direction in the development of firearms: an increase in the rate of fire. As a result, several solutions to the problem appeared almost simultaneously. The French gunsmith de Reffy designed a mitrailleuse, consisting of 25 fixed barrels of 13 mm caliber, capable of releasing up to 5-6 volleys per minute. In 1869, the Belgian inventor Montigny improved this system, bringing the number of barrels to 37. But mitrailleuses were very bulky and were not widely used. A fundamentally different solution was required.

kind doctor

Richard Gatling was born on September 12, 1818 in Hartford County, Connecticut to a farmer's family. Since childhood, he was fond of inventing, helping his father to repair agricultural machinery. Richard received his first patent (for a seeder) at the age of 19. But, despite his passion, he decided to become a doctor and in 1850 he graduated from the medical college in Cincinnati. However, the passion for invention won. In the 1850s, Gatling invented several mechanical seed drills and a new system propeller, but his most famous invention came later. On November 4, 1862, he received patent number 36,836 for a design that forever inscribed his name in the history of weapons - the Revolving Battery Gun. Nevertheless, the author of the deadly invention, as befits a doctor, had the best feelings for humanity. Gatling himself wrote about it this way: “If I could create mechanical system shooting, which, due to its rate of fire, would allow one person to replace a hundred shooters on the battlefield, the need for large armies would disappear, which would lead to a significant reduction in human losses. (After Gatling's death, Scientific American published an obituary that read: "This man was unparalleled in kindness and cordiality. It seemed to him that if the war became even more terrible, then the nations would finally lose the desire to resort to arms.")

Despite the development of technologies and materials, the principle of operation of the Gatling gun has not changed. All the same block of trunks is spun by an external drive. By the way, precisely because, unlike their ancestors, modern Gatlings are powered by an electric motor (or other engine), their use as infantry weapons is very impractical ... The Terminator, apparently, always had a portable diesel power station.

The merit of Gatling was not at all that he was the first to make multi-barreled weapons - as already noted, multi-barreled systems were no longer a novelty by that time. And not in the fact that he arranged the trunks "in a revolving" manner (this scheme was widely used in handguns). Gatling designed an original mechanism for feeding cartridges and ejecting cartridges. A block of several barrels rotated around its axis, under the influence of gravity, the cartridge from the tray entered the barrel at the upper point, then a shot was fired with the help of a striker, with further rotation from the barrel at the lower point, again, under the influence of gravity, the sleeve was extracted. The drive of this mechanism was manual, with the help of a special handle the shooter rotated the block of barrels and fired. Of course, such a scheme was not yet fully automatic, but it had a number of advantages. Mechanical reloading was at first more reliable than automatic: weapons of early designs constantly jammed. But even this simple mechanics provided a fairly high rate of fire for those times. The barrels overheated and became fouled with soot (which was a significant problem, since black powder was widely used at that time) much slower than single-barreled weapons.

machine guns

The Gatling system usually consisted of 4 to 10 barrels of 12-40 mm caliber and made it possible to fire at a distance of up to 1 km with a rate of fire of about 200 rounds per minute. In terms of firing range and rate of fire, it surpassed conventional artillery pieces. In addition, the Gatling system was rather cumbersome and was usually mounted on carriages from light guns, therefore it was considered an artillery weapon, and it was often not quite correctly called a "shotgun" (in fact, this weapon is correctly called a machine gun). Before the adoption of the St. Petersburg Convention of 1868, which banned the use of explosive projectiles weighing less than 1 pound, there were Gatlings and large caliber guns that fired explosive projectiles and shrapnel.

In America went Civil War, and Gatling offered his weapons to the northerners. However, the Ordnance Department was inundated with proposals for the use of new types of weapons from various inventors, so, despite a successful demonstration, Gatling failed to get an order. True, individual copies of the Gatling machine gun still fought a little at the end of the war, having proven themselves very well. After the war, in 1866, the American government nevertheless placed an order for 100 Gatling guns, which were produced by Colt under the Model 1866 marking. Such guns were put on ships, they were also adopted by the armies of other countries. British troops used Gatlings in 1883 to put down a mutiny in Egyptian Port Said, where the weapon earned a fearsome reputation. Russia also became interested in it: the Gatling gun here was adapted by Gorlov and Baranovsky under the "Berdanov" cartridge and put into service. Later, the Gatling system was repeatedly improved and modified - the Swede Nordenfeld, the American Gardner, the British Fitzgerald. Moreover, it was not only about machine guns, but also about small-caliber cannons - a typical example is the 37-mm five-barreled Hotchkiss cannon, adopted by the Russian fleet in 1881 (a 47-mm version was also produced).

But the monopoly on the rate of fire did not last long - soon the name "machine gun" was assigned to automatic weapons that worked on the principles of using powder gases and recoil for reloading. The first such weapon was the Hiram Maxim machine gun, which used smokeless powder. This invention relegated the Gatlings to the background, and then completely ousted them from the armies. The new single-barreled machine guns had a much higher rate of fire, were easier to manufacture and less bulky.

Gatlings in the air The pilot can change the rate of fire of the GAU-8 cannon depending on the task. In the "low" rate of fire mode, this is 2000 rds / min, when switching to the "high" mode - 4200. The optimal conditions for using the GAU-8 are 10 two-second bursts with minute breaks to cool the barrels.

Eruption"

Ironically, the revenge of the Gatlings over single-barreled automatic guns took place more than half a century later, after the Korean War, which became a real testing ground for jet aircraft. Despite their fierceness, the battles between the F-86 and MiG-15 showed the low effectiveness of the artillery armament of the new jet fighters, which had migrated from their piston ancestors. Aircraft of that time were armed with whole batteries of several barrels with a caliber from 12.7 to 37 mm. All this was done for the sake of increasing the second salvo: after all, a continuously maneuvering enemy aircraft was kept in sight for only a fraction of a second, and in order to defeat it, it was necessary to create an enormous density of fire in a short time. At the same time, single-barreled guns practically approached the "design" rate of fire limit - the barrel overheated too quickly. An unexpected solution was found by itself: in the late 1940s, the American corporation General Electric began experiments with ... old Gatling guns taken from museums. The block of barrels was spun by an electric motor, and the 70-year-old gun immediately gave out a rate of fire of more than 2000 rounds per minute (it is interesting that there is data on the installation of an electric drive on Gatling guns back in late XIX century; this made it possible to achieve a rate of fire of several thousand rounds per minute - but at that time such an indicator was not in demand). The development of the idea was the creation of a gun that opened up a whole era in weapons business - M61A1 Vulcan.

When reloading, the GAU-8 module is completely dismantled from the aircraft. This greatly improves the ease of maintenance of the gun. The rotation of the block of barrels is carried out by two hydraulic motors operating from the common hydraulic system of the aircraft.

The Vulcan is a six-barreled gun weighing 190 kg (without ammunition), 1800 mm long, 20 mm in caliber and with a rate of fire of 6000 rounds per minute. Automation "Volcano" works at the expense of an external electric drive with a power of 26 kW. Ammunition supply is linkless, carried out from a drum magazine with a capacity of 1000 shells through a special sleeve. Spent cartridges are returned to the store. This decision was made after the incident with the F-104 Starfighter aircraft, when spent cartridges were thrown back air flow back and severely damaged the fuselage of the aircraft. The huge rate of fire of the cannon also led to unforeseen consequences: the oscillations that occurred during firing forced a change in the rate of fire in order to eliminate the resonance of the entire structure. The recoil of the cannon also brought a surprise: in one of the test flights of the ill-fated F-104, while firing, the Vulcan fell off the carriage and, continuing to fire, turned the entire nose of the aircraft with shells, while the pilot miraculously managed to eject. However, after correcting these shortcomings, the US military received light and reliable weapons that have served faithfully for decades. M61 guns are used on many aircraft and in the Mk.15 Phalanx anti-aircraft system, designed to destroy low-flying aircraft and cruise missiles. Based on the M61A1, a six-barreled rapid-fire machine gun M134 Minigun with a caliber of 7.62 mm was developed, thanks to computer games and filming in numerous films, which became the most famous among all the Gatlings. The machine gun is designed for installation on helicopters and ships.

The most powerful cannon with a rotating block of barrels was the American GAU-8 Avenger, designed for installation on the A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft. The 30-mm seven-barrel gun is designed to fire primarily at ground targets. Two types of ammunition are used for it: high-explosive fragmentation shells PGU-13 / B and those with increased initial speed armor-piercing PGU-14 / B with a core of depleted uranium. Since the gun and the aircraft were originally designed specifically for each other, firing from the GAU-8 does not lead to a severe violation of the controllability of the A-10. When designing the aircraft, it was also taken into account that the powder gases from the cannon should not enter the engines of the aircraft (this could lead to their stop) - special reflectors were installed for this. But during the operation of the A-10, it was noticed that unburned powder particles settle on the blades of engine turbochargers and reduce thrust, and also lead to increased corrosion. To prevent this effect, electric afterburners are built into the aircraft engines. Igniters turn on automatically when fire is opened. At the same time, according to the instructions, after each shot ammunition, the A-10 engines must be washed from soot. Although the gun did not show high efficiency during combat use, psychological effect from use turned out to be on top - when a stream of fire literally pours from the sky, it's very, very scary ...

The tower of the automatic gun AK-630 is uninhabited. Guidance of the gun is carried out remotely, with the help of electrohydraulic drives. AK-630 is a universal and effective "means of self-defense" of our warships, which allows us to defend ourselves against a variety of misfortunes, whether it be an anti-ship missile, Somali pirates or a sea mine that has surfaced (as in the film "Peculiarities of National Fishing") ...

In the USSR, work on rapid-fire guns began with the development of ship-based short-range air defense systems. The result was the creation of a family of anti-aircraft guns designed in the Tula Precision Instrument Design Bureau. The 30-mm AK-630 guns still form the basis of the air defense of our ships, and the modernized machine gun is part of the Kortik naval anti-aircraft missile and gun system.

In our country, they realized late the need to have an analogue of the Vulkan in service, so almost ten years passed between the tests of the GSh-6-23 gun and the decision to put it into service. The rate of fire of the GSh-6-23, which is installed on the Su-24 and MiG-31 aircraft, is 9000 rounds per minute, and the initial spin-up of the barrels is carried out by standard PPL squibs (rather than electric or hydraulic drives, as in American counterparts), which made it possible significantly improve the reliability of the system and simplify its design. After the squib is triggered and the first projectile is fed, the barrel block is spun by using the energy of the powder gases discharged from the barrel channels. The supply of the gun with shells can be both linkless and link.

The 30-millimeter gun GSh-6-30 was designed on the basis of the ship's anti-aircraft gun AK-630. With a rate of fire of 4600 rounds per minute, it is capable of sending a 16-kilogram volley at the target in 0.25 seconds. According to eyewitnesses, a 150-shell burst from the GSh-6-30 looked more like a thunderclap than a burst, while the aircraft was shrouded in a bright fiery glow. This gun, which had excellent accuracy, was installed on the MiG-27 fighter-bombers instead of the regular "double-barreled" GSh-23. The use of the GSh-6-30 on ground targets forced the pilots to exit the dive sideways in order to protect themselves from fragments of their own shells rising to a height of 200 m. 27 was not originally designed for such powerful artillery. Therefore, due to vibrations and shocks, equipment failed, aircraft components were deformed, and in one of the flights, after a long line in the cockpit, the instrument panel fell off - the pilot had to return to the airfield, holding it in his arms.

Gatling pattern firearms are practically the rate limit of mechanical weapon systems. Despite the fact that modern rapid-fire single-barrel guns use liquid cooling of the barrel, which significantly reduces its overheating, systems with a rotating block of barrels are still more suitable for long-term firing. The effectiveness of the Gatling scheme allows you to successfully complete the tasks assigned to the weapon, and this weapon rightfully takes its place in the arsenals of all the armies of the world. In addition, it is one of the most spectacular and cinematic types of weapons. Shooting from a Gatling is an excellent special effect in itself, and the menacing appearance of the barrels spun before firing made these guns the most memorable weapons of Hollywood action films and computer games.

In the century before last, gunsmiths came up with the idea to increase the rate of fire (and hence the efficiency) of rifle models by including several barrels in the design. According to this scheme, even revolvers were created, and the most famous example is the Gatling gun (as this machine gun was called in Russia). Later, the idea found its further development, however, it was applied for somewhat different reasons. Numerous systems such as the M134 Minigun, the GAU-8/A Avenger and, of course, the Volcano Electric Machine Gun are examples. The dark glory of this weapon is inextricably linked with military history turbulent XX century, in particular its second half.

The prototype invented by Gatling

It was in 1862, when an American inventor named Gatling received his patent. The speech in the document confirming the priority was about a firing system that fired up to two hundred bullets per minute. The principle of operation consisted in the rotation of the block, which included six barrels arranged in a circle in such a way that after each shot the next cartridge was at the next muzzle channel, while the breech was one. Muscle power was used to turn 60 degrees. At its core, it was a six-barreled revolver-type machine gun with an axis of rotation parallel to the line of the shot, with the difference that instead of feeding the cartridge to the barrel, on the contrary, the barrel was fed to the cartridge. Well, it is difficult for the author of the invention to refuse the elegance of a technical solution, although soon the weapon designers abandoned this method of moving ammunition, preferring tape and disk magazines, which ensured a high rate of fire and ease of reloading. Even the improvement of the Gatling model in 1866 gave only a slight improvement in performance. The system continued to be cumbersome, however, this did not prevent it from being in service with the US Army until the beginning of the 20th century.

The birth of "Volcano"

O multi-barreled weapons remembered at the beginning of the era of jet aviation. Under conditions of transonic speeds, air combat became fleeting, and conventional submachine guns simply did not have time to release the number of charges needed to achieve success. They fired no faster than 1400 rounds per minute, and the simplest calculations indicated that any weapon could melt if the pace was increased. They tried to cool the machine guns, but they still used up their resource very quickly. And then they remembered the old Gatling. The American company General Electric took the principle of multi-barrel as a basis and solved the problem of overheating. An electric motor was used to rotate the working block. The six-barreled 20mm M61 Vulcan entered service in 1956.

Multipurpose system

The scope of the new weapon was quite wide. The rate of fire was useful for both sailors and anti-aircraft gunners, although in the first place GE fulfilled the request of the US Air Force. For operation, the Vulkan machine gun requires connection to the onboard electrical or hydraulic system of a ship, aircraft, helicopter, car, armored vehicle or other mobile carrier. He became the basis anti-aircraft systems, such as the land M161 and M163 and the sea "Volcano-Phalanx". The rate of fire can be adjusted up to 6 thousand shots / min. This system was widely used by the US Army and the armed forces of other countries in various conflicts, including during the Vietnam War. The Vulkan machine gun was installed as standard armament for helicopters and aircraft.

What is "Minigun"?

In the conditions of local conflicts, the American army needed a weapon with a high rate of fire, but at the same time compact enough to be mounted on relatively small aircraft such as Iroquois or Cobra helicopters. Others mattered combat characteristics: the mass of ammunition (and it required a large one - several thousand rounds of ammunition, otherwise it would not make sense to start the whole thing), as well as a return that exceeded during firing from standard sample hundred kilograms of force. GE has developed a system that fires conventional NATO standard rifle cartridges (7.62 mm), which significantly reduced weight. At its core, it was still the same Vulkan machine gun, only smaller and lighter.

But what about us?

Soviet gunsmiths closely followed the achievements of their American colleagues, but preferred to act in their own way. Copying a six-barreled machine gun in the USSR was considered unnecessary. The GSh-23 cannon (the number is the caliber in mm) is twice as light as the Vulkan, while it can fire up to 3-4 thousand charges per minute, which is usually quite enough. There is also a heavier 30mm version of the GSh-30, which is used by Su-25 aircraft and Mi-24P helicopters. By the way, both guns are double-barreled.

Domestic gunsmiths used rotating blocks in the design of the YakB-12.7 and GshG-7.62 machine guns (the numbers mean the same), but even in this case there are fewer barrels - only four. And, finally, about the six-barreled Soviet guns GSh-6-23, designed for the MiG-27 and shipborne anti-aircraft systems AK-230 and AK-630. Their rate of fire is somewhat higher than the Vulcan one - it is 10 thousand rounds / min.

By the way, domestic systems do not require an external power source, the rotation of the barrel units is carried out by the energy of powder gases.

Toys and movies

The six-barreled monster just asks for the hands of a Hollywood hero from a blockbuster, but this directorial move is due only to violent fantasy. Even if we discard such conventions as the need for a power source (27V, 400A, which, in terms of the power that everyone understands, is 4 hp), then there is still a mass of ammunition, which is about 25 kg per minute. Yes, and return ... In general, from the "Volcano" in the hands of sense, like a crane in the sky.

But you should not despair, there is always a place for a feat in life. You can just buy a nerf machine gun "Volcano" (it is usually sold in the toy and sports department). And, of course, the developers of computer shooters did not ignore the M61.