The Gatling Gun is interested for many reasons, and one of them is the variety of feeding mechanisms that were developed and used with it. Most firearms are designed around a single specific feeding mechanism, sometimes with variants made for two types (like mag-fed and strip-fed Hotchkiss LMGs).

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The Gatling was one of the very first high rate of fire guns, though, and it inspired an impressive number of inventors to develop feed systems. Let’s take a look at them all, shall we? Hopper The first Gatling guns used a very simple hopper to feed ammunition. It was cast into the action cover, and could be continuously topped off by the assistant gunner while the gunner aimed and fired the gun. It was simply gravity fed. To assist in loading, cartridges could be fed into the hopper from very simple purpose-made tin boxes, which held 40 rounds each.

These boxes were not magazines in the modern sense, as they had no springs or followers, and were used simply to pour cartridges into the gun’s hopper. Gatling Gun tin cartridge box Early 1862 Gatling with prominent hopper (gun at; photo by ) Box Magazine With the introduction of the 1871 Gatling, the tin cartridge boxes were replaced by a true early box magazine. Instead of being manually dumped into the hopper, the new magazine would fit and lock into the feed hopper, and included a flat spring on the side which prevented cartridges from falling out of the magazine unless it was secured in the gun, at which point the spring was lifted up and out of the way (similar to a Madsen or Johnson LMG magazine).

Early 1871 model Gatling magazine Gatling mags of this period vary in capacity and curvature, depending on the cartridge they were designed for. These magazines also included weighted followers to help push rounds into the gun, although these were not spring loaded. Feed boxes for the 1865 model had been made with followers, but still having removable lids instead of spring catches to hold in ammunition. Early guns held the magazines at a 45 degree angle off the left side of the gun: Gatling Gun with angled magazine The angled magazine was located so as to allow use of the sights, which were located centrally on the gun.

In 1874 this arrangement was changed, though, and the sights were moved to the right side to allow a vertical magazine on the centerline of the gun. This reduced friction in the mag, and improved feeding. Colt 1890 Gatling with vertical magazine (photo from ) Broadwell Drum In 1872, a new type of feed device was patented by the Gatling company, named after L.M Broadwell (the employee who devised it). According to the patent, this drum consisted of twenty stacks of cartridges arrayed in a circle with the bullets pointing inwards at a central column (kind of like a Lewis or DP drum).

Download update modoo marble terbaru hot. Each stack held twenty rounds, giving the drum a total capacity of 400 rounds. At the bottom of the drum was a metal plate with a hole to allow cartridges from one stack to drop down into the gun. In actual use, drums were typically a bit smaller, with the standard being sixteen stacks of fifteen rounds each (for a total of 240 rounds). To load it, one would set the drum upside down, and drop 15 rounds into each column, rotating the bottom plate to access them. Then the plate would be rotated to a position in between two stacks so that no cartridges could fall out, and be mounted onto the gun. The body of the drum then had to be manually indexed to line a stack of cartridges up with the hole in the bottom plate, and then rotated to the next stack when all 20 rounds were fired. It’s a bit tricky to explain, so here is a brief video on it: As best we can tell, Broadwell drums were used primarily in Naval applications, where the unit’s weight (about 50 pounds loaded) was not particularly problematic.

However, it had some definite limitations. The drum was held on the gun only by gravity, and could simply fall off if fired at too steep an elevation or depression. Additionally, feeding became less reliable at steeper angles, as gravity alone also was responsible for dropping cartridges into the gun. Bruce Feed The most popular feed mechanism for the Gatling in US Army service was the Bruce Feed, which you can see in use on our recent.