“If war was made more terrible, it would have a tendency to keep peace among the nations of the earth.” – Richard Gatling, Inventor of the Gatling Gun
Richard Gatling was born in Hertford County, NC, on December 12, 1818. His father was a prosperous farmer and inventor, and the son was destined to inherit the “invention bug.”
After three of his sisters died at a young age from disease, Richard Gatling decided to study medicine, and graduated from the Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati in 1850. He moved to Indianapolis the same year, and in 1854 married the daughter of a prominent local physician. There is no evidence that Richard Gatling ever practiced medicine after leaving medical school, but he was always referred to as “doctor.”
Gatling was a born inventor. Between 1857 and 1860 he patented a steam plow, a rotary plow, a seed planter, a lath-making machine, a hemp rake, and a rubber washer for tightening gears. One day in 1861, with the Civil War only a few months old, Dr. Gatling’s inventive fervor suffered a shock that would turn his mind from machines of peace to machines of war. From his Indianapolis office window, Gatling watched in horror as wounded and maimed soldiers were unloaded from a train—casualties from the southern killing fields.
The doctor was aware that the conflict was being waged in Napoleonic fashion. Men faced each other in solid ranks—aimed, fired, reloaded—and, on command, charged headlong into the blazing guns of the enemy. For several nights Richard Gatling could not sleep. A single idea occupied his thoughts. What if a few soldiers could duplicate the firepower of a hundred men? Troops would no longer be able to stand still and shoot at each other. And the running charge would be impossible, because the attacking force would be mowed down like tall grass.
Gatling reasoned that if he were able to invent a machine that could plant seeds swiftly, accurately, and in precise rows, he should be able to devise a mechanical gun that would spray bullets like water from a garden hose.
Invention of the Gatling Gun
Within a few weeks, the doctor had completed the drawings for his innovative weapon, the “Gatling gun,” and took the sketches to a machinist to manufacture.
The first Gatling gun consisted of a cluster of six rifle barrels, without stocks, arranged around a center rod. Each barrel had its own bolt, and the entire cluster could be made to revolve by turning a crank. The bolts were covered by a brass case at the breech. Cartridges were fed into a hopper, and as the cluster revolved, each barrel was fired at its lowest point, and then reloaded when the revolution was completed.
The gun was mounted upon a wheeled carriage. Two men were required to operate the weapon—one to sight the target and turn the crank, the other to load the ammunition.
A working model was completed within six months, and a public demonstration was held across Graveyard Pond in Indianapolis. The abrupt, rapid noise of gunfire could be heard for five miles and, at 200 rounds per minute, the bullets cut a 10-inch tree in half in less than 30 seconds.
Dr. Gatling patented his gun on November 4, 1862, but he had a difficult time selling it to the Army. General James Wolfe Ripley, chief of ordnance, was not impressed with the weapon and remarked: “You can kill a man just as dead with a cap-n’-ball smooth-bore.”
Gatling was unperturbed, however, and took his diagrams to a manufacturing company in Cincinnati. Twelve of the Gatling guns were built, and a few of them were sold to General Benjamin Butler for $1,000 each. Butler later used the Gatlings to hold a bridgehead against Confederate cavalry at the James River.
In early trials of the Gatling gun, it was regarded by the military as a supplement to artillery. The tests that were conducted compared the range and accuracy of the machine gun with the range and accuracy of grapeshot fired by artillery pieces.
Richard Gatling continued to modify and improve the weapon, and in 1865 patented a model that was capable of firing 350 rounds per minute. A demonstration was held at Fortress Monroe. This time the ordnance department was impressed and ordered a hundred guns. The Gatling gun was officially adopted by the U.S. Army on August 24, 1866. It was first manufactured by Cooper Arms in Philadelphia, and later by the Colt Arms Company of Hartford, Conn.
Europe and Abroad
Dr. Gatling traveled throughout Europe selling his weapon, and new models were continually being designed. A short-barrel variety was purchased by the British and mounted on camels. This so-called “camel gun” was also used by the U.S. Army and Navy.
As settlers moved west after the Civil War, Army garrisons in forts along the frontier housed Gatling guns. Gatlings were also attached to cavalry expeditions. A Gatling detachment under Lieutenant James W. Pope accompanied General Nelson A. Miles’s campaign into west Texas. On August 30, as an advance party of Army scouts entered a trail that led between two high bluffs, about three hundred Indians charged down the cliffs. At the sound of gunfire, Pope quickly brought up his Gatling guns. The rapid, withering fire scattered the attacking warriors, and they fled in confusion.
During the same year, a battalion of 8th Cavalry, commanded by Major William R. Price, was ordered out to suppress an uprising by several Indian tribes, including Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa. Price was able to successfully fight off several surprise attacks by hostile bands with two Gatling guns.
But in the most famous battle of the Indian Wars, the Gatling was strangely absent. On June 22, 1876, Maj. Gen. George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry rode out from their Powder River camp and headed for the Little Big Horn River. Custer had been offered three Gatling guns but refused them.
He felt that the Gatlings—mounted on horse-drawn carriages—would slow his cavalry troop down in rough country. Custer also believed that the use of such a devastating weapon would cause him to “lose face” with the Indians. Whether or not the Gatlings could have saved Custer and his 200 men is questionable. Some accounts report the column of Indians that retreated after the battle as being three miles long and a half-mile wide.
During the next few years, the Gatling gun participated in a number of battles, including those with the Nez Perce. The warriors under Chief Joseph fought 13 engagements against the U.S. Army, many of which were standoffs. Finally, on September 30, 1877, in the Bear Paw Mountains of Montana, General Nelson Miles, with 600 men and a Gatling gun, attacked Chief Joseph’s camp. After four days of bitter fighting, Chief Joseph could hold out no longer. As he surrendered his rifle to Miles, the valiant Indian leader said, “My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”
The Gatling Gun In Africa
During the latter part of the 19th century, Gatling guns became more and more popular, and were used in the many wars that flared during the 1880s and 1890s. The 1879 war between England and the African Zulu tribes was the first major land action in which the Gatling gun proved to be a deciding factor. A small British army, commanded by Lord Chelmsford, defeated a much larger Zulu force under King Cetywayo. In one encounter, a single Gatling mowed down more than 400 tribesmen in only a few minutes.
After his victorious campaign, Lord Chelmsford wrote: “They [Gatling guns] should be considered essentially as infantry weapons. They can be used effectively, not only in defense, but also in covering the last stage of an infantry attack upon a position—where the soldiers must cease firing and charge with the bayonet.”
By the time Dr. Gatling died in 1903, the automatic machine gun had arrived on the scene. It was powered by the discharging gases of its fired cartridges, and was simpler and more economical to use than the manually operated guns. In 1911, the U.S. Army declared the Gatling gun obsolete.
But Richard Gatling’s legacy did not die with him. In September 1956, the General Electric Company unveiled its 6-barrel aerial cannon called the Vulcan. For several years, General Electric had made a detailed study of every rapid-fire gun, and its engineers had found that Dr. Gatling’s original patents offered the most promise for the development of firepower necessary for fast jet fighter aircraft. The Vulcan was also put to use on attack helicopters and gunships.
Categories
The world’s smallest AR15!
Known as the rarest of the “Snake Guns”, Colt only produced 600 revolvers in this configuration, and a total of 1,400 Boa revolvers in total.
Categories
Shooting a DShK Heavy Machine Gun
Val Kilmer recently died at the young age of 65. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really a fan of his until it was too late. I first took notice of him when he portrayed Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, Tom Cruise’s nemesis in Top Gun. Kilmer was just three years older than me, and I believe Cruise is the same age, or thereabouts, so I could relate to their age mindset at the time of the movie.
Obviously, I’m no fighter pilot, but I had friends that were. Just about all fighter pilots are spilling over with confidence. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be effective in doing their job. They come across as cocky and arrogant, which is not uncommon for most people who are at the top of their game in complex fields, such as surgeons, professional athletes, and yes, fighter pilots.
Old timers know the plot of the movie, so we won’t go there. But the main thing to take away for this purpose is the feelings we all had at that age.
In our early 20s, we’re brimming full of testosterone, giving us a sense of invincibility. It’s why young men enlist in the military or become cops. They seek action and excitement and never think they’ll get hurt or killed. That’s how it was for me. Plus, at that age, who doesn’t love supersonic fighter jets and aerial combat with electronic “lock-on” with missiles?
The famous line, “I feel the need, the need for speed,” was applicable to all of us back then. While Cruise was the renegade stallion, “Iceman,” though cocky, was more disciplined and under control. While everyone rooted for “Maverick,” you had to respect Kilmer’s character for having disciplined control.
I’ve watched Top Gun too many times to admit. I always stop and watch it whenever I come across it while channel surfing. It reminds me of the good old days of being young, carefree and invincible.
Tombstone
Fast forward to 1993. Kilmer portrayed famed fast-draw gunman Doc Holliday in Tombstone, perhaps what would become his most famous role. Kilmer stole the show, as they say, as he delivered his lines with perfection in a slow, witty drawl. As a matter of fact, when I first heard of Kilmer’s death, this was the movie I felt I needed to watch; he was so good in it.
Kilmer lost over 30 pounds for the role of the dying Holliday, practicing a proper “southern aristocrat accent” that the real Holliday spoke.
Fun fact: The real Doc Holiday was a cousin, several generations removed, of Margaret Mitchell — author of “Gone With the Wind.” Between a slew of witty responses, fast gun handling and being Wyatt Earp’s loyal friend, you couldn’t help loving the character he portrayed. Here are a few top quotes by Kilmer in the movie:
• “I’m your huckleberry.”
• “You’re no daisy at all.”
• “My hypocrisy goes only so far.”
• “Why Johnny Ringo, you look like somebody walked over your grave.”
• “It would appear that the strain was more than he could bear.”
• “I’ve yet now begun to defile myself.”
When most people I know think of Tombstone, they all mention Kilmer’s portrayal of Holliday and say he was the best Doc Holliday, period, in any movie.
Ghost and the Darkness
A few years later, Kilmer portrayed Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson in The Ghost and the Darkness. Patterson was summoned to oversee the construction of the Uganda-Mombasa Railway in Kenya in 1898.
Progress of the railroad was slowed by the attack of workers by two hungry lions who attacked the men at night. Between 35 and 135 men disappeared in just a few months’ time.
Patterson is a dedicated hunter and takes on the task of hunting the two renegade lions. The movie is based on Patterson’s book, “The Man-eaters of Tsavo,” detailing his experiences and eventual taking of the two lions.
The beautiful scenery, animals, vintage rifles and excitement will keep you glued to your seat. It’s one of my favorite movies, and another I had to rewatch after hearing of Kilmer’s death.
Top Gun: Maverick
The latest movie starring Kilmer came out in 2022. In my opinion, Top Gun: Maverick was an excellent sequel. Maverick is a test pilot and still manages to keep himself at odds with his superiors. However, his nemesis, “Iceman,” is now a four-star admiral and commander of the U.S. Pacific fleet. He has a soft spot for Maverick and shows it by continuously bailing him out of problems he runs into.
Cruise and Kilmer became close friends in real life after Top Gun. In fact, Cruise wanted Kilmer in the sequel and made special accommodations for him and his needs while battling throat cancer. Like the original, I’ve watched this movie more times than I care to admit.
RIP Iceman
After hearing of Val Kilmer’s death, I started thinking of him and the roles he played over the years. These are my favorites. Being a fellow boomer, it hits close to home. Thanks for the memories, Iceman, Doc and Lt. Col. Patterson. You’ll be terribly missed, but your life and memories will live on through your work, so you’ll never be forgotten.
America has an oddly bipolar relationship with automatic weapons. On one hand, we feel that these guns are so extra special deadly that normal folks will often never even touch one.
On the other, they are so cool that we flock to the local cineplex to see them exercised in their natural habitat. That’s honestly pretty weird if you think about it. Regardless, little gets my blood pumping faster than seeing my favorite action star unlimber something cool, select-fire and noisy on the big screen. While there are countless laudable examples, here are my five favorites.
The Hunter
Steve McQueen’s The Hunter is an underappreciated gem. This 1980 biographical depiction of real-world bounty hunter Ralph “Papa” Thorsen is funny, poignant, exciting, and cool.
It was also McQueen’s last film before he succumbed to pleural mesothelioma at age 50. The narrative orbits around an incongruously soft-hearted bounty hunter. The sequence wherein Papa Thorsen flees a pair of enraged rednecks throwing dynamite from a combine harvester while behind the wheel of a black 1970’s-vintage Trans Am tearing through a cornfield is just hilarious.
The story follows Thorsen’s exploits as he tracks down sundry bail jumpers. However, there is a dark thread throughout wherein a lunatic psychopath named Rocco Mason hunts Papa and his girlfriend over some unexplained slight.
Eventually Rocco stalks them both in a dark high school armed with an M-16A1 rifle equipped with an AN/PVS-2 night vision sight. Papa eventually rescues his girlfriend Dotty and flees the chemistry lab, turning on the gas taps as he leaves.
Rocco unlimbers his M-16 from the hip on rock and roll, ignites the gas, and subsequently blows himself to smithereens. The classic star-shaped muzzle flash from the M-16 in dim light was adequate to illuminate the dark room. I’ve run that sequence back and forth a dozen times. This scene was shot with good old-fashioned blanks in the days before digital effects. Also, the real Papa Thorsen has a cameo as a bartender.
High Risk
There aren’t but about ten people in the world who have seen the low-budget 1981 comedy heist film High Risk. That’s the real crime. High Risk rocks. It’s available for free on YouTube. Four buddies, none of whom have any serious military experience, are trapped in low-paying loser jobs.
On a whim they pool their meager resources and travel to Colombia with the intention of robbing a drug lord and getting filthy rich. They score weapons from a shifty gun runner and arrange for a couple of hippies with a beat-up old DC-3 to exfil them from a jungle airstrip once the mission is complete.
The flight service is cryptically called Adios Airlines. Their logo is a giant marijuana leaf painted on the side of the airplane. The nail-biting climax has our heroes trying to hold the drug lord’s henchmen at bay with some simply epic full auto MAC-10 action.
At one point James Brolin runs his MAC sideways while stabilizing the gun by gripping the extended buttstock with his left hand. I’ve actually tried that myself. It doesn’t work well.
When all seems hopeless the derelict DC-3 arrives just in the nick of time. The pilot then pops in a cassette tape of the Rolling Stones belting out Satisfaction as his crew chief unlimbers a belt-fed M-60 from the cargo door. Just describing that scene made me go back and watch the movie again. Trust me, it’ll change your life.
Scarface
The 1983 crime classic Scarface had some fascinating origins. Loosely derived from a 1929-vintage novel of the same name, Scarface took the Depression-era tale of Al Capone and transported it into the 1980’s Miami drug wars.
The end result helped define an era. The story was written by Oliver Stone. The movie was directed by Brian De Palma. Al Pacino’s depiction of Cuban refugee-turned-drug lord Tony Montana helped cement his position as one of the most accomplished actors of the modern era.
Like most De Palma films, Scarface was violent, profane, and messy. However, it was the final shootout that really anchored the film. The trajectory of the narrative follows Pacino’s character as he rises from abject poverty to unimaginable opulence.
Along the way, Tony Montana also loses his soul. At the climax, now stoked on his own dope and bereft of both friends and family, Montana has to face down a veritable army of drug cartel sicarios.
Hopelessly outnumbered and lyrically outgunned, he retrieves an M-16A1 rifle equipped with an M-203 grenade launcher. His timeless line, “Say hello to my little friend!” became cinematic legend. Forget that his 40mm HEDP (High Explosive Dual Purpose) rounds seemed to arm as soon as they left the launcher and nobody paid much attention to friendlies that might be behind their targets, the final gorefest was pretty epic.
As Tony’s lifeless body topples off the balcony into the pool below, a garish globe sports the neon slogan, “The World is Yours.” Brian De Palma was never known for his subtlety.
The host rifle was a full auto M-16A1. The M-203 was a fairly cheesy theatrical prop. I’ve actually held that gun, and it wasn’t terribly impressive up close. The double magazines were held together with gaffer’s tape, and the front ladder sight was actually installed backwards. Regardless, in the right hands that rifle helped create one of the most iconic gun scenes in Hollywood history.
Predator
No list of this sort is complete without a nod to the M-134 minigun in the pioneering Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi action flick Predator.
While the movie was awesome in its own right, watching Jesse Ventura and Bill Duke run that minigun from the hip set a new standard for Hollywood gun work. I saw the film in the theater back in 1987 when I was a soldier, and it changed my life.
The hulking alien Predator hunting humans has become a theme throughout seven full-length movies, but that was not the original vision for the film makers.
The original Predator was to be played by martial artist Jean-Claude Van Damme. Van Damme even suited up for some of the early scenes shot on location in Mexico.
However, at 5’ 9” tall, his screen presence seemed insufficiently compelling alongside physical specimens like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers. Van Damme was ultimately replaced by 7’2” Kevin Peter Hall who dominated the screen.
Incidentally, Hall also plays the helicopter pilot in the film. The M-134 used in the movie sported a custom mount built from, among other things, the handguard from an M-60 machine gun turned around backwards.
The trigger on the weapon was non-functional. The gun was operated off-scene by an armorer with an electrical switch. The power cable was snaked through the actor’s trouser leg.
The weapon was down-regulated to 1,250 rounds per minute so the viewer could see the barrels spin clearly. The ammo pack carried 550 blank rounds which were good for about 25 seconds of continuous fire.
However, to preserve the actors’ mobility, they usually only packed enough ammunition for about four seconds’ worth of mayhem. We have seen the M-134 used in a variety of movies since Predator, but nobody has ever quite captured lightning in a bottle the way director John McTiernan did here.
I am proud to say that I have actually held the original Predator minigun myself. I thought I might never wash my hands again afterwards, but that eventually got kind of gross.
Aliens
There are lots of cool gun movies out there, but one film easily eclipses them all. When James Cameron was making his studio pitch for his sci-fi magnum opus Aliens, he supposedly just stood up in front of the movie executives with a white board, took up a dry erase marker, and wrote “Alien$.”
What resulted set an unassailable standard. Aliens came along at the end of the era of analog movie effects. That meant that Stan Winston’s aliens were monsters in the real world, and the weapons wielded by the U.S. Colonial Marines were made from the real steel.
Cameron himself designed the small arms used in the film. They were built in England by Simon Atherton and his team at Bapty, the same guys who brought us the guns used in the Indiana Jones movies and Star Wars.
The original M41A pulse rifles were to be built around HK MP5s. You can actually see an MP5 example on the “Peace Through Superior Firepower” t-shirt worn by Marine Ricco Frost if you look closely in the movie.
However, Cameron needed more muzzle flash than could be afforded by the 9mm Parabellum and subsequently opted for a World War II vintage M1A1 Thompson submachine gun as a starting point instead.
The M41A pulse rifle in the movie narrative famously fires 10mm caseless light armor-piercing rounds and includes a 30mm over-and-under pump-action grenade launcher.
The prop furniture came from a Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun, while the grenade launcher was a seriously chopped Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun. I would gladly give my 401k to own a screen-used original. The other paradigm-shattering gun in Aliens was the M-56 smart gun.
This massive gyro-stabilized support weapon was built from a German MG42 belt-fed machine gun mounted on a Steadicam mount originally designed to support a movie camera. When I saw Vasquez yell, “Let’s rock!” and unlimber that puppy in the theater back in 1986, I very nearly wet my pants. Also, if you haven’t yet seen it, surf on over to YouTube and type in “Aliens Sentry Guns Deleted Scenes.” You’ll thank me later.
Aliens (1986): directors cut sentry turrets
byu/RedAndBlackMartyr invideos