Photo: Tula State Weapon Museum
February 15 marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ivan Alekseevich Pastukhov, a Tula gunsmith and machine gun production specialist. Under his leadership, the assembly of the first machine guns was organized in Tula, and together with another famous gunsmith Pavel Tretyakov, he worked on the Russian version of the famous Maxim machine gun.
In total, more than 200 innovations were introduced into the foreign version. So the creation of Hiram Stevens Maxim turned into his faithful comrade “Maximka”. And both gunsmiths earned such great authority that a saying was made about them: “God knows machine guns, Tretyakov and Pastukhov.”
The Russian history of the world's first machine gun and the contribution of Tula gunsmiths to its modernization is in our material.
Nobody cares
Hiram studied in primary school for five years, then there was no time for self-indulgence - he got down to business: he was a carpenter, painter, blacksmith's assistant, wrestler and bartender. He was constantly inventing something: he patented a mousetrap, a bicycle with spokes on wheels, an inhaler. He became interested in electricity and got involved in the battle with Thomas Edison for the electrification of America. He lost, got offended and left for England. There, a random acquaintance advised him: stop with mousetraps and light bulbs, create something useful.
The result is that in 1881, 41-year-old Hiram, who did not have an engineering education, designed a machine gun. He earned a lot of money, in Great Britain he was knighted: he became Sir Maxim.
But he didn’t dream about machine guns at all. I wanted to build a plane and fly. He almost succeeded, the airplane even took off from the ground, but due to a breakdown he had to land. He didn't give up, he built another one. Maxim's plane weighed 3.6 tons, the wingspan was 31.5 m. Two engines produced 180 hp each. every. This happened in 1893-1894. For comparison: the engine of the Wright brothers' airplane, which successfully took off only in 1903, had a power of only 12 hp. But Wright had an internal combustion engine, and Maxim had a steam boiler...
He never became a successful aircraft designer or first pilot. Irony - but his machine gun was flying. Maxim was installed on fighters.
Hiram Stevens Maxim died in the fall of 1916 at the age of 76. The First World War was going on, so the world didn’t really notice the death of the genius.
The machine gunner is scribbling
Everyone praised the Maxim machine gun, but the military was in no hurry to buy it: its complex design, large and heavy, burns a lot of ammunition...
Everything changed after the first combat use. The British killed the native army in Sudan: the Africans naively ran towards the enemy with guns and sabers, fired up a machine gun... They counted 3,000 corpses on the battlefield.
And then all the armies rushed to acquire new weapons of mass destruction. Hiram Maxim's trading strategy also worked well. He found a way to show the invention to the first persons: the British monarch Edward VII, the German Kaiser Wilhelm. Once he brought a machine gun to Austria and, in front of Emperor Franz Joseph’s eyes, fired 330 bullets from a distance of 100 meters, knocking out the initials FJ on the target. And on March 8, 1888, in the arena of the Anichkov Palace, a nosy American (by that time already having received British citizenship) convinced Emperor Alexander III to shoot with a machine gun.
The Russian army first used this machine gun during the campaign in China in 1900-1901. And during the Russo-Japanese War, every second Japanese soldier already died from Maxim’s bullets.
Maxim system machine gun mod. 1910/30 Only towards the end of the Great Patriotic War did they begin to oust Goryunov with a machine gun. But it was also used in 1969: in battles on Damansky Island.
Photo of the Maxim machine gun
Maxim machine gun in action (1916-1917)
Large-caliber Maxim on a warship.
German version of the Maxim machine gun - MG 08
MG 00 (Maschinengewehr Modell 1900) - the first Swiss version of the Maxim
Vickers machine gun - English version of the Maxim machine gun
Tachanka
Quadruple anti-aircraft machine gun mount model 1931
Maxim machine gun mod. 1910 - 1930 with a wide water filler neck introduced in 1940 as a result of the experience of the Soviet-Finnish War, now in winter conditions the casing could be filled with ice and snow.
Maxim's machine gun crew fires at the enemy. Battle of Kursk.
Machine guns "Maxim" on the Kondakov machine
Commanders and soldiers of the Red Army with a Maxim machine gun, late 1920s - early 1930s
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Our everything
Our army does not have Maxims. Well, maybe in warehouses.
But they sell machine guns to the public. Of course, not for everyone, but with a license for rifled weapons. The machine gun in the hunting version fires single shots. Costs from 270-300 thousand rubles. Real hunters sometimes say offensive words to the “machine gunners”.
That's right, it's not for hunting. But there is no other way to become the owner of a legendary weapon.
An interesting detail: in 1901, one Maxim machine gun in our army served a crew consisting of 7 lower ranks and 2 riders. The crew was commanded by a non-commissioned officer. Total - 10 people.
And today, as the law dictates, only its owner has the right to touch Maxim. That is, you have to manage alone. And this despite the fact that Maxim weighs 66 kg on Sokolov’s machine.
And they also say: “we are not the heroes.” Well, if not us, then who...
By the way
Background
Gunsmiths have long been looking for the possibility of creating a weapon capable of firing more than one shot after pressing the trigger. The first working example of such a weapon was the Gatling machine gun. The multi-barreled monster fired 200 rounds per minute, fantastic for those times. Due to the large number of bullets fired, Gatling's invention began to be called a grapeshot. But it cannot be called an automatic weapon in the full sense. The barrels were moved and cartridges were reloaded by rotating a handle, reminiscent of a drive for a manual meat grinder.
The need to rotate the handle greatly affected the accuracy of shooting; the bulkiness of a multi-barreled weapon on a heavy carriage impaired mobility and stealth. The fixed magazine, which had to be filled periodically, reduced the actual rate of fire during combat use.
Modern aircraft and ship fire systems use up to 12 barrels, but at that time the single-barrel Maxim machine gun, the design of which was based on a new principle, became a breakthrough in the automation of firearms.
In and behind the scenes
The famous episode from the film “Brother-2”: Tatar (the hero of Sergei Sukhorukov) Maxim shoots bandits with a machine gun. According to the script, the heroes took this machine gun from the Historical Museum. In fact, it is impossible to shoot from “museum machine guns,” let alone steal the weapon. The filmmakers arrived with their machine gun. Although there are Maxims in this museum, and they are unique.
The MG-08 is on display at the WWI exposition - this is the German version of the Maxim, it does not have an armor shield. And in the special storage there are also heavy machine guns of the Maxim system: made in England, as well as our own, made in Tula.
Photo: Getty Images
By the way
In rubles and workdays
After moving from the USA to England, Hiram Maxim settled in West Norwood (London area), where he developed his machine gun. I made an announcement in the local press: I am going to experiment with firearms in my garden, I ask my neighbors to open their windows so that the glass does not burst...
In 1904, the production of Maxim machine guns was established in Tula. The cost has dropped to 942 rubles. Even taking into account the 80 pounds sterling reward for each machine gun, the total cost was 1,700 rubles. While the British sold them to us for 2288 rubles.
To understand the price level. In St. Petersburg at that time, the average salary in industry was 450 rubles per year. A bottle of official vodka cost 40 kopecks, a kilogram of red caviar cost 2.5 rubles. Salmon - 80 kopecks/kg, beef - 45 kopecks/kg, granulated sugar - 25 kopecks/kg, loaf of white bread - 7 kopecks.
By the beginning of the First World War, the Russian army had 4,157 Maxim machine guns in service. From 1914 to 1917, our industry produced 27,571 machine guns. During the Civil War - 21 thousand machine guns. The dynamics of the production of these machine guns in the pre-war and war years: in 1937 - 8052, in 1938 - 16,094, in 1940 - 4049, in 1941 - 9601, in 1942 - 55,258!
The Maxim machine gun was assembled from 282 parts, and its machine from 126 parts. For manufacturing it was necessary to perform 2448 operations and spend 700 hours of working time.
Performance characteristics
Let us present the characteristics of the Maxim machine gun of the 1910 model, which was produced at the Tula Arms Plant.
- Structural weight: the machine gun itself/on the frame - 23.8/64.3 kg;
- Length - 1,107 mm;
- Number of rifling - 4 right-hand;
- Caliber - 7.62 mm;
- The design of the USM is striker type;
- The principle of operation is based on the recoil of the barrel, which is locked by a crank element;
- Rate of fire parameters - 600 rounds/min;
- The fuse is a lever type, located between the handles;
- Sighting device - rear sight and front sight, optional installation of optics;
- Firing range: targeted/effective - 2,700/800 m;
- Initial bullet acceleration - 740 m/s;
- Ammunition - metal belt for 250 rounds.
