Aircraft cannon volcano. Vulcan machine gun – electric drive and six deadly barrels

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

But the Gatling system was revived already in the middle of the 20th century, when the need arose to create aircraft and anti-aircraft guns with ultra-high rates of fire. One of the first Gatlings of the new generation was the 20mm M61 Vulcan cannon. 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. War experience, however, showed that “cannon” aircraft could hit the enemy from a greater range. At that time, the only aircraft cannon 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-firing automatic cannon was a revolving design. Another option involved the revival of the seemingly irrevocably outdated Gatling system.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 brainchild, who in 1893 patented a version of a machine gun in which the barrels rotated using an electric motor.

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

Work on the “Vulcan project” began already in 1946.

The caliber was initially supposed to be increased slightly - to 15mm. It was believed that high initial speed and rate of fire would ensure sufficient efficiency even with this caliber. The first firing using the 15mm Vulcan prototype (under the symbol T45) took place in 1949, and a 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 gun was considered more balanced.

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

Design and modifications

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

During a full rotation of the block, the barrel manages to go through a cycle that includes firing, ejecting the spent cartridge case and chambering a new projectile.

The bolts are moved using rollers attached to them, which move along a special groove in the receiver.

Locking the barrels is done by turning the bolt cylinder. The ignition of the cartridge case is electrical. The automation of the basic modification of the Vulcan operates 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.

M61A2 is a lightweight version installed on later F/A-18s. Due to thinner barrels and replacement of metal parts, the weight of the gun was reduced to 92 kg.

M130 (GAU-4) - “Vulcan”, which does not require external power supply. The block of barrels is rotated by the exhausted powder gases. This modification was used for installation in suspended cannon nacelles.

M197 is a three-barreled Vulcan with a rate of fire reduced to 1500 rounds per minute. Intended to arm AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters.

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

XM301 – the most lightweight “Vulcan” with two barrels, which was supposed to arm helicopters.

M168 – anti-aircraft gun artillery installations.

Even more famous than the above-mentioned Vulcan variants is the six-barreled M134 Minigun machine gun of 7.62mm caliber, designed for arming helicopters. This is, in fact, a smaller version of the M61 cannon.

Ammunition

Initially, two types of projectiles were developed for the Vulcan cannon: the armor-piercing incendiary M53 and the high-explosive fragmentation M56. The first is a simple 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 loaded with 10 grams of explosive (“composition B”), the damage radius is estimated at 2 meters.

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

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

Specialized projectiles with high armor penetration were developed for naval anti-aircraft Vulcans.

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

Application

The first aircraft armed with the M61 Vulcan cannon entered service at the end of the 50s. They were the F-104 fighter, the F-105 fighter-bomber, and the gun appeared on the B-52 and B-58 bombers as a defensive weapon. And then senior officials The Air Force felt 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 fallacy of such conclusions. Armed with the Vulcan, the F-105, even after firing all its missiles, could successfully fight off the North Vietnamese MiG-17s.

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

Late model Phantoms and next generation fighters once again received the built-in Vulcan.

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

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

In 1980, the US Navy received the Phalanx anti-aircraft complex, armed with an M61 cannon and designed to protect ships mainly from anti-ship missiles. In 2004, its ground version “Centurion” appeared, knocking down shells and mortar mines with cannon fire.

Specifications

Let's compare the Vulcan with some of its “contemporaries” - the Soviet GSh-23 cannon and the British ADEN.

When developing a new aircraft gun, the British relied on the power of a single projectile. The relatively low rate of fire was compensated for by the installation of several guns. The Soviet cannon is inferior to the M61 in rate of fire and initial projectile velocity, but is slightly superior in its mass.

As the main weapon of fighters, unlike the Vulcan, competitors did not stay long - late Soviet aircraft received 30mm cannons, and in Europe the 27mm Mauser cannon became widespread. Interestingly, all three guns are made according to different designs. The ADEN system is built on a revolver design, and the GSh-23 uses a Gast design, in which one barrel is reloaded at the moment the second is fired.

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

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

Video

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

“You lower the nose of the car a little, carefully turn it towards the target so that it is easily caught in the sight mark. You press the trigger for a split second and it feels as if the plane is being shaken by a giant, but you can clearly see how a fiery tornado is flying towards the ground. At this moment, you won’t envy the enemy who is there, even if it’s a conditional one,” a pilot of the Russian Air Force shared with the Military-Industrial Courier his impressions of the use of the six-barreled GSh-6-23 aircraft cannon.

The GSh-6-23M, 23 mm caliber with a rate of fire of 10,000 rounds per minute, was developed by two great Russian gunsmith designers Arkady Shipunov and Vasily Gryazev back in the early 70s. Since the adoption of the “six-barreled general gun” into service in 1974, its carriers have been the legendary Su-24 front-line bombers and the equally famous supersonic heavy interceptors Mig-31.

From “cardbox” to “Vulcan”

In the mid-50s, when the first homing ones, such as the American AIM-9 Sidewinder, began to enter service with fighter aircraft, aviation experts began to talk about the fact that machine guns and cannons on combat aircraft would have to be abandoned in the near future. In many ways, these 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. The MiGs, armed with three guns, often lacked the rate of fire, and the Sabers lacked the 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 newest American carrier-based fighter at that time, the F-4B Phantom-2, had only missile weapons, including the ultra-modern medium-range AIM-7 Sparrow. The F-4C guns adapted for the needs of the US Air Force were also not installed. True, in Vietnam, the Phantoms were initially opposed by the Soviet MiG-17s, which had only cannon armament, on which the Vietnamese pilots tried to fly close air battle to avoid being hit by guided missiles.

In “dog fights,” as such battles are called in Western aviation slang, the American aces were not always helped and those considered at that time best rockets AIM-9 short-range with thermal homing head. Therefore, the command of the Air Force, as well as the Navy and Marine Corps aviation, had to urgently develop new tactics to combat Vietnamese fighters, first of all, to equip the Phantoms with suspended gun 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 standard six-barrel Vulcan installed in the bow.

A number of recently published studies on the air war in Vietnam argue that the decision to arm the Phantom 2 with a cannon mount was not driven by the need to combat Vietnamese MiGs, but by the desire to make the fighter more suitable for attacking ground targets. For an impartial assessment, it is worth turning to the numbers. According to the Pentagon, during the entire war in Southeast Asia, from 39 to 45 Vietnamese fighters, including supersonic MiG-19 and MiG-21, were shot down by the cannon armament of American fighters. And 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 total number cars shot down by US pilots.

Be that as it may, it was with the advent of the F-4E Phantom-2 that 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 popular in the arsenal of the Western Air Forces was the already mentioned M61 Vulcan. It is noteworthy that the American fifth-generation 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 Vulcan, had never before worked on small arms models. Moreover, the company's core business has always been electrical equipment. But immediately after World War II, the American Air Force opened a promising topic for the creation of aircraft cannons and machine guns, the rate of fire of which should have been at least 4000 rounds per minute, while the samples were required to have sufficient range and high accuracy when striking air targets.

In traditional small arms designs, implementing such customer requests was quite problematic. Here we had to choose: either high accuracy, firing range and accuracy, or rate of fire. As one of the solution options, the developers proposed adapting the so-called Gatling canister, which was used in the United States during the Civil War, to modern requirements. This design was based on the design of a 10-barrel rotating block developed by Dr. Richard Gatling back in 1862.

Surprisingly, despite the participation of eminent weapons developers and manufacturers in the competition, the victory went to General Electric. When implementing the Gatling scheme, it became clear that the most important part of the new installation was the external electric drive that rotates the block of barrels, and with its extensive experience, General Electric did a better job 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 shooting systems, in which Colt and Browning were also supposed to take part.

During research, testing and development work, the company had to experiment with the number of barrels (at different times 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-barrel aircraft gun of 20 millimeter caliber, with a maximum rate of fire of 6,000 rounds per minute, firing 110-gram shells at a speed of over 1,030 meters per second.

A number of Western researchers claim that the choice in favor of the 20 mm caliber 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 universal, equally suitable for conducting aimed fire at both air and ground goals.

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

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

The six barrels of the M61 Vulcan cannon, adopted in 1956, together with the bolts, were concentrically assembled into a single block located in a common casing, rotating clockwise. In one revolution, each barrel was sequentially reloaded, and a shot was fired from the barrel located at the top at that moment. The entire system operated using 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 ended up being almost 115 kilograms. The struggle to lose weight continued 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 currently in the English-language literature all shooting systems with a rotating barrel block are called Gatling-gun - “Gatling gun (gun).

In the USSR, work on the creation of multi-barrel aircraft guns was going on even before the Great Patriotic War. True, they ended in vain. Soviet gunsmiths came to the idea of ​​a system with barrels combined into one block, which would be rotated by an electric motor, at the same time as 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 United States, but not only the technical solutions used by the Americans, but also the tactical and technical characteristics of the new Western system remained secret.

True, Arkady Shipunov himself later admitted that even if he and Vasily Gryazev had become aware of American technical solutions, it would still hardly have been possible 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 would not operate 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 companies participating in the competition to create a promising aircraft gun. True, Western designers were unable to implement such a solution. In contrast, Arkady Shipunov and Vasily Gryazev created the so-called gas exhaust engine, which, according to the second member of the tandem, worked like an engine internal combustion- took part of the powder gas from the barrels when fired.

But, despite the elegant solution, another problem arose: how to fire the first shot, because the gas exhaust engine, and therefore the gun mechanism itself, is not yet working. For the initial impulse, a starter was required, after which, from the first shot, the gun would operate on its own gas. Subsequently, two starter options 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 belt loaded 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, a void forms in the cartridge box in a matter of seconds and the tape begins to “walk.” In this case, the ammunition falls out, and the tape itself breaks. Shipunov and Gryazev developed a special pneumatic tape pull-up that does not allow the tape to move. Unlike the American solution, this idea provided a much more compact placement of the gun and ammunition, which is especially important for aircraft, where designers fight for every centimeter.

On target, but not right away

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

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

Surprisingly, despite all the difficulties, Arkady Shipunov, who by this time headed TsKB-14, decided to revive the cannon theme at his enterprise. After the Military-Industrial Commission approved 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 of resuming work on cannon aircraft weapons arose not only in the USSR, but also in the West. In fact, at that time, the only multi-barreled gun in the world was the American one - the Vulcan.

It is worth noting that, despite the rejection of the “AO-19 object” by the Air Force, the product was of interest to the Navy, for which several gun systems were developed.

By the beginning of the 70s, 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 projectiles used, but also in the starters for preliminary acceleration of the barrel block. The AO-18 had a pneumatic one, and the AO-19 had a pyrotechnic one with 10 squibs.

Initially, representatives of the Air Force, who considered the new gun as armament for promising fighters and fighter-bombers, placed increased demands on the AO-19 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. The design has been changed. The gas engine was modified, where so-called floating pistons were installed.

Preliminary tests have shown that the modified AO-19 can show much better performance than originally stated. As a result of the work carried out at the KBP, the 23-mm cannon was able to fire at a rate of fire of 10–12 thousand rounds per minute. And the mass of the AO-19 after all the modifications was just over 70 kilograms.

For comparison: the American Vulcan, which had been modified by this time, received the index M61A1, weighed 136 kilograms, fired 6000 rounds per minute, the salvo was almost 2.5 times smaller 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, which is on board the fifth-generation fighter F-22, American designers, with the smaller caliber and rate of fire of their guns, were unable to achieve the unique indicators in weight and compactness, like the gun developed by Vasily Gryazev and Arkady Shipunov.

Birth of a legend

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

The time frame for work on the new vehicle was quite tight: the T-6, which made its first flight on January 17, 1970, in the summer of 1973, was already ready for transfer to military testers. When fine-tuning the AO-19 to the requirements of aircraft manufacturers, certain difficulties arose. The gun, which fired well on the test bench, could not fire more than 150 shots - the barrels overheated and 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 Engineering Design Bureau joked, “to stop shooting.” After releasing the launch button, the AO-19 managed to spontaneously fire 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 Air Force GLITs for testing with a cannon fully integrated into the new front-line bomber.

During the tests that began in Akhtubinsk, the product, which by that time had received the GSh index (Gryazev - Shipunov) -6-23, was shot at various targets. During the test use of the newest system, in less than one second, the pilot was able to completely cover all targets, firing about 200 shells!

Pavel Sukhoi was so satisfied with the GSh-6-23 that, along with the standard Su-24 ammunition, the so-called SPPU-6 suspended gun containers with movable GSh-6-23M gun mounts, capable of deflecting horizontally and vertically by 45 degrees, were included . It was assumed that with such weapons, and in total it was planned to place two such installations on the front-line bomber, it 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, SPPU-6 became one of the largest mobile cannon installations. Its length exceeded five meters, and its mass with ammunition of 400 shells was 525 kilograms. Tests have shown that when firing new installation There was at least one shell hit for every linear meter.

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 supersonic interceptor MiG-31. Despite his big sizes, aircraft manufacturers needed a fairly small-sized cannon with a high rate of fire, since the MiG-31 was supposed to destroy supersonic targets. KBP helped Mikoyan by developing a unique lightweight conveyor-free linkless feeding system, thanks to which the weight of the gun was reduced by several 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 still remains in service with the Russian Air Force. Moreover, in many ways its characteristics, despite its more than 40-year service life, remain unique.

7.62 mm six-barreled aircraft machine gun M134 "Minigun" (in the US Air Force it has the designationGAU-2 B/ A) was developed in the early 1960s by General Electric. During its creation, a number of unconventional solutions were used that had not previously been used in the practice of designing small arms.

Firstly, to achieve a high rate of fire, a multi-barrel weapon design with a rotating block of barrels was used, which is used only in aircraft guns and rapid-fire anti-aircraft guns. In a classic single-barreled weapon, the rate of fire is 1500 – 2000 rounds per minute. In this case, the barrel becomes very hot and quickly fails. In addition, it is necessary to reload the weapon in a very short period of time, which requires high speeds of movement of the automation parts and leads to a decrease in the survivability of the system. In multi-barreled weapons, the reloading operations of each barrel are combined in time (a shot is fired from one barrel, a spent cartridge is removed from another, a cartridge is sent to the third, and so on), which makes it possible to keep the interval between shots to a minimum and at the same time prevents the barrels from overheating.

Secondly, to drive the automation mechanisms, the principle of using energy from an external source was chosen. With this scheme, the bolt frame is driven not by the energy of the shot, as in traditional automatic engines (with the recoil of the bolt, barrel or removal of powder gases), but with the help of an external drive. The main advantage of such a system is the high survivability of the weapon, due to the smooth movement of the moving parts of the automation. In addition, there is practically no problem of ammunition being discarded during strong blows automation links that arise in high-temperature weapons. In the 1930s, the developers of the ShKAS rapid-firing machine gun encountered this problem, as a result of which a 7.62-mm cartridge with a reinforced design was created and adopted specifically for it.

Another advantage of an external drive is the simplification of the design of the weapon itself, which lacks return springs, a gas regulator and a number of other mechanisms. In externally driven weapons it is much easier to regulate the rate of fire, which is extremely important for aviation weapons, often having two firing modes - both with a low rate (for firing at ground targets) and with a high rate (for combating air targets). And finally, the advantage of a circuit driven by an external source is that if it misfires, the cartridge is automatically removed by the bolt and ejected from the weapon. However, it is impossible to instantly open fire from such a weapon, since it always takes some time to spin up the barrel block and reach the required rotation speed. Another drawback is that a special device is needed to prevent a shot when the bolt is not completely locked.

The idea of ​​creating multi-barrel systems is far from new. Their first samples appeared even before the invention of automatic weapons. First, double-barreled, three-barreled, four-barreled guns and pistols appeared, and in the middle of the 19th century, the so-called grapeshots were created - firearms obtained by placing several barrels on one carriage. The number of grapeshot barrels varied from 5 to 25, and their rate of fire reached an unprecedented figure at that time - 200 rounds per minute. The most famous are Gatling guns, named after the American inventor Richard Jordan Gatling. By the way, today in the USA all types of firearms made according to a multi-barrel design with a rotating block of barrels are called Gatling guns.

After the end of World War II, the rate of fire of the best examples of aviation single-barrel machine guns reached 1200 rounds per minute (Browning M2). The main way to increase the firepower of aviation was to increase the number of firing points, which reached 6–8 on fighters. To arm the bombers, bulky dual installations were used, which were a pair of two conventional machine guns (DA-2, MG81z). The emergence of high-speed jet aviation in the post-war period required the creation of small arms and cannon weapons systems with a higher rate of fire.

In June 1946, the American company General Electric began work on the Vulcan project. By 1959, several prototypes of the T45 multi-barrel gun had been created for ammunition of various calibers: 60, 20 and 27 mm. After careful testing, a 20 mm caliber sample was selected for further development and designated T171. In 1956, the T171 was put into service ground forces and the US Air Force under the name M61 "Vulcan".

The gun was a sample of an automatic weapon driven by an external source. To unwind a block of 6 barrels and drive the automation mechanisms, a hydraulic drive or compressed air was used. Thanks to this design scheme, the maximum rate of fire from the cannon reached 7200 rounds per minute. A mechanism was provided to regulate the rate of fire from 4,000 to 6,000 rounds per minute. Ignition powder charge in ammunition was carried out with an electric primer.

Somewhat later, the Vulcan cannon was modernized - a linkless ammunition supply system appeared. A 30 mm version of the 6-barrel gun was also developed under the designation M67, but it was not further developed. The fate of the M61 turned out to be more successful; the gun soon became (and still serves) the main model of aircraft cannon armament for the US Air Force and many other countries.

Versions of the gun were developed for towed anti-aircraft (M167) and self-propelled (M163) installations, as well as a ship version of the Vulcan-Phalanx to combat low-flying aircraft and anti-ship missiles. To equip helicopters, General Electric has developed lightweight versions of the M195 and M197 guns. The last of them had three rather than six barrels, as a result the rate of fire was halved - to 3000 rounds per minute. The followers of the Vulcan were the heavy 30-mm seven-barreled gun GAU-8/A "Avenger" and its lightweight five-barrel 25-mm version GAU-12/U "Equalizer", intended for arming the A-10 Thunderbolt attack aircraft and fighters, respectively. AV-8 Harrier vertical take-off bombers.

Despite the success of the Vulcan cannon, it was of little use for arming light helicopters, which became increasingly large quantities enter service with the US Army during vietnam war. Therefore, initially the Americans included in the helicopter armament system either slightly modified versions of the conventional 7.62-mm M60 infantry machine gun, or light 20-mm M24A1 aircraft cannons and 12.7-mm Browning M2 heavy machine guns. However, neither infantry machine guns nor conventional cannon and machine gun installations made it possible to obtain the density of fire required for aircraft weapons.

Therefore, in the early 1960s, the General Electric company proposed fundamentally new sample aircraft machine gun using the Gatling principle. The six-barreled Minigun was developed based on the proven design of the M61 cannon and looked very much like its smaller copy. The rotating block of barrels was driven by an external electric drive, powered by three 12-volt batteries. The ammunition used was a standard 7.62 mm NATO screw cartridge (7.62×51).

The rate of fire from a machine gun could be variable and usually ranged from 2000 to 4000–6000 rounds per minute, but if necessary could be reduced to 300 rounds per minute.

Production of the M134 Minigun began in 1962 at the General Electric plant in Burlington, where the Vulcan gun was also produced.

Structurally, the M134 machine gun consists of a barrel block, a receiver, a rotor block and a bolt block. Six 7.62 mm barrels are inserted into a rotary block, and each of them is locked by rotating 180 degrees. The barrels are connected to each other by special clips that protect them from displacement and are also designed to reduce vibration of the barrels when firing. The receiver is a one-piece casting, inside of which there is a rotating rotor unit. It also houses the receiver, mounting pins and control handle. On the inner surface of the receiver there is an elliptical groove into which the bolt rollers fit.

The rotor block is the main element of the weapon. It is mounted in the receiver using ball bearings. The front of the rotor block holds six barrels. In the side parts of the rotor there are six grooves into which six gates are placed. Each groove has an S-shaped cutout, which is intended for cocking the firing pin and firing a shot. The barrel bore is locked by turning the bolt head. The role of the extractor is played by the combat larva and the bolt stem.

The drummer is spring-loaded and has a special protrusion that interacts with an S-shaped cutout on the rotor block. The valves, in addition to translational movement along the grooves of the rotor block, rotate together with the rotor.

The machine gun mechanisms operate as follows. Pressing the trigger button on the left side of the control handle causes the rotor unit with barrels to rotate in a counterclockwise direction (as viewed from the breech of the weapon). As soon as the rotor begins to spin, the roller of each bolt is driven by an elliptical groove on the inner surface of the receiver. As a result, the shutters move along the grooves of the rotor block, alternately capturing the cartridge from the feed fingers of the receiver. Then, under the action of the roller, the bolt sends the cartridge into the chamber. The bolt head, interacting with a groove in the bolt, rotates and locks the barrel. The firing pin is cocked under the action of the S-shaped groove and, in the extreme forward position of the bolt, is released, firing a shot.

The shot is fired from the barrel, which is in a position corresponding to the 12 o'clock position on the clock hand.

The elliptical groove in the receiver has a special profile that does not allow unlocking until the bullet leaves the barrel and the pressure in the barrel reaches a safe value. After this, the bolt roller, moving in the groove of the receiver, returns the bolt back, unlocking the barrel. When the bolt moves backward, it removes the spent cartridge case, which is reflected from the receiver. When the rotor unit rotates 360 degrees, the automation cycle repeats.

The machine gun's ammunition capacity is usually 1,500–4,000 rounds connected by a link belt. If the length of the hanging tape is long enough, an additional drive is installed to supply cartridges to the weapon. It is possible to use a linkless ammunition supply scheme.

Helicopter weapon systems using the M134 were extremely varied. The “Minigun” could be installed in the opening of the helicopter’s sliding side door, and on remote-controlled triangular installations (in the bow, as on the AH-1 “Hugh Cobra”, or on the side pylons, as on the UH-1 “Huey”), and in fixed hanging containers. The M134 was equipped with multi-purpose UH-1, UH-60, light reconnaissance OH-6 Keyus, OH-58A Kiowa and fire support helicopters AN-1, AN-56, ASN-47. During the Vietnam War, there were cases when the Minigun was converted into an easel weapon in the field.

In the US Air Force, the 7.62-mm Minigun machine gun was used to arm light attack aircraft such as the A-1 Skyraider and A-37 Dragonfly, intended for counter-insurgency operations. In addition, it was equipped with fire support aircraft special purpose"Ganship", which are converted military transport aircraft (S-47, S-119, S-130), equipped with an entire artillery battery, including a 105-mm infantry howitzer, a 40-mm cannon, a 20-mm Vulcan cannon and "Miniguns." Firing from the Gunship's on-board weapons is carried out not as usual - along the course of the aircraft, but perpendicular to the direction of flight ().

In 1970–1971 a small-caliber modification of the Minigun was created chambered for a 5.56 mm caliber cartridge. The XM214 machine gun also had an external electric drive, providing a rate of fire of 2000–3000 rounds per minute and resembled a smaller copy of the M134. However, this sample did not turn out to be as successful as its prototype, and was not further developed.

The Minigun design with a rotating block of barrels was used to create machine gun modules for more than large caliber. In the mid-1980s, General Electric developed a new 12.7 mm aircraft multi-barreled machine gun, designated Gecal-50. The machine gun is designed in two versions: six-barreled (basic) and three-barrel. The maximum rate of fire is 4000 rounds per minute with link feed and 8000 with linkless feed. Shooting is carried out with standard 12.7 mm American and NATO cartridges with high-explosive fragmentation incendiary, armor-piercing incendiary and practical bullets. Unlike the Minigun, the Gecal-50 is used not only to arm helicopters, but also ground combat vehicles.

To the USSR for replacement heavy machine gun A-12.7, since the early 1950s was the only example small arms helicopters (Mi-4, Mi-6, Mi-8 and Mi-24A), designers TsKIB SOO B.A. Borzov and P.G. Yakushev created a new multi-barreled machine gun. The sample, designated YakB-12.7, entered service in 1975 ().

The YakB-12.7, like the Minigun, had a rotating block of four barrels, providing a rate of fire of 4000–45000 rounds per minute. Special two-bullet cartridges 1SL and 1SLT were developed for the machine gun, but conventional 12.7 mm ammunition with B-32 and BZT-44 bullets can also be used for firing. The YakB-12.7 could be installed in the NSPU-24 bow mobile installations of Mi-24B, V and D combat helicopters, as well as in the GUV-8700 suspended installations (Mi-24, Ka-50 and Ka-52).

Today, machine guns have given way on board combat helicopters to automatic cannons of 25–30 mm caliber, often unified with the cannon armament of infantry fighting vehicles. This is due to the fact that in order to destroy enemy armored vehicles on the battlefield, fire support helicopters required more powerful weapon than machine gun installations. In action tactics army aviation new concepts appeared: “aerial combat between helicopters”, “aerial combat between a helicopter and an airplane”, which also required an increase in the firepower of helicopters.

However, it is too early to talk about the demise of aircraft machine gun weapons. There are several areas of combat use of multi-barrel aircraft machine guns where they have no competition.

Firstly, it is the armament of special forces aviation intended for reconnaissance, sabotage, search and rescue and anti-terrorism operations. Light multi-barreled machine gun of 7.62–12.7 mm caliber – ideal and high here effective remedy to combat unprotected enemy personnel and for self-defense tasks. Since operations of this kind are often carried out behind enemy lines, the interchangeability of ammunition for aircraft and infantry weapons is also important.

The second task is self-defense. For this purpose, transport-landing, multi-purpose, reconnaissance, search and rescue helicopters are armed with machine guns, for which fire support is not the main task. Multi-barreled machine guns can be used not only in aviation, but also on ground vehicles ( anti-aircraft system"Avenger" with a 12.7-mm Gecal-50 machine gun), as well as for the protection of ships and vessels.

And finally, a multi-barreled machine gun can be successfully used for installation on light training and combat trainer aircraft carrying a limited combat load. By the way, many developing countries that do not have the opportunity to purchase modern, expensive combat aircraft are showing great interest in purchasing such aircraft. Equipped with light weapons, they are used as fighters and attack aircraft.

Comparative tactical and technical characteristics of the M61A1 cannon and the M134 Minigun machine gun

Characteristic	М81А1 "Volcano"	M134 "Minigun"
Year of adoption
Caliber, mm
Number of trunks
Initial velocity of the projectile (bullet), m/s
Projectile (bullet) mass, g
Muzzle energy, kJ
Mass of a second salvo, kg/s
Rate of fire, rpm
Specific power, kW/kg
Weight, kg
Vitality (number of shots)

FROM THE EDITORIAL OF THE MAGAZINE

An inexperienced reader may have the opinion that Russia lags behind the West in the development of multi-barreled rapid-fire small arms. However, this is not the case. Back in 1937, the Kovrov Arms Plant launched serial production of 7.62-mm single-barreled Savin-Norov machine guns, firing 3,000 rounds per minute. The single-barrel 7.62 mm machine gun, developed by designer Yurchenko and produced at the same plant in a small series, had a rate of fire of 3600 rounds per minute.

During World War II, the German army used the MG-42 infantry machine gun, which had a rate of fire of 1,400 rounds per minute. The 7.62-mm ShKAS aircraft machine gun, which was then in service with the Red Army, allowed it to fire 1,600 rounds per minute. The popularity of this machine gun was facilitated by the assertiveness of its authors and the personal sympathy of Stalin and Voroshilov for them. In fact, the ShKAS machine gun was not the best rapid-fire machine gun of those times. According to the automation scheme, this is the most common, but forced to the limit sample. Its rate of fire was limited by the problem of “unloading”*. Unlike the ShKAS, the Savin-Norov and Yurchenko machine guns were designed taking into account a high rate of fire, and the problem of “unloading” practically did not concern them.

To the beginning of World War II aviation weapons caliber 7.62 mm was considered ineffective. Soviet fighters of that era were equipped with automatic cannons of 23, 37 and 45 mm calibers. The aircraft of the German Luftwaffe were armed with three types of powerful 30-mm cannons. American Cobra fighters - 37 mm automatic cannon.

Multi-barreled weapons, characterized by a rotating block of barrels, were created in the middle of the 19th century by the American Gatling. As time passed, Gatling-type small arms were revived by Soviet designers in the mid-thirties, in particular by Kovrov gunsmith I.I. Slostin. In 1936, a 7.62-mm machine gun was created with an eight-barreled barrel block, which was rotated by gases removed from the barrels. The rate of fire of the Slostin machine gun reached 5000 rounds per minute.

At the same time, Tula designer M.N. Blum developed a machine gun with a block of 12 barrels. Soviet models of multi-barreled weapons were distinguished by the fact that instead of an external manual or electric drive, they were driven by powder gases vented from the bores. Then this direction was abandoned by our designers, since the military showed no interest in it.

In the second half of the fifties, the NIISPVA (Research Institute of Small and Cannon Weapons of Aviation) received an American open magazine with a short message about a certain experimental American model of 20 mm weapons. It was also reported there that when firing in bursts, individual shots are completely indistinguishable. This information was regarded as a foreign attempt to revive the Gatling system at a modern level. Soviet gunsmiths - designer Vasily Petrovich Gryazev and scientist Arkady Grigorievich Shipunov, then twenty-six-year-old leading engineers, and now academicians and professors, began to create a domestic analogue. At the same time, they theoretically substantiated that such a gas-operated weapon would be much lighter than an American electric weapon. Practice has proven the validity of this assumption.

A captured American Vulcan air gun (20 mm) arrived from Vietnam. We were convinced from experience that in comparison with our more powerful six-barreled AO-19 (23 mm), the American Vulcan looked like a bulky crocodile.

V.P. Gryazev and A.G. Shipunov developed new models of 23-mm and 30-mm multi-barreled guns, creating various versions of them - aviation, sea and land transportable.

Only one helicopter-mounted four-barreled electric machine gun was created in the USSR for the 7.62 mm rifle cartridge - GShG-7.62. Its sole designer is the youth friend of the author of this expert assessment, Evgeniy Borisovich Glagolev, the leading designer of the Tula KBP.

Military customers never showed any interest in creating an infantry version of such a weapon.

The record development of weapons with a rotating barrel block belongs to the senior engineer of NII-61 Yu.G. Zhuravlev. His mock-up of a 30-mm air cannon with a six-barrel block drive jet engine showed a rate of fire of 16 thousand rounds per minute! True, the barrel block could not withstand this regime. The centrifugal force of the spinning block tore it apart already on the 20th shot.

Along with this, I would like to note that the opinion of the magazine’s editors does not entirely coincide with the opinion of the author of the article.

Expert consultant Dmitry Shiryaev

* “Uncartridgement” – dismantling or deformation of a cartridge as a result of impacts and inertial overloads when it moves within the weapon.

Work on the creation of a multi-barreled machine gun began in the 40s of the twentieth century. This type of weapon, with the highest rate of fire and high density of fire, was developed as a weapon for tactical jet fighters of the US Air Force.

The prototype for the creation of the first standard six-barreled M61 Vulcan was the German 12-barrel Fokker-Leimberger aircraft machine gun, the design of which was based on the Gatling revolving battery design. Using this scheme, a perfectly balanced design of a multi-barreled machine gun with a block of rotating barrels was created, while all the necessary operations were carried out in one revolution of the block.

The Vulcan M61 was developed in 1949 and adopted by the American Air Force in 1956. The first aircraft in the fuselage of which was built six-barreled machine gun M61 Vulcan became the F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber.

Design features of the M61 Vulcan gun

The M61 Vulcan is a six-barreled aircraft machine gun (cannon) with an air-cooled barrel and ammunition with a 20 x 102 mm cartridge with an electric capsule ignition type.

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Six-barreled ammunition supply system Vulcan machine gun without a link, from a cylindrical magazine whose capacity is 1000 rounds. The machine gun and the magazine are connected by two conveyor feeds, in which the spent cartridges are returned back to the magazine using a returnable assembly flow.

Conveyor belts are located in elastic guide sleeves with a total length of 4.6 meters.

The entire array of cartridges in the magazine moves along its axis, but only the central guide rotor, made in the shape of a spiral, rotates, between the turns of which the ammunition is placed. When firing, two cartridges are synchronizedly removed from the magazine, and two spent cartridges are placed in it on the reverse side, which are then placed on the conveyor.

The firing mechanism has an external drive circuit with a power of 14.7 kW. This type of drive does not require the installation of a gas regulator and is not afraid of misfires.

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The ammunition load can be: caliber, fragmentation, armor-piercing incendiary, fragmentation incendiary, sub-caliber.

Video: shooting from a Vulcan machine gun

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Mounted aircraft mounts for the M61 gun

In the early 1960s, General Electric decided to make special mounted containers (mounted cannon mounts) to accommodate the six-barreled 20 mm M61 Vulcan. It was supposed to use them for firing at ground targets with a range of no > 700 m, and equip them with subsonic and supersonic attack aircraft and fighters. In 1963-1964, two PPU variants entered service with the US Air Force - SUU-16/A and SUU-23/A.

The design of the mounted gun mounts of both models has similar overall dimensions of the body (length - 5.05 m, diameter - 0.56 m) and unified 762-mm mounted units, allowing the installation of such a machine gun in the PPU on a variety of models of combat aircraft. The corresponding difference in the SUU-23/A installation is the presence of a visor above the receiver block.

The SUU-16/A PPU uses an aircraft turbine powered by an incoming air flow as a mechanical drive for spinning and accelerating the barrel block of the Vulcan machine gun. The full ammunition load consists of 1200 shells, the weight when equipped is 785 kg, the weight without equipment is 484 kg.

The drive of the SUU-23/A installation for accelerating the barrels is an electronic starter, the ammunition load consists of 1200 shells, the weight when equipped is 780 kg, the weight without equipment is 489 kg.

The machine gun in the hinged container is fixed and fixed motionless. An on-board fire adjustment system or a visual shooting sight is used as a sight when shooting. Extraction of spent cartridges during firing occurs outside, over the side of the installation.

The main tactical and technical properties of the Vulcan M61

• The total length of the gun is 1875 mm.
• Barrel length - 1524 mm.
• The mass of the M61 Vulcan cannon is 120 kg, with the feed system kit (without cartridges) - 190 kg.
• Rate of fire - 6000 rounds/min. Instances with a firing rate of 4000 rounds/min were produced.
• The initial speed of caliber/sub-caliber projectiles is 1030 / 1100 m/s.
• Muzzle power - 5.3 MW.
• The time to reach the highest rate of fire is 0.2 - 0.3 seconds.
• Vitality - about 50 thousand shots.

The Vulcan M61 rapid-fire submachine gun is currently installed on fighters - Eagle (F-15), Corsair (F-104, A-7D, F-105D), Tomcat (F-14A, A- 7E), "Phantom" (F-4F).

Automatic device - clock Nerf Vulcan

A student from Germany, Michelson, using the popular toy blaster gun Nerf of the Vulcan system, designed a rather funny, but very useful automatic device, perfect for protecting the area.

With the help of several additional drives, conventional electronics and computer programs, the Nerf guard weapon can automatically recognize, track a target, and then hit it. With all this, the owner of the weapon can be in shelter.

The trigger mechanism of the mechanized Nerf Vulcan device is connected to a laptop and hardware-software (integrated circuit) Arduino Uno with processors. It is triggered when a web camera tracking and scanning the area around it detects the movement of an unnecessary object. In this case, the webcam is installed on the front panel of the laptop, and the computer program is configured for movement.

Since the advent of firearms, the military has been concerned with increasing their rate of fire. Since the 15th century, gunsmiths have 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 ribodeckens. However, the name “rapid-firing” did not suit such systems: although it was possible to simultaneously fire a salvo from large quantity barrels, 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 were revived again - thanks to a man who, with the best intentions, wanted to reduce combat losses

In the second half of the 19th century, the military was extremely puzzled by the decline in the effectiveness of artillery against infantry. For the usual shot with buckshot, it was necessary to bring the enemy within 500-700 m, and the new long range rifles, which entered service with the infantry, simply did not allow this to be done. However, the invention of the unitary cartridge marked a new direction in the development of firearms: increasing the rate of fire. As a result, several options for solving the problem appeared almost simultaneously. The French gunsmith de Reffy designed a mitrailleuse, consisting of 25 fixed barrels of 13 mm caliber, capable of firing up to 5-6 salvoes per minute. In 1869, the Belgian inventor Montigny improved this system, increasing the number of barrels to 37. But mitrailleuses were very bulky and were not particularly widespread. A fundamentally different solution was required.

Good Doctor

Richard Gatling was born on September 12, 1818 in Hartford County (Connecticut) into a farmer's family. Since childhood, he was interested in inventing, helping his father repair agricultural equipment. Richard received his first patent (for a seeder) at the age of 19. But, despite his hobby, he decided to become a doctor and in 1850 he graduated from medical college in Cincinnati. However, the passion for invention won out. In the 1850s, Gatling invented several mechanical seeders and the propeller new system, but the most famous invention did it 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, thanks to its rate of fire, would allow one person to replace a hundred riflemen 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 included the following words: “This man had no equal in kindness and warmth. He believed that if the war became even more terrible, the people would finally lose the desire to resort to weapons.”)

Despite the development of technology and materials, the operating principle of the Gatling gun has not changed. The same block of barrels 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 an infantry weapon is very impractical... The Terminator, apparently, always had a portable diesel engine with him power station.

Gatling's merit did not lie in the fact that he was the first to make multi-barrel weapons - as already noted, multi-barreled systems were no longer a novelty by that time. And it’s not that he arranged the barrels “revolver-style” (this design was widely used in hand-held firearms). Gatling designed an original mechanism for feeding cartridges and ejecting cartridges. A block of several barrels was rotated around its axis, under the influence of gravity the cartridge from the tray entered the barrel at the top point, then a shot was fired using the firing pin, and with further rotation from the barrel at the bottom point, again under the influence of gravity, the cartridge case was extracted. The drive of this mechanism was manual; using 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. At first, mechanical reloading was more reliable than automatic reloading: weapons of early designs constantly jammed. But even this simple mechanics ensured a fairly high rate of fire for those times. The barrels overheated and became contaminated with soot (which was a significant problem since black powder was widely used at the time) much slower than single-barrel weapons.

Machine guns

The Gatling system usually consisted of 4 to 10 barrels of 12-40 mm caliber and allowed firing 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 was superior to conventional artillery pieces. In addition, the Gatling system was quite cumbersome and was usually placed on carriages from light guns, so it was considered artillery weapons, and it was often not entirely correctly called a “shotgun” (in fact, this weapon is correctly called a machine gun). Before the Petersburg Convention of 1868, which prohibited the use of explosive shells weighing less than 1 pound, there were large-caliber Gatling guns that fired explosive shells and shrapnel.

Was in America 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 the successful demonstration, Gatling failed to receive an order. True, some copies of the Gatling machine gun did see a little battle at the end of the war, proving themselves to be quite good. After the war, in 1866, the American government nevertheless placed an order for 100 copies of the Gatling gun, which were produced by Colt under the Model 1866 label. Such guns were installed on ships, and they were also adopted by the armies of other countries. British troops used Gatling guns in 1883 to quell a rebellion in Port Said, Egypt, where the weapon earned a fearsome reputation. Russia also became interested in it: the Gatling gun was adapted here by Gorlov and Baranovsky for the Berdanov cartridge and put into service. Later, the Gatling system was repeatedly improved and modified by the Swede Nordenfeld, the American Gardner, and the British Fitzgerald. Moreover, we were talking not only about machine guns, but also about small-caliber cannons - a typical example is the 37-mm five-barreled Hotchkiss gun, adopted by the Russian fleet in 1881 (a 47-mm version was also produced).

But the monopoly on 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 pushed the Gatlings into the background, and then completely forced them out of the armies. The new single-barrel machine guns had a significantly higher rate of fire, were easier to manufacture and less bulky.

Gatling guns in the air The pilot can change the rate of fire of the GAU-8 gun depending on the task. In the “low” rate of fire mode it is 2000 rounds/min, when switching to the “high” mode it is 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 weapons of the new jet fighters, which migrated from their piston ancestors. Aircraft of that time were armed with entire batteries of several barrels with calibers ranging from 12.7 to 37 mm. All this was done in order to increase the second salvo: after all, a continuously maneuvering enemy aircraft was kept in sight for only a fraction of a second, and to defeat it it was necessary to create a huge density of fire in a short time. At the same time, single-barrel guns almost reached the “design” limit of rate of fire - the barrel overheated too quickly. An unexpected solution came naturally: the American corporation General Electric began experiments with... old Gatling guns taken from museums back in the late 1940s. The block of barrels was spun by an electric motor, and the 70-year-old gun immediately produced a rate of fire of more than 2000 rounds per minute (interestingly, there is evidence of 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 an entire era in the arms industry - the M61A1 Vulcan.

When recharging, the GAU-8 module is completely removed from the aircraft. This significantly increases the ease of maintenance of the gun. The rotation of the barrel block is carried out by two hydraulic motors operating from the general hydraulic system of the aircraft.

The Vulcan is a six-barreled gun weighing 190 kg (without ammunition), 1800 mm long, 20 mm caliber and 6000 rounds per minute. The Vulcan automation operates using 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 along a special sleeve. Spent cartridges are returned to the magazine. This decision was made after an incident with the F-104 Starfighter, when spent cartridges ejected by the cannon were thrown back by the air flow and severely damaged the fuselage of the aircraft. The enormous rate of fire of the gun also led to unforeseen consequences: the vibrations that arose during firing forced a change in the rate of fire in order to eliminate resonance of the entire structure. The recoil of the gun also brought a surprise: in one of the test flights of the ill-fated F-104, during 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 a light and reliable weapon that has served faithfully for decades. M61 guns are used on many aircraft and in anti-aircraft complex Mk.15 Phalanx, 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, becoming the most famous among all “Gatlings”. The machine gun is designed for installation on helicopters and ships.

Most powerful gun with a rotating barrel block was the American GAU-8 Avenger, designed for installation on the A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft. The 30-mm seven-barreled cannon is designed to fire primarily at ground targets. It uses two types of ammunition: high-explosive fragmentation shells PGU-13/B and armor-piercing PGU-14/B with an increased initial speed with a depleted uranium core. Since the gun and the aircraft were originally designed specifically for each other, firing from the GAU-8 does not lead to severe disruption of the A-10's controllability. When designing the aircraft, it was also taken into account that powder gases from the gun should not enter the engines. aircraft(this can lead to their stopping) - special reflectors are 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's engines. Ignition devices are switched on automatically when fire is opened. At the same time, according to the instructions, after each ammunition fired, the A-10 engines must be washed to remove soot. Although during combat use the gun did not show high efficiency, the psychological effect of use was great - when a stream of fire literally pours from the sky, it is very, very scary...

The AK-630 automatic cannon turret is uninhabited. The gun is aimed remotely using electric hydraulic drives. The AK-630 is a universal and effective “means of self-defense” for our warships, allowing protection from a variety of misfortunes, be it anti-ship missile, Somali pirates or a sea mine that surfaced (as in the film “Peculiarities of National Fishing”)...

In the USSR, work on rapid-fire guns began with the development of shipborne short-range air defense systems. The result was the creation of a family of anti-aircraft guns designed at the Tula Precision Instrumentation Design Bureau. 30-mm AK-630 cannons 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.

Our country realized late the need to have an analogue of the Vulcan in service, so almost ten years passed between the tests of the GSh-6−23 cannon and the decision to adopt it for 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 rotation of the barrels is carried out by standard PPL squibs (and not electric or hydraulic drives, as in American analogues), which made it possible significantly increase the reliability of the system and simplify its design. After the squib is fired and the first projectile is fired, the barrel block spins up using the energy of the powder gases removed from the barrel channels. The cannon can be fed with shells either linkless or link-based.

The 30-mm GSh-6−30 gun was designed on the basis of the AK-630 shipborne anti-aircraft gun. With a rate of fire of 4,600 rounds per minute, it is capable of sending a 16-kilogram salvo at a target in 0.25 seconds. According to eyewitnesses, a 150-round burst from the GSh-6−30 resembled a clap of thunder more than a burst, and the plane was enveloped in a bright fiery glow. This gun, which had excellent accuracy, was installed on MiG-27 fighter-bombers instead of the standard GSh-23 double-barreled gun. The use of the GSh-6−30 against ground targets forced the pilots to exit the dive sideways in order to protect themselves from fragments of their own shells, which rose to a height of 200 m. The huge recoil force also caused criticism: unlike its American “colleague” A-10, the MiG- 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 pilot’s cockpit, the instrument panel fell off - the pilot had to return to the airfield, holding it in his hands.

Firearms Gatling schemes are practically the limit of fire rate of mechanical weapon systems. Despite the fact that modern high-speed single-barrel guns use liquid barrel cooling, which significantly reduces its overheating, systems with a rotating barrel block are still more suitable for long-term firing. The effectiveness of the Gatling scheme makes it possible to successfully carry out the tasks assigned to the weapon, and this weapon rightfully occupies a place in the arsenals of all armies of the world. In addition, this is one of the most spectacular and cinematic types of weapons. Firing a Gatling gun in itself is an excellent special effect, and the menacing appearance of the barrels spinning before firing made these guns the most memorable weapon in Hollywood action films and computer games.