From the machine gun reading program. Popular wisdom has it that the pre-Cold War U.S. military was, in times of peace, dominated by bureaucrats that rejected any innovation in weaponry or tactics. There’s some truth to this, but only some; in most cases the bureaucrats had pretty good reasons for doing what they did, and their actions were probably correct.


In Bullets and Bureaucrats author David Armstrong considers the specific case of the machine gun, starting with the American Civil War. The Ordnance Bureau was singularly resistant to any new weaponry – probably correctly, as the problems of supply and logistics made it desirable to arm units with identical weapons, even if there were better ones available – i.e., units with rifles that all took the same ammunition and used interchangeable parts were better than units armed with a wild assortment of firearms, even if some of the wild assortment were considerable improvements on an issue Springfield muzzle loader. That didn’t stop inventors from deluging the War Department with samples; a few of these were tested and fewer still made it to combat. Armstrong first discusses the Ager “Coffee Mill” gun, which had the advantage that the inventor was politically connected. This was a single barrel weapon on a light wheeled mount with a rotary breechblock feed from a hopper (hence the “coffee mill” name). The Ager turns up in a lot of weapon histories; I’d seen pictures of it before but was surprised to find Armstrong was able to find an occasion when it was actually used successfully in combat; a pair of Agers privately purchased by Colonel Geary of the 28th Pennsylvania Volunteers cut up Confederate cavalry near Middleburg, Virginia on March 29th, 1862. However, Geary returned the Agers as unsatisfactory a month later, complaining about poor workmanship (which was just one of the problems; because fixed ammunition wasn’t available yet the Ager used paper cartridges individually loaded into a steel case and individually primed. The single barrel overheated on sustained firing, and the gas seal mechanism was poor, limiting the range).


Two multiple barrel guns were tested; the 25-barrel Billinghurst and Requa “battery gun” and the 85-barrel Vandenburg “volley gun”; both turned out to be amazingly inaccurate, with only a small fraction of the bullets hitting a target at 600 yards (Armstrong doesn’t speculate but I imagine the problem was getting all the barrels aligned) and difficult to maintain (the Vandenburg required 9 hours for an armorer to clean it after sustained firing). The final gun tested was the Gatling; the Model 1865 performed very well (the test for durability is instructive; first two handfuls of “coarse beach sand” were thrown into the mechanism and the Gatling was fired for 90 seconds without cleaning; then the Gatling was wiped free of all oil, soaked in ammonium chloride for ten minutes, allowed to sit outside for two days, then again test fired). By 1865 there wasn’t that much use for a new weapon, but the Army still ordered 100 Gatlings, fifty each of 0.50 and I inch (the 1” gun had been developed for buckshot cartridges, and could put a pretty impressive amount of lead downrange for a hand-cranked weapon). The weapon was still seen as primarily defensive artillery, though; the guns were not intended for field service but for flank defense in coastal fortifications. The military was not exactly dismissive of machine guns; the general attitude seemed to be “Wow, these Gatlings are impressive. What do we do with them?” and the answer turned out to be cover them in grease and put them in storage. Armstrong has tracked a couple of cases where Gatlings were successfully used in the Indian Wars, but as artillery – long range firing at groups. (Armstrong does dismiss the popular meme “If only Custer had taken his Gatlings to the Little Big Horn” by noting the tactical situation there was completely unsuitable for what was essentially field artillery). There’s one interesting note; Major Alfred Gibbs noted that the standard Gatling mounting was much too heavy to keep up with cavalry; he suggested a carriage based on the chassis of a standard Army ambulance. The Army ambulance was a four-wheel vehicle, and I have a mental image of a cruciform platform with wheels at the corners and a Gatling in the middle with all-around traverse. Unfortunately there’s no picture or detailed description of what Gibbs’ mounting would have looked like and I may be projecting my own ideas backwards. In any event, Gatlings in U.S. Army service remained on artillery carriages.


The Army continued to replace its Gatlings as the issue rifle caliber changed (the 1” Gatling was abandoned), leading eventually to the last military version, the Model 1895, chambered for .30-40 Krag. The leads us to one of the most interesting personalities in the history of machine guns in the U.S. Army, Lieutenant (later Captain) John Henry “Gatling Gun” Parker. Parker comes across as sort of a machine gun equivalent of Billy Mitchell; an advocate of new weaponry who had a singular talent for rubbing the brass the wrong way. Parker had entered the Army when “there was more time available than work to do” and was assigned to train a Gatling gun crew more or less to keep him busy. He wrote a number of papers on Gatling gun use and employment that he forwarded to the War Department; they were apparently ignored, but at least officers heard his name. One of his particular ideas was using massed Gatling guns in offense, contrary to the prevailing doctrine. When war with Spain broke out in 1898, Parker was assigned to the Provisional Gatling Gun Detachment under V Corps – apparently to get rid of him, since he didn’t get transport orders to go to Cuba. Parker demonstrated his talent for creative interpretation of orders; he had also been detailed to do ammunition security, thus he and his Gatlings got on board the transport Cherokee as an unofficial “ammunition escort” and made it to the landing at Daiquiri. The Spanish-American war, like the Civil War, was another case of American inventive ingenuity outpacing the military’s capability to absorb new weaponry; various new weapons had been foisted off on the Army and the Army turned around and foisted them off on Lieutenant Parker. Thus Parker ended up with three Gatlings, two “potato diggers”, and a Sims-Dudley pneumatic dynamite cannon; in the further spirit of officialdom not knowing quite what to do with him, Parker got orders to take his weapon assortment and “go into action at the best point you can find”. This turned out to be the base of San Juan Hill, and Parker put his ideas about the offensive use of machine guns into action by firing at Spanish trenches over the heads of the dismounted 1st Volunteer Cavalry as they were scrambling up. This turned out to be singularly successful; the Spaniards broke and ran and Parker was “mentioned in despatches”. Parker also became friends with the commander of the 1st Volunteer Cavalry (better known as the Rough Riders), Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, a connection that stood him good stead later on.


After the war, Parker continued to deluge the War Department with memoranda and reports advocating machine guns; these were more or less politely ignored. But he also went public, with the book History of the Gatling Gun Detachment Fifth Army Corps , At Santiago, With a Few Unvarnished Truths Concerning That Expedition. This was bad enough, but then Parker wrote an article for the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States. To illustrate his argument that artillery could not operate in the open within machine gun range, Parker stated that an American artillery in the front lines had only fired three rounds before being “compelled to seek safety in precipitate and disorderly flight”. Parker was forced to retract the magazine article but he’s said something nearly identical in his book, which was grounds for a court martial; however a court martial would have required investigation of the whole thing and would have been unpaid advertisement for the book; Parker was therefore merely the recipient of a written reprimand.


That turned out not to be enough to get Parker to shut up, and he continued pushing for machine guns. Unfortunately, much like Billy Mitchell and his advocacy of level bombers for coast defense, Parker’s ideas for machine guns actually weren’t that good. What Parker wanted was a whole separate branch of service – i.e., the Army would have Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery and Machine Guns. (An individual gun was a section; three sections in a company, three companies in a battalion, three battalions in a regiment, three regiments in a brigade; he expected the actual maneuver unit to be the battalion). He also advocated machine guns as indirect fire weapons and developed a complicated and expensive sight system to allow this (which was unsuccessful; forward observers couldn’t observe the fall of bullets unless ground in the target area was dry and vegetation free). Parker designed a special cart for his guns – there are no pictures of this but it’s probably somewhat similar to various wheeled Maxim gun mounts that turned up at about this time. Parker’s idea for tactical employment of machine guns was similar to the French doctrine for the rapid fire 75mm cannon: infantry would advance until they began taking casualties from enemy rifle fire; then the machine gun unit would move forward and saturate the enemy lines with fire and the advance would continue (Parker, like the French, didn’t consider what would happen if the enemy also had machine guns or rapid fire cannon). Then Parker presented a formal presentation copy of his ideas to President Roosevelt.


That probably should have been the kiss of death to Parker’s career – an Army captain just doesn’t send military stuff directly to the President - but Roosevelt didn’t let that happen. He did, however, direct the Army to figure out exactly how machine guns should be used. By now the standard machine gun was the Model 1904 Maxim, a water-cooled tripod mounted weapon (the Army had kept buying new machine guns without any real idea of what they would do with them. The eventual decision was to take machine guns out of the artillery and attach them directly to infantry and cavalry units, with one machine gun platoon per battalion. That was more or less how machine guns would eventually end up in WWI (although there were a lot more of them by then); thus by 1909 the Army had a serviceable machine gun and a reasonable tactical doctrine to go with it.


It didn’t last, unfortunately. The sticking point was the cavalry. When the 1904 Maxim had a full load of water, it and its tripod weighed well over 200 pounds; that took a pack mule. Ammunition went on two more pack mules. The cavalry complained that it didn’t want to be tied down to the speed of a pack mule. Thus the 1904 Maxim was replaced by the Benét-Mercié M1909. There were all sorts of problems with the Benét-Mercié (aka Hotchkiss). It was light enough to be carried by a single man, true – but it was so light that it was uncontrollable on the original bipod mount; this had to be replaced by a tripod which negated the original portability advantage. It was air cooled; when it was originally tested against the M1904 Maxim, the test was limited to two minutes of sustained fire (it was later claimed this test was rigged). When the Benét-Mercié was fired for longer periods, the barrel began to overheat and warp, and eventually cartridges began to “cook off” in the chamber. Feed was from a 30-round clip unlike the canvas belt on the Maxim; this made for frequent pauses in fire and the clips could be inserted improperly, jamming the gun. The Army eventually recognized these problems and determined to go back to a water-cooled Vickers; however by the time this was decided (1916) all the Vickers guns in the world were going elsewhere. Thus when the first US units arrived in France in 1917 they were still equipped with Benét-Merciés.


This is an interesting, but not exciting read; it’s hard to make details of military procurement decisions fascinating literature. However, history of why and how those decisions were made is enlightening. I would have liked a few more illustrations, especially of some of the more esoteric machine gun designs. References are extensive and easy to use (endnotes by chapter). The bibliography is also extensive, with a lot of pretty obscure documents; Armstrong must have spent a lot of time rummaging through dusty military archives. Parker’s book is available for free for the Kindle; I’ll have to pick it.
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