American Machine Guns 1904-1914
Battalion: An Organizational Study of the United States Infantry
The estate of the late John Sayen has graciously given the Tactical Notebook permission to serialize his study of the organizational evolution of American infantry battalions. The author’s preface and the previous section of this book may be found via the following links:
Until 1906, the United States infantry relied for its firepower almost solely upon its rifles or muskets. The introduction of machineguns would not only have a profound effect on the infantry’s firepower but would also change its structural configuration. During the Civil War several different models of machinegun had been tried but all proved to be heavy, expensive, slow firing, and unreliable. Nevertheless, the Army Ordnance Department purchased about 100 Gatling guns in 1865 and 50 more in 1874. These Gatlings spent much of their service lives in storage, as there was great uncertainty over what to do with them. Their potential as close defense weapons for the nation’s permanent (mostly coastal) fortresses was recognized, however. Because the artillery regiments garrisoned those fortresses and because Gatlings corresponded in size and weight to light artillery pieces it seemed logical that the Gatlings should be artillery weapons. At about the same time, the French army adopted a Gatling “look-alike” called the Montigny Mitrailleuse. Like the Americans, the French assigned it to their artillery. During the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War the Mitrailleuses stayed back with the French field guns and were thus easily spotted, outranged, and neutralized by the German field artillery. However, on the rare occasions when they deployed forward with the French infantry the Mitrailleuses performed very successfully. This fact, however, was generally overlooked and conventional wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic held that machineguns were mere “defensive” weapons effective only when protected by a fortress or, at least, when not threatened by enemy artillery. Acting on these conclusions, the US Army tried to employ a few Gatlings against the Plains Indians. However, the mobility penalties imposed by the guns’ size and weight were such that the troops usually left them at home. Interest in the Gatlings thus fizzled and the US Army continued to ignore them until 1898.[1]
Meanwhile, in 1884 Hiram Maxim, an American living in England, patented a design for an entirely new type of machinegun. Unlike earlier weapons that operated through the use of external (usually muscle) power, the Maxim gun harnessed the force of its own recoil. This enabled a single man to fire a Maxim gun twice as fast as a full crew could fire any previous weapon. Six years later in 1890, a Mormon gunsmith named John Moses Browning also patented a machinegun. This one operated by using the energy of the gas generated by the combustion of the propelling charges of its ammunition. Known as the Colt machinegun (after its manufacturer) it was an air-cooled weapon significantly lighter than the water-cooled Maxim. The near simultaneous invention of smokeless powder (1886), rimless cartridge cases, and copper jacketed lead cored bullets made available all of the essential technology that automatic weapons use today. However, the new machineguns still needed many refinements and armies hesitated to invest too heavily in them. The early Maxim and Browning guns were heavy, complex, and delicate and their mechanisms jammed frequently. Firing tests showed them to be even less reliable than the later model Gatlings and the Colts would overheat rapidly since air is a much less efficient cooling medium than water. Disappointed by the results of its own testing of the Colt and Maxim guns, the Army Ordnance Department left it to the US Navy to purchase the 50 Colt guns that became the United States’ armed forces’ first true machineguns. Unfortunately, these weapons were further plagued by problems with the Navy’s unconventional .236 caliber ammunition.[2]
The Army’s first prominent machinegun advocate was First Lieutenant John Henry Parker. Parker commanded a battery of four Gatling guns that operated with some success in Cuba as part of General Shafter’s Fifth Corps. He had worked closely with Lieutenant Colonel Teddy Roosevelt of the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry who enthusiastically endorsed Parker and his guns. Riding on the crest of this success, Parker proposed the formation of an experimental machinegun company that he himself would command. It would be the prototype organization for a machinegun corps that would support the infantry in both attack and defense. However, Parker presented very little factual data to support his conclusions. Worse, his criticisms of the Army’s performance in Cuba (though often justified) were tactless, as were his attacks on the prevailing dogma of the superiority of field artillery over machineguns. The fact that his machinegun corps would be a separate branch of the Army (competing with the others for money and manpower) was also highly objectionable. These factors caused both the War Department and Congress to view his ideas with indifference or hostility. Nevertheless, the Army soon gained additional experience with machineguns in the Philippines and, later, in China. Besides using its own Gatling guns, the Army found it necessary to increase its supply of automatic weapons by borrowing some of the Navy’s Colt machineguns. In China the importance of the machinegun was brought even more forcefully to the Army’s attention when an attack by the 9th Infantry against the walled city of Tientsin was repelled by Chinese machinegun and rifle fire.[3]
In light of these events, the Ordnance Department reluctantly concluded that perhaps the Army could use a few machineguns and it set about procuring some. Naturally, it needed to take its time in order to do a good job so it embarked upon its search for the “perfect weapon” by following the same policy of decisive indecision that had produced the Krag-Jörgensen rifle. This time the results would be even worse. The Department began by buying Model 1895 Colt machineguns chambered for the .30-40 Krag cartridge. These would serve as stopgaps pending the adoption of a standard weapon. After much deliberation, the Department selected, in 1904, a version of the Maxim gun built by Vickers Sons and Maxim (VSM). The Ordnance Department chose the Maxim because its water-based cooling system gave it a superior sustained rate of fire over the air-cooled Colt. Although the test guns performed well, Ordnance Department tinkering soon transformed the production design into a 65-pound monster that fired from an 80-pound tripod. This modified VSM ended up with the dubious distinction of being one of the heaviest tripod-mounted weapons ever devised. Needless to say, it proved unpopular in service. Only 287 were built.[4]
Smarting under this failure, the Ordnance Department began casting about for an alternative. Prodded by the cavalry to opt for a much lighter weapon than the VSM the Department selected the 22-pound, bipod mounted, air cooled, gas operated Benet-Mercie. This weapon emerged as the winner in competitive trials against the VSM gun but only because testing was deliberately structured to minimize the importance of the Benet-Mercie’s inferiority in long-range accuracy and sustained rate of fire. In an army that stressed individual marksmanship and tactical mobility and which mostly fought against poorly armed irregulars the Benet-Mercie’s weak points seemed acceptable. Though the gun was officially adopted as the M1909, actual deliveries did not begin until 1911 and issue to the troops was further delayed by the need to develop pack equipment. Serious testing only began in 1912 and the results were disquieting. The Benet-Mercie guns failed to develop even as much firepower as a group of riflemen of the same size as their crews. Unreliable ammunition feed strips, firing pins, and extractors plus the instability of the bipod mount all contributed to the guns’ ineffectiveness. Although reliable firing pins and extractors became available in 1913, the inaccuracy, slow rates of fire, and overheating problems all persisted. The use of a heavy tripod only partially solved the accuracy problem while detracting considerably from the gun’s mobility. By this time the Ordnance Department had recognized the Benet-Mercie as a disaster and started to search for yet another design. In 1914, it settled on the Vickers machinegun. This was a much-improved redesign of the old VSM, but when the Ordnance Department finally announced its interest in the weapon, Britain was already at war with Germany and needed every available Vickers gun for its own use.[5] Thanks to these Ordnance Department follies the United States would enter the First World War in 1917 without possessing a single modern machinegun.[6]
Meanwhile, as the Army procured its first (albeit, second rate) machineguns, it had to answer the inevitable question of what to do with them. The National Defense Act of 1901 still classified machineguns as artillery weapons but permitted their issue to the infantry and cavalry. Lieutenant Parker, now a captain and lately returned from the Philippines, resumed his advocacy of a machinegun corps. He promised that if a company of this corps were attached to each three-regiment infantry or cavalry brigade, it could provide a machinegun for each rifle company or cavalry troop. Brigadier General J. Franklin Bell, on the other hand, wanted to permanently add a machinegun to each infantry battalion or cavalry squadron. Drawing on his own Philippine experience, he observed that in the decentralized small unit operations that were characteristic of the fighting in those islands, brigade or higher headquarters tended to fill requests for specialized weapons like machineguns very slowly if at all. The fact that more fighting of the same sort was widely anticipated gave General Bell’s comments added weight. The final decision on what to do with machineguns was eventually referred to the Army’s newly organized General Staff. As yet unfamiliar with its duties the Staff moved slowly and carefully considered the opinions of Captain Parker, General Bell, and many others. It concluded that machineguns should not be treated as artillery weapons. They fired the infantry cartridge. Their maximum range did not exceed 2,000 yards. They were substantially smaller and lighter than any field gun. They and their ammunition were readily transportable in the vehicles normally found with infantry and cavalry units. In combat they had proven most successful when deployed with the infantry.[7]
Other key questions, however, still remained. Should the infantry, the cavalry, or a separate machinegun corps man the new machineguns? Should the guns be employed singly or by platoons or companies? How should they be tactically controlled? Many officers were against having machineguns at all. They criticized their heavy use of ammunition, their inferior accuracy per round to that of aimed rifle fire, their mechanical unreliability, and the difficulties of estimating the range from gun to target. The very inappropriateness of some of these objections illustrated the lack of any realistic machinegun performance data or employment concepts that might guide the General Staff in its decisions. The Staff therefore looked at what the European armies were doing. The British had pioneered machinegun technology and had used machineguns in combat in Africa but they had done almost nothing to develop machinegun organization or doctrine. Repelled by their experience with the Montigny Mitrailleuse, the French did not even start to buy machineguns in quantity until 1907 and then only because public opinion forced them to do so. It was the Germans who were doing most of the machinegun doctrinal work. However, even they were buying guns only in small quantities, as they could not decide which model they really wanted. They did, however, organize the guns they had into six-gun company-sized “detachments” (Abteilungen). These largely separate and independent units (16 of them by 1904, but that was in an army of about 180 active infantry regiments) operated mainly under the control of high level commanders, much like Captain Parker’s independent machinegun corps.[8]
While these deliberations were in progress, the Russo-Japanese War broke out in February 1904. It was largely an extended land campaign fought in Manchuria between two European style armies equipped not only with modern small arms and field artillery but also with machineguns. The Russians used the Maxim while the Japanese employed the French designed air-cooled and gas operated Hotchkiss. Unfortunately, the reports of American military attaches sent to observe the fighting omitted important details about machinegun employment, and reached no concrete recommendations or conclusions regarding the new weapons. In general they agreed that machineguns could be very effective at times, especially when used to suddenly increase the volume of fire in a given sector without overcrowding the firing line. However, the Americans criticized the guns’ mechanical reliability. After making similar observations, the European observers were able to reach far more definite conclusions. The British (under Sir Ian Hamilton, who later presided over the Gallipoli disaster) were emphatic about the machineguns’ deadly effectiveness. They credited them with half of all the war’s casualties though they may only have been referring to the later months since very few machineguns had been in use before then.[9] Predictably, the British War Office largely ignored these reports. The Germans and French observers agreed with the British though the French army, like the British, was reluctant to take any action. The Germans, however, promptly redesigned the Maxim gun to reduce its weight as much as possible, and then built it in large numbers as their own Model 1908 machinegun. By 1914 every German active or reserve infantry regiment had its own machinegun company.[10]
It was only in 1906 when the now Major General Bell became Army chief of staff that a decision on how to use the U.S. Army’s machineguns was finally reached. Nearly two thirds of the 195 VSM guns that the Army had received by that time had to be set aside for fortress use or placed in reserve but the rest could be issued to the troops immediately. Bell reasoned that the best way to start would be to organize a provisional machinegun platoon for each infantry or cavalry regiment. Each platoon would consist of three noncommissioned officers and 18 men under a regimental staff officer and it would operate two guns. Since the platoon was too small to handle its own supply and administration, it would be attached to one of its parent regiment’s battalions (or squadrons), which could then provide such support. In maximum strength regiments (such as one of those in the Philippines) the men of the machinegun platoon would all be detailed from the rifle companies of its host battalion. In minimum strength regiments the host battalion would receive enough additional men to form the machinegun platoon. The new organization allowed for training and experimentation at the individual gun crew and platoon level but did not allow for machinegun units of company size or larger. However, in 1908 Captain John Parker (with the help of his friend Theodore Roosevelt) was finally allowed to organize his experimental machinegun company, which would have three officers (Parker had asked for four), 95 men, and six guns (nine in wartime).[11]
Unfortunately, the machinegun platoons were not popular within the United States Army. The number of VSM guns was so small that few soldiers ever saw them. Their complexities made them difficult and time consuming to master and the best men tried to avoid assignment to them. However, it was the decision to allow only 1,000 rounds per gun per year for training purposes that proved fatal both to the effectiveness of the guns and the morale of their crews. This was, of course, a product not just of financial parsimony but also of the prevailing ignorance about what machineguns required. Doubtless many officers, thinking only in terms of training riflemen, would have considered 1,000 rounds per year as a very generous allowance. It might never have occurred to them that a machinegun could fire off 1,000 rounds within a few minutes and that such a small quantity of ammunition would hardly suffice even for gunner familiarization, let alone the achievement any sort of marksmanship proficiency or crew cross training. Officers who complained about the weight of the guns restricting the mobility of their commands rarely had the opportunity to see what the guns could do for them. Machinegun visionaries, especially ambitious and publicity hungry visionaries like John Henry Parker, were looked upon as cranks. The news that Parker’s methods for such things as range finding and the delivery of indirect machinegun fire were not working out well in tests (although they would ultimately prove themselves in World War I) was doubtless received by many with great satisfaction.[12]
The War Department meanwhile, in its 1910 issue of the Field Service Regulations, prescribed a provisional machinegun company of three officers, 108 men, and six machineguns. Each infantry regiment was ordered to organize one. Like the earlier provisional machinegun platoons, the new companies would use officers detailed from the regimental staff and men detailed from the rifle companies. The Army was reluctant to ask Congress for a permanent organization until the provisional one was fully tested. A new Infantry Board, meeting in 1911, continued to examine the problem and concluded that machineguns should be regarded as a separate class of weapon rather than a specific item of equipment. Machineguns were best used in defensive emergencies because once they began firing they would attract so much enemy counterfire that they might soon be put out of action. The old dogma stemming from the French misuse of the Montigny Mitrailleuse was still popular, despite the Russo-Japanese War experience. Now that the much lighter Benet-Mercie was replacing the VSM, the Board gave little thought as to how the Benet-Mercie’s small size and light weight might make it much less conspicuous in the defense and more mobile in the offense. Nevertheless, because the Benet-Mercie was easier to carry the Board did propose a smaller machinegun company with four officers, 83 men, and six guns. Internally, the company would have three platoons of two eight-man gun squads each. The squads could use guns of either the VSM or Benet-Mercie types.[13]
Editor’s Note: The format of the many appendices to this work fit poorly with Substack. For that reason, I have placed them on a PDF file that can be found at Military Learning Library, a website that I maintain.
[1]David A. Armstrong, Bullets and Bureaucrats, the Machinegun and the United States Army 1861-1916 (Westport CT, Greenwood Press 1982) pp. 51-71 and 83-84.
[2]Armstrong op cit pp. 75-78. See also Dolf L. Goldsmith, The Devil’s Paintbrush, Sir Hiram Maxim’s Gun (Toronto Canada, Collector Grade Publications 1993) pp. 257-270.
[3]Armstrong pp. 96-110 and 114-118.
[4]Goldsmith op cit pp. 260-282; Armstrong pp. 125-130.
[5] At about this time Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis of the Automatic Arms Company of Buffalo NY offered the US Army one other machinegun. In 1910 Automatic Arms had hired Lewis, recently retired from the Coast Artillery, to market a machinegun design the rights to which Automatic Arms had just acquired from its inventor Samuel Neal McClean. Lewis revised and considerably improved McClean’s basic design (which later bore Lewis’ name) but the US Army Ordnance Department showed no interest in it. In 1913 Lewis offered the gun to Belgium and England. Both soon recognized its revolutionary potential and built it in great numbers in factories at Liege (Belgium) and Birmingham (England). The Lewis gun served with great success in World War I and the British, who could not build enough for themselves, had additional guns made by the Savage Arms Corporation at Utica NY. Even so, the US Army could still not make up its mind to embrace the light (27-pound) Lewis gun despite its great superiority over both the disastrous Benet-Mercie and the Chauchat automatic rifle that the Army later accepted from the French. As matters turned out in 1917-18 the US Army mainly issued the Lewis for aircraft use or to infantry operating in British sectors. The Navy also bought a few thousand Lewis guns for itself and the Marines though the Marine Brigade in France had to give up its Lewis guns to the Air Corps and use Chauchats instead. The Marines, however, employed Lewis guns extensively after the war until enough Browning automatic rifles (BAR) became available to replace them. For the US Army, the Lewis gun marked yet another wasted opportunity. See Joseph E. Smith, Small Arms of the World, 10th Edition (Harrisburg PA, The Stackpole Company 1973) pp. 113-114 and 270.
[6]Ibid, pp. 181-185.
[7]Armstrong pp. 134-136
[8]Ibid pp. 61 & 136-137; Goldsmith pp. 100-119
[9] In February 1904, apart from guns assigned to fortresses the Russians had only one eight-gun machinegun company in the entire Far East. The Japanese had two six-gun companies, each one attached to a cavalry brigade. A year later, at the Battle of Mukden, the Russian Army had only seven machinegun companies (56 guns) supporting an army of about 350,000. The Japanese, by contrast, had 254 machineguns for an army of 250,000 and intended to assign 24 machineguns to each of their infantry divisions. After Mukden the Russians considerably increased the quantity of their machineguns. They had earlier used 62 machineguns (including many Gatlings) in the defense of Port Arthur from August 1904 to January 1905. See Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defense, Official History of the Russo-Japanese War, (3 Volumes) (London, His Majesty’s Stationary Office 1910 for Vol. 1; Vol. 3 not published until 1921).
[10]Goldsmith pp. 140-149; Armstrong pp. 138-140.
[11]Armstrong pp. 141-144.
[12]Ibid pp. 151-165.
[13]Ibid pp. 174-180.