Gorgas machine gun

The Gorgas machine gun (or sometimes just a Gorgas gun) was a manually cranked prototype machine gun, the creation of Confederate States General Josiah Gorgas.

Gorgas machine gun
Type	Machine gun
Place of origin	Confederate States of America
Specifications
Action	Crank Handle
Sights	Iron

It had a single 1+1⁄4-inch-caliber (32 mm) smooth-bore barrel. The barrel was fed from a revolver-like ring, but with an axis of rotation perpendicular to the bore, rather than the usual revolver configuration with parallel axes. The cylinder housed 18 copper-lined chambers that were muzzle loaded from the outer side of the ring. The interior side of the multiple-chamber ring was lined with the corresponding 18 percussion cap nipples. The ring was rotated by a hand lever. The gun had a cast iron receiver.

The sole exemplar built was not used in combat, not having been sufficiently perfected.

See also

• Agar gun
• Centrifugal gun
• Confederate Revolving Cannon
• Gatling gun
• Puckle gun
• Revolver cannon

References

• George M. Chinn (1951). The Machine Gun, History, Evolution and Development of Manual, Automatic and Airborne Repeating Weapons, Vol. 1. U.S. Government Printing Office. pp. 46–47.