When is a Gatling not a Gatling? Trivia

...The answer is, when the 'Gatling' is actually a Hotchkiss.

I have found the history of the Gatling gun - especially in relation to the AiP model of the gun I am modifying at the moment - quite convoluted as things are, so imagine my frustration when I realised the gun had a doppelgänger! The Hotchkiss company also made it's own multibarreled hand-cranked machine gun, and so close were the designs (externally) that it's easy to mistake one for the other. Which is exactly what I did with this picture...

I mistook this illustration for a picture of a 1865 1 inch Gatling of the type that were demonstrated to the British Army. In fact it is a Hotchkiss - the give away (now I have learned about the two weapons) is the small loading 'slide' on the top of the breech.

Luckily I was introduced to the Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon (as it is correctly termed) by this wonderful short video by 'Forgotten Weapons'. It's worth a look, especially as the presenter opens up the breech and shows the internal mechanism in action...

Arms shipment arrives - French rifles

"The Office of the War Department of Molatero is pleased to announce that it has just taken delivery of some of the very latest rifles in order to evaluate their suitability as the new standard infantry weapon. The Lebel and Berthier rifles exemplify some of the latest technological advancements in infantry long arms and will complete with other designs to become the sole model of firearm that will replace the diverse, and in some cases obsolete, infantry weapons that currently make up our army's inventory." General de Brigadă Mustăți-Mari, 1907. 

Today I received a small package from Reedees Miniature containing two packets of their 1/32 resin model rifles. As normal, before I go trying to scratch build anything I like to examine a commercial example of a similar object first so I can get a sense of scale and level of detail required.

The Reedees Minatures 1/32 scale resin rifles; top is the Lebel
and bottom is the more modern Berthier.

The two rifle sets I received were the 1886 Lebel set and the 1907 Berthier set, both representing state of the art French rifles from the turn of the 19th/20th century. To be frank, the only reason that I sourced these French models was that I could not find any other 1/32 scale model rifles - I would have preferred a Mosin-Nagant or a Mannlicher style rifle if I could have found one.

However, these lovely Reedees models are very fine examples of the model makers art and will do just nicely for my purposes. I have a good idea of scale and can work on a Mosin-Nagant of my own, taking the scale measurements from the Reedees guns.

I'm not sure if I will be able to match the Reedees models for quality, but they do give me a target to shoot for!

There are two rifles per pack, and the packs are £4.50 each - prices, as you might guess, are really for the ardent display modeller!

Links: Reedees Miniatures (UK)

> Wikipedia: The Lebel M1886 Rifle
> Wikipedia: The Berthier Rifle

The Nordenfelt machine gun

Source: WIkipedia

I have a particular fondness - if that's the right word - for primitive hand-cranked machine guns, the Maxim gun is a little new fangled for my tastes! Being that Molatero is a tad behind the times and it's army desperately in need of modernisation I imagine there are quite a few of these peculiar weapons still in service.

Of particular note is the European manufactured Nordenfelt. I became aware of this gun in a novel by Douglas Reeman about the Royal Marines during the Boxer Rebellion called 'First to Land'. What struck me was the notion - expressed in the book - that the British sailors and marines apparently preferred the old hand-cranked Nordenfelt to the Maxim, which was then just coming into service (what serviceman ever likes 'new' things).

Anyway, I was trying to describe the operation of this antique machine gun to my brother - badly - and have been in search of a video that better illustrates how this five-barreled  wonder worked. As usual YouTube has come to my rescue with this very informative little segment by (appropriately) 'Forgotten Weapons'...