WW Pictures

[Grmps]

[Grmps]

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Impressive pictures, as pictures from that era usually are. But those aren't British or Indian soldiers with the elephant machine-gun, and I don't believe the Colt machine-gun saw active service. The Indian Army used elephants to pull artillery, but had to switch to bullocks close to the noise of gunfire, as the elephants would panic.

Even with a horse and single shots, the reaction of all but the best trained changes drastically when the muzzle is overhead. I think that is why some European muzzle-loaders, like my 16ga Mortimer which obviously wasn't a waterfowl gun, have extremely long barrels. I don't believe an elephant would do as well with a machine-gun.

[Grmps]

Elephant mounted with a M1895 Colt-Browning machine gun, WWI; ca. 1914-18.

https://miepvonsydow.wordpress.com/2...wi-ca-1914-18/

The least they could have done was give the elephant some giant ear plugs.

A corporal aims a Colt M1895 atop a Sri Lankan Elephant. The M1895 was developed by John Browning during the 1890s, it was a belt-fed, air cooled, gas operated machine gun. As the weapon was air cooled it did not require the water cooling system used by the Maxim Gun, as a result it was much lighter weighing just 35 lbs.

The M1895 was lever actuated which meant that the gun was cocked by retracting the lever and once the first round was fired the propellant gas was tapped from a gas port several inches from the muzzle this gas pushed the lever down and swung it back towards the receiver to cock the gun for the next round. If the gun’s tripod was set too low, or impeded by cover, then the lever would catch any obstruction, as a result it quickly became known as the ‘potato digger’ by troops. There looks to be more than enough clearance on top of the elephant.

While there is historical precedent for the use of elephants in warfare for over 1000 years, used by the Persians, Alexander the Great, Indian Sultans, Siamese warriors who mounted Jingals (small guns often mounted on walls) on elephants well into the 1880s, and later by the British Army in India as pack animals capable of carrying mountain guns and supplies over difficult terrain. Why the corporal is atop the elephant is a mystery but it was never a weapons platform adopted by the US Army.

[vzerone]

Impressive pictures, as pictures from that era usually are. But those aren't British or Indian soldiers with the elephant machine-gun, and I don't believe the Colt machine-gun saw active service. The Indian Army used elephants to pull artillery, but had to switch to bullocks close to the noise of gunfire, as the elephants would panic.

Even with a horse and single shots, the reaction of all but the best trained changes drastically when the muzzle is overhead. I think that is why some European muzzle-loaders, like my 16ga Mortimer which obviously wasn't a waterfowl gun, have extremely long barrels. I don't believe an elephant would do as well with a machine-gun.

The M1895 was being quickly outpaced in the lead-up to World War 1 (1914-1918) and was generally seen as obsolete by the time war arrived in Europe during the summer of 1914. The weapon was modernized by the Canadians in 1915 to produce the M1915 variant. This model added cooling fins to counter barrel overheating and a new, lighter-weight tripod was developed for increased portability. Engineers also designed a new cable-based cocking system which allowed for charging of the weapon at its rear. The M1915 was used by Canadian and Imperial Russian forces in World War 1 and was adopted (as the M1917) by the US Army. The United States entered the conflict in 1917 and ended up procuring some 4,800 M1915 guns in all with about 1,500 being delivered to the Navy. Marlin Arms Company was given a production charge (reformed as "Marlin-Rockwell" in 1916) for the M1915. Canadian use of the M1915 was eventually given up in favor of the more popular Vickers water-cooled machine gun by war's end, though reports from the Front concerning the Browning design generally found it a good and reliable platform.

[Olut]

... and the American soldier standing by the tank in photo #2 is Dwight Eisenhower

[Mytmousemalibu]

The dog-towed machine gun is an 1914 pattern MLE French Hotchkiss if im not mistaken. The French in general had some very neat guns back then. The French catch a lot of carp and completely false urban legends and stupid descriptors.

[jlm223]

Awesome pics, Thanks for posting.

[MUSTANG]

The picture of the Corporal and Potatoe Digger on the elephant actually looks to me more like a Marine in Blues. Note the trousers, they could easily be blue with a blood stripe down the side of the leg. The darker blouse would fit in with Dress Blues, and the cover is the same shape the Corps wore back in the 1900 to 1920's.

Looking at the picture below of Sergeant Major Dan Daly (Two time Medal of Honor Winner - Boxer Rebellion and Battle of Belleau Wood) I believe you can see the similarity with the Covers (Caps) in the two pictures.




Quality of the picture makes it hard to tell.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The dog-towed machine gun is an 1914 pattern MLE French Hotchkiss if im not mistaken. The French in general had some very neat guns back then. The French catch a lot of carp and completely false urban legends and stupid descriptors.

That could be another propaganda shot, although the Belgian army performed as well, throughout the war, as anyone could have expected. The Belgians in peacetime had a tradition of using dogs to pull little door-to-door delivery carts for things like milk. I remember the star of "Old Yeller" doing it in 1959.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dog_of_Flanders

Their army did have dog-pulled machine-guns at the beginning of the war, although perhaps not later. Those I know about had a water-cooled Vickers or Maxim on a miniature artillery carriage, a little like the ones the Russians pulled by humans. But they had wire wheels with pneumatic tyres, and were drawn by a pair of larger mastiff-type breeds, often muzzled.

In the picture it looks like a Hotchkiss for dismounted use, with a tripod and shoulder stock, carried on a general-purpose cart, and the dog looks like he might soon be thinking pretty seriously about career choices. I don't see anything about the men that couldn't be French, but the Belgians did use the Adrian helmet. I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up with Lee-Enfields some of the time, as they operated in conjunction with British forces from Ypres to the sea, and in Africa. But that rifle could be their 1889 Mauser, which they had made by WW Greener in the UK when their factory in Herstal was overrun, and later by Hopkins and Allen in the US.

There were two Marlin-improved versions of the Colt machine-gun. One, little used, was a naval version with a longitudinal gas piston replacing the rotating lever. More successful was a fairly radical design, also piston-operated, as a tank and aircraft gun. Its closed-bolt operation, far from ideal in most machine-gun applications, was well suited to synchronised fire through a rotating propeller, in the days when wings were too thin and flimsy to mount guns. In effect the propeller fired semi-automatic shots at very high speed, and it is difficult to control the pace of an open-bolt machine-gun that accurately, as temperature and lubricant viscosity vary.

Eisenhower's tank is the French Renault FT, which was an extremely modern and effective light tank in 1918, but got used until much later by a large number of nations, including the French in 1940 when the problem with their modern main battle tanks wasn't their quality, but tactical deployment. The Renaults were sometimes used to fill deficiencies, and suffered badly. Ironically the last substantial user of the FT was Nazi Germany in 1944, resisting the retaking of Paris.

[William Yanda]

When I saw the title, I thought; Why pics of wheel weights, they are just going to be melted anyway?