Chapter 27: An Automatic Rifle

While science works ceaselessly to cure the ills that human flesh is heir to, invention as persistently devises weapons for man’s destruction. Yesterday it was the discoveries of Pasteur and the Maxim gun; to-day it is the Finsen rays and the Rexer automatic rifle.

Though one cannot restrain a sigh on examining a new contrivance, the sole function of which is to deal out death and desolation--sadly wondering why such ingenuity might not have been directed to the perfecting of a machine which would render life more easy and more pleasant; yet from a book which deals with modern mechanisms we may not entirely exclude reference to a class of engines on which man has expended so much thought ever since gunpowder first entered the arena of human strife.

We therefore choose as our subject for this chapter a weapon hailing from Denmark, a country which, though small in area, contains many inventors of no mean repute.

In a London office, within sight of the monument raised to England’s great sailor hero, the writer first made acquaintance with the Rexer gun, which, venomous device that it is, can spit forth death 300 times a minute, though it weighs only about 18 lbs.

Its form is that of an ordinary rifle of somewhat clumsy build. The eye at once picks out a pair of supports which project from a ring encircling it near the muzzle. Even a strong man would find 18 lbs. too much to hold to his shoulder for any length of time; so the Rexer is primarily intended for stationary work. The user lies prone, rests the muzzle on its supports, presses the butt to his shoulder, and blazes away. History repeats itself in the chronicles of firearms, though it is a very long way from the old matchlock supported on a forked stick to the latest thing in rifles propped up by two steel legs.

Machine-guns, such as the Maxim and Hotchkiss, weigh 60 lbs. and upwards, and have to be carried on a wheeled carriage, drawn either by horses or by a number of men. In very rough country they must be loaded on pack-horses or mules. When required for action, the gun, its supports and appliances, separated for packing, must be hurriedly reassembled. This means loss of valuable time.

The Rexer rifle can be carried almost as easily as a Lee-Metford or Mauser, and fires the ordinary small-bore ammunition. Wherever infantry or cavalry can go, it can go too, without entailing any appreciable amount of extra haulage.

Before dealing with its actual use as a fighting arm we will notice the leading features of its construction.

The gun comprises the stock, the casing and trigger-plate which enclose the breech mechanism, the barrel, and the perforated barrel cover, to which are attached the forked legs on which the muzzle end is supported when firing, and which fold up under the cover when not in use. The power for working the mechanism is obtained from the recoil, which, when the gun is fired, drives the barrel, together with the breech and the other moving parts, some two inches backwards, thus compressing the powerful recoil-spring which lies behind the breech, enclosed in the front part of the stock, and which, after the force of the recoil is spent, expands, and thus drives the barrel forward again into the firing position. The recoil and return of the breech operate a set of levers and other working parts within the casing, which, by their combined actions following one another in fixed order, open the breech, eject the empty cartridge-case, insert a new cartridge into the chamber, and close the breech; and when the gun is set for automatic action, and the gunner keeps his finger pressed on the trigger, the percussion arm strikes the hammer and the cartridge is fired; the round of operations repeating itself till the magazine is emptied, or until the gunner releases the trigger and thereby interrupts the firing.

A noticeable feature is the steel tube surrounding the barrel. It is pierced with a number of openings to permit a circulation of air to cool the barrel, which is furnished with fins similar to those on the cylinder of an air-cooled petrol motor to help dissipate the heat caused by the frequent explosions. Near the ends of the cover are the guides, in which the barrel moves backwards and forwards under the influence of the recoil and the recoil-spring. The supports are attached to the casing in such a way that the stock of the gun can be elevated or depressed and traversed through considerable angles without altering the position of the supports on the ground. The rear end of the barrel cover is firmly fixed to the casing of the breech mechanism, and forms with this and the stock the rigid part of the gun in which the moving portions work, their motions being guided and controlled by cams and studs working in grooves and notches and on blocks attached to the rigid parts.

Without the aid of special diagrams it is rather hard to explain the working of even a simple mechanism; but the writer hopes that the following verbal description, for which he has to thank the Rexer Company, will at least go some way towards elucidating the action of the breech components.

Inside the casing is the breech, the front end of which is attached rigidly to the barrel, the rear end being in contact with the recoil arm, which is directly operated by the recoil spring lying in a recess in the stock. In the breech is the breech-block, which has three functions: first to guide the new cartridges from the distributer, which passes them from the magazine one by one into the casing, to the firing position in the chamber (i.e. the expanded part of the bore at the rear end of the barrel); secondly, to hold the cartridge firmly fixed in the chamber, and to act as an abutment or support to the back of the cartridge when it is fired, and thus transmit the backward force of the explosion to the recoil spring; thirdly, to allow the spent cartridges to be discharged from the chamber by the extractor, and to direct them by means of a guide curved downwards from the chamber, so that they may be flung through an opening provided for that purpose in the trigger-plate in front of the trigger, and out of the way of the gunner. (This opening is closed by a cover when the gun is not in use, and opens automatically before the shot can be fired.) In order to effect this threefold object, the breech-block is pivoted in the rear to the rear of the breech, and has a vertical angular motion within it, so that the fore end of the block can move into three different positions in relation to the chamber: one, below the chamber to guide the cartridge into it; one, directly in line with the chamber, to back the cartridge; and one, above the chamber, to allow the ejection of the spent cartridge-case by the extractor. The cartridge is fired by a long pin through the breech-block, struck behind by a hammer operated by a special spring.

The first function of the breech-block is, as we have said, to act as a guide for the cartridge into the chamber ready for firing, after the fashion of the old Martini-Henry breech-block. The actual pushing forward of the cartridge is performed by a lever sliding on the top of the block. After the explosion a small vertical lever jerks out the cartridge-case against the block, and causes it to cannon downwards through the aperture in the trigger-plate already mentioned.

On the left-hand side of the breech casing is a small chamber, open at the top and on the side next the breech. To the top is clipped the magazine, filled with twenty-five cartridges. The magazine is shaped somewhat like a slice of melon, only that the curved back and front are parallel. The sides converge towards the inner edge. It is closed at the lower end by a spring secured by a catch. When a magazine is attached to the open top of the chamber the catch is released so as to put chamber and magazine in direct communication. The cartridges would then be able to drop straight into the breech chamber through the side slot, were the latter not protected by a curved horizontal shutter, called the distributer. Its action is such that when a cartridge is being passed through into the breech casing, the shutter closes, and holds the remaining cartridges in the magazine; and when the cartridge has passed it opens and lets the next into position in the side casing.

As soon as a cartridge enters the breech it is pushed forward into the chamber ready for firing by the feeder lever. The magazine and the holder are so arranged that when the last cartridge has passed from the magazine to the distributer, the motion of the moving parts of the gun is arrested till the magazine is removed, when the motion is resumed so far as to push the remaining cartridge into the chamber and bring the breech-block into the firing position. When another magazine has been fixed in the holder, firing can be resumed by pulling the trigger; but if another magazine is not fixed in the holder the last cartridge cannot be fired by pulling the trigger, and only by pulling a handle which will be presently described. This arrangement secures the continuance of the automatic firing being interrupted only by the very brief interval required for charging the apparatus.

The gun is fired, as usual, by pulling a trigger. If a steady pull be kept on the trigger the whole contents of the magazine will be fired automatically (the last cartridge excepted); but if such continuous firing is not desired, a few shots at a time may be fired automatically by alternately pulling and releasing the trigger. If it is desired to fire shot by shot from the magazine, a small swivel on the trigger-guard is moved so as to limit the movement of the trigger. By moving this swivel out of the way, automatic firing is resumed. The gun may also be fired without a magazine by simply feeding cartridges by hand into the magazine holder. In front of the trigger-guard is a safety catch, and if this is set to “safe” the gun cannot be fired until the catch is moved to “fire.”