Of those, the best-known today is perhaps the Fokker-Leimberger, an externally powered 12 barrel Gatling gun in the 7.92x57mm Mauser round, claimed to be capable of firing over 7,000 rpm, but suffering from frequent cartridge-case ruptures due to its 'nutcracker', rotary split-breech design, which is fairly different from that of a Gatling.

ĭuring World War I, several German companies were working on externally powered guns for use in aircraft.

Despite Gatling's improvements, the Gatling gun fell into disuse after cheaper, lighter-weight, recoil and gas operated machine guns were invented Gatling himself went bankrupt. Gatling's electric-powered design received U.S. Even after Gatling slowed down the mechanism, the new electric-powered Gatling gun had a theoretical rate of fire of 3,000 rounds per minute, roughly three times the rate of a typical modern, single-barreled machine gun. Richard Jordan Gatling replaced the hand cranked mechanism of a rifle-caliber Gatling gun with an electric motor, a relatively new invention at the time. The ancestor to the modern minigun was made in the 1860s. History Background: electrically driven Gatling gun

1.1 Background: electrically driven Gatling gun.

The term is also used to refer to guns of similar rates of fire and configuration regardless of power source and caliber. 'Minigun' refers to a specific model of weapon that General Electric originally produced, but the term 'minigun' has popularly come to refer to any externally powered Gatling-style or rotary gun of rifle caliber. The 'Mini' of the name is in comparison to designs that use a similar firing mechanism, such as General Electric's earlier 20 mm M61 Vulcan, and 'gun' referencing the delineation between rifle caliber bullets and the shells fired by autocannons. It features Gatling-style rotating barrels with an external power source, normally an electric motor. The M134 Minigun is a 7.62x51 mm NATO, six-barreled rotary machine gun with a high rate of fire (2,000 to 6,000 rounds per minute). General Electric, Garwood Industries, Dillon Aero, DeGroat Tactical Armaments, McNally Industries LLCĭisintegrating cartridge belt or linkless feed dependent on installation ĭependent on installation no fixed sights ( Discuss) Proposed since July 2013.ĭillon Aero's M134D-H (H for Hybrid) combines the titanium and skeletonized parts that were engineered for use in the M134D-T minigun with the steel housing of the previous M134D. It has been suggested that ] be merged into this article.

Why are they called miniguns