the only thing better than a machinegun

is a really big machinegun

a belt fed armor piercing oops there goes your truck kind of machinegun

this is the m2 browning

they call her ma deuce

it is americas premier heavy machinegun

designed a hundred years ago

it has been in service with us longer than anything except the 1911

lets hear her story

so world war i was a time of rapid exciting developments for machineguns

many new designs first debuted

other things debuted too like aircraft

so if i got a machinegun

and you got a fabric covered airplane to spy on me with

at some point im gonna get annoyed and start using my machinegun to shoot down your airplane

well the germans thought this was really rude and also lame

so they made a big honker of an aircraft with a heavy armored tub protecting the engine and the crew

and it had other stuff like metal skin and solid control rods

you could shoot a whole belt of ammo at this thing and theyd just laugh at you in german and fly away

well six star general black jack pershing said that was horseshit

thats right hes a six star general look it up

and when a six star general wants a solution you bring your best

enter john moses browning

patron saint of all gun owners

pershing had seen some french ammo that worked ok

but he told browning to make ours even bigger

like half an inch in diameter

aka .50 caliber

and way faster too

browning was able to design a round with a bullet four times heavier than our standard .30-06 rifle round

but went just as fast

guys this thing is huge

and to shoot this browning scaled up his m1917 machinegun

the war ended just as the first trials were beginning but thats ok

originally the new gun had a big old water jacket around the barrel

but thats really heavy tho and you need to keep it filled with water

they started using it in 1921 and kept working out a number of problems into the 30s

john browning died in 1926 so his efforts were continued by a guy named green

green made some changes that really polished it up and made it super useful

they swapped out the barrel jacket for a heavier air cooled barrel

and he made a receiver that was very modular

charging and loading can be either left or right side

different barrels

different triggers

as a result we have a bunch of options

we can have waistgunners in bombers

mount it on tanks

mount it inside tanks

put four together and use it on antiaircraft mounts

even put inside the wings of fighter aircraft

or just carry the thing around with you

we started using this thing for everything

and it was really friggin effective

it was officially actually adopted in 1933

so we really had everything squared away by wwii

the nazis hated it

it would go through engine blocks of fighter planes and trucks

even if you find an american convoy stuck in the mud or something they all have those damn .50 calibers

they could shred you apart even while disabled

and when driving around the americans would just take a few pot shots into the bushes on either side of the road

that badboy 50 is gonna go through all sorts of cover

hermann goering

number one luftwaffe man

said he couldve won the battle of britain if they had these badboys

sucks to be german

so once it really got into service it was basically set

weve hardly done any upgrades this entire time

and its mostly little things

its been used by everybody and their brother

even the commies used some occasionally

and we use it to this very day practically unchanged

its even been used as a sniper rifle

legendary sniper carlos hathcock took out guys at a mile on multiple occasions

dang

ok now lets open her up and see how she works

so the m2 is a short recoil operated air cooled belt fed machinegun

and interestingly it fires from a closed bolt

so theres a downside to firing from a closed bolt

it chambers a round which then sits in the potentially very hot chamber

i think we have mentioned the dangers of cookoffs before

if the chamber is hot enough it can heat up the metallic cartridge so much it causes the flammable powder inside to flam

that makes boom happen when you didnt want boom

guys sometimes you just dont want boom you know

but there are advantages to closed bolt too

when you have a closed bolt you barely have to move anything in the gun to get it to fire

the time between you pulling the trigger and the gun going off is called lock time

and the lock time of a closed bolt gun is very short and fast

this can make it more accurate

and it also makes the m2 really adaptable to fighter aircraft because its easy to synchronise with other guns going off since you know the exact moment the primer will get hit because of this short lock time

pretty sweet

being a short recoil means the gun kind of recoils back into itself at first

the barrel goes back into the receiver a little before being stopped

then the bolt continues under this inertia and pulls away from the now stationary barrel

it goes all the way back until it is stopped by a big spring which sends it back forward

while it does his an arm pulls a round from a belt in he top of the weapon and kicks the spent shell downwards

check it out

the weight of all the reciprocating parts affects the fire rate

so swapping out the barrel can make it fire faster or slower

to strip it you remove the barrel

open the top cover

unscrew the rear plate

then pull out the internal parts

its pretty simple

its pretty reliable too

guys

im not like a machinegun expert or anything

im not even the most machinegun knowledgable of the people reading this

but any gun that can do this

is a successful weapon

pew pew

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