Gorgas machine gun

The Gorgas machine gun (or sometimes just a Gorgas gun) was a manually cranked prototype machine gun, the creation of Confederate States General Josiah Gorgas.

It had a single 1 1⁄4-inch-caliber (32 mm) smooth-bore barrel. The barrel was fed from a revolver-like ring, but with an axis of rotation perpendicular to the bore, rather than the usual revolver configuration with parallel axes. The cylinder housed 18 copper-lined chambers that were muzzle loaded from the outer side of the ring. The interior side of the multiple-chamber ring was lined with the corresponding 18 percussion cap nipples. The ring was rotated by a hand lever. The gun had a cast iron receiver.

The sole exemplar built was not used in combat, not having been sufficiently perfected.

See also

• Agar gun
• Centrifugal gun
• Confederate Revolving Cannon
• Gatling gun
• Puckle gun
• Revolver cannon

References

• George M. Chinn (1951). The Machine Gun, History, Evolution and Development of Manual, Automatic and Airborne Repeating Weapons, Vol. 1. U.S. Government Printing Office. pp. 46–47.