Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
with a US 1904 Maxim gun.
This is the first machine gun that the United States military actually adopted.
We had Gatling guns prior to this of course, but the Gatling gun's not actually a machine gun.
It's all manually operated, this runs itself.
Now the Maxim of course is the world's first practical, successful machine gun.
And from nearly the very first years that the Maxim gun was invented,
the United States military was testing them.
So the first test was at Springfield in 1887 and 1888.
And it was a Maxim gun in black powder .45-70.
Now this would go on, like there would be about 16 years
of US military trials on and off, with nothing actually adopted.
The biggest issue was no one in the US Army Ordnance bureaucracy
was willing to put their career on the line to actually make a decision
on something as expensive and substantial as machine guns.
And so the result was the US Army just didn't adopt anything.
1895 came and went, the US Navy held trials for a machine gun in .236 Lee Navy calibre.
And to be fair, the Maxim didn't do all that well in that trial because of the cartridge.
And Colt ended up winning it with the Colt Model of 1895.
But the US Army saw that, and it came, and it went, and the US Army still just had Gatling guns.
It wouldn't be until 1903 that there was finally one big conclusive trial
where the US Army would test the ... most common,
the most popular, potential modern guns of that period.
So they tried the Madsen ("massen"), the Danish Madsen light machine gun was in that trial.
It had feed problems, didn't survive.
The Colt, Colt's gas operated gun, it was in that trial.
It ran something like 9,000 rounds, it stopped running when the Maxim kept running.
This would ultimately be the winner of the trial with a little over 21,000 rounds fired.
And finally at this point the US Army was willing to come down and say, "Alright, we'll buy this."
And they ended up with perhaps the worst military Maxim gun
of any of them that there were ever actually adopted.
So let's take a closer look at what this thing really is.
So first off, let me point out that the majority of these guns
that were ordered were just ordered with a standard tripod.
A small number of them ... were ordered with complete carriage mounts.
And this was intended to be something for coastal defence fortresses.
Remember, 1903 this is a period in American history where
we're not going abroad in search of monsters to slay.
The American Army is there to defend the United States coastline and shores and borders.
And so coastal defence was much more of a substantial part
of military procurement than we typically hear about today.
And for one of the period fortifications of that time,
a wheeled mount like this actually isn't the least impractical thing ever.
But it's important to realise that they were not taking something like this
and planning to hitch it up to a team of horses and go gallivanting across the prairie with it.
That's not what this gun was intended for.
The contract for these guns was actually signed in February of 1904.
And they were actually ... made in .30-03 calibre.
Now the original contract went to Vickers, Sons & Maxim in the UK.
... And it was a contract for 50 guns. The plan was to move production
into the United States after those guns were complete
so that we would have domestic production capability.
And it would be the Colt Company that would manufacture them in the US.
And this particular gun is actually a Colt manufactured one, this is number 155.
After the initial order of 50 there was actually a second order placed with Vickers.
So Vickers would end up making 90 of the guns, Colt would make another 197.
For a grand total of 287 of these things ever produced and put into US service.
And you can see we have a matching feed block here, the feed block is "B".
Each of these guns was supplied with two locks and two feed blocks,
and they were lettered A and B, first and second.
Easily the most distinctive element of the 1904 Maxim
is this massive booster and muzzle piece.
These guns had a large diameter water jacket,
and they had a very large diameter barrel.
This thing actually has a 1 inch in diameter all the way through barrel.
So here's the barrel with a hand for size.
... That is a really heavy, heavy barrel.
And of course, that barrel necessitated a larger booster to fit around the end of the barrel.
The tripod here is actually made by Vickers. In fact Vickers would make all of the tripods,
including for Colt's production guns.
Colt just didn't want to get into manufacture of the tripods.
The orders were small enough that there just wasn't any profit margin in them to do it.
Now part of the interesting story of the 1904 Maxim is all of the tribulations
that the Vickers Company and Hiram Maxim went through
to actually get these things manufactured for the US.
The contract was signed in February of 1904.
It would be December of 1904 before they could even start production.
And this was on a gun that they already essentially had all of the tooling ready for.
The problem was, among other things, the US Ordnance Department insisted
that they get a copy of the drawings to inspect and review before production began.
They got those drawings, they sat on them for 6 months,
and then they sent them back to Vickers heavily revised.
They did things like change all of the tolerances.
So Ordnance Department draughtsmen went through and they would find a tolerance
that was something like 1.00 minus .003 inch.
And what that means is the part has to be 1 inch, the dimension has to be 1 inch,
and it can be that size, or up to 0.003 of an inch smaller.
This ... isn't a plus or minus tolerance, it's just a minus.
Like we can tolerate it being a little smaller, but it can't be any bigger.
Well, the Ordnance Department decided to have a 0.002 tolerance on like, anything.
First off, they did that as subtraction, not realising what it meant.
So that became 0.997, and then they added a plus or minus 0.002 to it.
And you end up with 0.995 to 0.999 allowable dimensions for that part.
And ... like you can't do that to tolerances,
or parts stop fitting together and the gun stops working.
And Vickers had to go back and forth with them over this sort of changed dimension.
Things continued to be bad even after these problems were resolved.
For example, once Vickers did actually start their production,
... the parts and the guns needed to be inspected by the Ordnance Department.
And so the US military assigned the chief military attaché in London
to be the ... chief inspector, and they assigned him a subordinate.
Well the attaché wasn't a gun guy, he didn't have the technical knowledge
to be confident in making any decisions on approving parts, or not.
And so he decided he wasn't willing to actually make any decisions.
And his subordinate wasn't willing to do anything except under direct orders from his superior,
so that guy didn't make any decisions either.
And essentially everything that was even slightly questionable
had to get sent all the way back to Washington for approval or disapproval.
Ultimately it would take a year before the 6 month production timeline could even begin.
And then there were further delays from this sort of bureaucratic nightmare.
However, by 1906 the first guns were delivered, orders continued until 1908.
This was really a ... very limited production gun.
Militaries pretty much always value light weight, but they don't always come through on it.
And usually troops are willing to accept
equipment that's heavy, as long as it's durable and reliable.
And there are some really good examples of this, like the BAR, like the MAT 49.
These are by no means lightweight guns,
but they had fantastic reputations because they just always worked.
Well, by that logic you would expect the 1904 Maxim to ... have been a pretty well-regarded gun.
It's a Maxim gun, and they work. They just work and work, and work, and work, and work.
They are fantastically durable and reliable guns.
This happens to be the heaviest pattern of Maxim ever manufactured.
In fact I believe it is the heaviest rifle-calibre machine gun ever fielded.
The gun itself weighs 62 pounds, the tripod weighs another 80 pounds,
and we're not even going to count the wheeled carriage assembly.
Just the gun on its tripod with water comes in at ... 142 pounds, that's insanely heavy.
And as a result, none of the US troops liked this thing at all.
The infantry hated moving it, the cavalry hated moving it around.
And it really didn't see any substantial field service.
By the time World War One comes around, half of these things
had actually been pulled out of service and put into warehouses,
because they just weren't getting used.
Alright, for just a quick primer, this whole carriage assembly has a bunch of stuff hanging on it.
What we've got here on the bottom of this side is the water can, that's down here.
Over here we have the spare parts can.
And then on top in these brackets would be 6 ammunition cans like this one.
Each of those holds 250 rounds,
so that would be a total of 3,000 rounds on the carriage with the gun.
I should also point out the carriage here is reproduction.
It's a pretty accurate reproduction, but it's not original.
The gun and the tripod are original, it is a curio and relic gun,
fully registered, transferable, all that good stuff.
The rear sight of the US 1904 pattern is pretty distinctive.
You've got your windage adjustment out here with a tremendous amount
of windage adjustment available.
You've got four different aperture sizes, plus an open notch.
And you've got an elevation adjustment out to 2,600 ... yards, this being an American gun.
When you need to transport the gun, or just when it's not in use,
you can fold the rear sight down to protect it.
The spade grips are solid brass.
The US military ... the one that they tested
had hollowed out spade grips for use as oil reservoirs.
You have a little brush screwed into the top of the grip.
You'll see that on some of the other military Maxim guns.
The US military specifically did not want that,
they wanted these things solid and plugged, so that's what they got.
We have a trigger here with a safety on it. So to fire it you pull this down, and then press in.
And that fires.
The US also dictated an easier system of adjustment for the fusee spring (or the mainspring).
And an easier way to see exactly what the adjustment was.
And so this is what they got.
You can press this in, and then rotate the adjustment screw here
to increase or reduce the tension on the mainspring.
That allows you to adjust the rate of fire. It also allows you to sort of set the gun
for whatever particular batch of ammunition you have, to make sure that it's running reliably.
It's also worth pointing out that the tripod is actually integrated into the carriage mount.
So on one of these wheeled guns, the back leg of the tripod acts as the rear stand.
And you can actually take the whole tripod off with the gun
and use it independently and ditch the wheels and the axles.
So the Colt made guns were all produced late enough that they were made in .30-06.
The Vickers made guns were all originally .30-03
and when the US fully converted to .30-06 they had to of course re-chamber them.
And then they also had to replace the little silver plaques
on the rear sights to have proper graduations for .30-06.
The US 1904 is one of the scarcest patterns of Maxim gun out there
because its production was so small.
And it's also one of the scarcest US military machine guns,
because again its production was so small
compared to the other patterns that the US has used over the years.
So very cool to get a chance to take a look at a completely intact
original example like this. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.