M134 Minigun: The Modern Gatling Gun

*Ian proceeds to erase a van* *Faints* Whoo! Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian and I'm here with a cool gun that Modern Arms provided for this video in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, Arizona. This is a GE M134

minigun

. And I'm sure everyone is familiar with having seen them, but I bet a lot of people don't really know how they work or where they come from. A little history on this. These were actually first developed as armament for 20mm rotary aircraft. And the reason they are called "Miniguns" today is because when GE developed this one, they reduced it from a 20mm aircraft cartridge to this little .308 bullet, and at that point it becomes the mini version of the weapon.

Now, the development actually goes back a little before that. That was in the 1950s. But in fact, experiments with electric Gatling guns, and that's what it really is, go back to the 1890s. In fact, you can find, it's really cool, you can find articles on magazines from the 1890s that talk about electrically powered Gatling guns firing at these amazing rates of fire, like 3,000 rounds per minute. Literally as fast as they shoot today as they could before 1900. The reason is that an electrically driven motor will run this gun as fast as you want to run the motor.

Now, the obstacle in... 1900 was that you couldn't have electricity anywhere. And where these weapons were considered, or motorized Gatling guns were considered, in that period it was as naval defense, because on a large warship there was a turbine always running that provided electrical power and therefore you could connect the weapon to that . At that time there were no vehicles circulating that you could... connect power to. And you certainly can't use this as an infantry weapon because you need electricity and in 1900 you didn't have electricity to transport it like that. So they were never really successful at that time, people opted for other mechanisms.

And at that time they were never belt fed, they were usually powered by Accles drums or Broadwell drums or some other existing Gatling feed mechanism. And at 3,000 shots per minute, any of them dry very quickly. If you're going to run this effectively, you really need belt feeding. And that's what we have in this, and that's what made them practical in the 1950s. In terms of power, these things run on 24 volts DC. ...Now your power consumption depends on your rate of fire because this is a completely electrically operated weapon. It doesn't run on recoil, it doesn't run on gasoline, it runs on an electric motor.

So it will run at whatever firing rate you want and your power consumption for 3,000 to 4,000 rounds per minute will be about 1.5 kilowatts, and that's quite a bit of power. You won't get that with AA or CR123 batteries, you basically need a couple of car batteries connected together. And that's one of several reasons why whenever you see these things in Hollywood being carried and shot from the hip or whatever, it's completely fake. The first reason it's fake is because... the guy isn't carrying, you know, 100 pounds of batteries. The second reason it's fake is that he doesn't carry ammunition with him because at 3,000 rounds per minute you're firing 67 rounds per second.

You're going to use up a lot of ammo and... you need a place to store it and it weighs a lot. And of course the recoil force, we're talking literally hundreds of foot pounds of recoil impulse from this thing. This is equivalent to firing your .308 rifle 3,000 times in one minute, or 67 times in one second, adding up all that recoil and delivering it to the shooter. That's why they are always on fixed supports. Now, originally it was aircraft armament, specifically helicopter armament in Vietnam. And they were fantastic in that role. That's where they really shine, because in say... a Huey attack, you can put this thing on a nice fixed stand, the guy has a nice open field of fire outside the door, the ammo just goes in a couple of boxes inside of the helicopter. , you can connect it to the helicopter's turbine engine and get all the power you need.

And the real advantage of this, the reason you want 3,000 rounds per minute, is because when you fly past someone you have a very limited window to engage a target. And so... the better the gun, the more lead it could deliver to the target in that second or two that were available. This is something you'll also see on standard aircraft machine guns. For example, a ground-mounted Browning 1919 operates at 500 or 600 rounds per minute. In the plane version, they make a bunch of changes and increase the speed up to 1200 rounds per minute, because again, you have these very short combat windows.

And when you're on target, you'll want to put as much of a lead as you can in that brief moment. That's where this shines. Okay, so the way they actually work is... we have a couple of main components here. We have a group of barrels. We have the actual power source, the motor that powers the weapon. And then the most complex element, and in some ways the most important element of the weapon, is this structure that is the delinker. So this gun feeds through a standard .308 ammo belt, regular links, M60 links. And what you have to do is find a way to get the bullets out of the belt and then feed them into the rotating system of the Gatling gun.

So I removed a cover plate so we can see how the gun actually works. And what we have is 6 barrels and 6 bolts, and you can see (...press this), you can see the barrels rotate (and we're getting the boring section here), but right here is where they're closing with a new cartridge. They're shooting around here. And then the bolt moves rearward using this track to extract the cartridge. So we are receiving information in this area, arrivals, cameras, locks, fires at 10:00 or 11:00 o'clock on the clock face. And then extract and expel. And you can actually hear the hammer.

So the firing mechanism, the actual barrel assembly, in some ways is not that complex and is actually extremely similar to a vintage Gatling gun from 1870. What makes it different is the decoupler. Alright, this is a separate disengagement mechanism, and this is definitely the most complex part of the actual weapon. So what we have here is the entrance, where the belt comes in. So when this is on the gun, it will be in this orientation, with this solenoid sticking out of the top. But what we're looking at here is... our belt is going to go in here, and what we need to do is push the cartridges forward out of the links, or straight through the links.

So most machine guns take the cartridge out the rear, this will push it forward through the link. And it will be connected to the motor through this gear. (And we can see it better...) Okay, up there at the top of the stroke, you can see the pushers starting to appear as I spin this. What is going to happen is that the rounds arrive here. At the top of this mechanism, they start to be pushed out of the links and then we get to this side. They are pushed towards this silver shaft. And the interesting thing here is that this shaft actually holds two cartridges, one on top of the other, when in operation.

So when a cartridge is first removed from the belt, it goes into the bottom of this cutout. And then it's going to go around this whole circle and end up on top of this, it's like a snail-shaped surface here. So when the cartridge goes down it is at the bottom, when it goes up it rides on this surface. And right here the transition to the weapon is made. So the best way for me to demonstrate this is to just put some ammunition into it. So there's no firing pin mechanism or anything on this, this is just the decoupler.

And it would be a little bit better if I had these on the links, but I can cycle them manually with my thumb if they're just loose rounds and you'll get an idea of ​​how it works. So I put a couple of bullets in there and then I have the equipment exposed so we can start taking them down. Put a couple more in there and fill it again. Now, if we look down, we will begin to see how they come out. There is our first projectile arriving. (Put a couple more in there). And like I said, it will come out in here.

So these cartridges are at the bottom of this (boy, I don't know all the terminology for this gun), at the bottom of that shaft. And then they're going to spin (and if I don't jam them, here we go). Now you can see we have this cartridge at the top and we have another one right below it. , just there. Just in time this one appears, now it can really come out. It is located above this surface and at the top of the shaft. And right here... the delinker delivers this cartridge to the actual gun group for firing.

And this is how your Minigun's feeder or decoupler works. When... the bullets are pushed out of the links, the links will come out through this small passage directed in the opposite direction to the rest of the parts of the gun to keep it clean. But that's where the links will appear, and we'll see that in a moment in some shooting images. So the trigger mechanism here. Since this is an electrically fired gun, it has an electric firing mechanism. Makes sense, right? There are a lot of different things happening. We have this plug that connects to our master power.

And then a safety switch, which turns the gun on or off. And of course, when you shoot this down, you'll turn off the weapon. The light simply confirms that you have power reaching the weapon. These are your triggers. You can fire the weapon with either of them, both do not need to be pressed. And then, interestingly, you have another one here. This button is actually set to connect to your communications. So if you're the door gunner on a helicopter, or if you're, you know, in a Humvee or something that has this mounted, pressing this activates your radio.

It's the equivalent of reaching for the microphone. And what this allows you to do is keep both hands on the gun and still be able to communicate. Which is important when you're the one directing this kind of firepower. Alright. So, firing procedure: lift the safety, engage master power. The light is on, although you can't see it in the sunlight, and now we are ready to go. One of the interesting side effects of a stun gun like this is that the barrels don't stop the moment you release the trigger. ...The motor stops and then the barrels rotate until they stop due to friction.

You want to make sure that you don't have, let's say, all of your ammunition continue to feed through the gun while the barrel is rotating, right, so that you don't have, you know, 50 or 100 rounds lying around the side. of the gun as the barrels slow down. And that is done in two ways. The original mechanism was actually a... solenoid in the feeder. And with those, you'd actually lose about 5 loaded rounds when you stopped shooting. They would spit out the ejection port. And the reason for this was that they were in the weapons group at that time.

The most

modern

way, which companies like Dillon have developed, is to brake what disconnects the feeder first. And with a Dillon clutch you don't lose live ammunition, that was one of their selling points. So, you know, I can shoot like a one second burst and I get a one second spin down. ...A little more than a second of turning down. When you actually shoot them, one thing to keep in mind is that they don't like quick, repeated pulls of the trigger. So give it a moment to slow down before firing it again, otherwise you'll be causing feed jams.

When these guns jam, it is mainly this type, it is the delinker that will give you problems. And you don't want to have to take this apart to fix a malfunction. You just want to keep filming it, so. Overall, shooting these gives you a blast. It doesn't have to be a long burst, but don't try to shoot, stop and then shoot again immediately. Alright. Before we can shoot it, we have to charge it. Now, of course, we have this feed pipe. ...What this does is it just guides the belt and prevents...here's a fabric cover to prevent the links from getting stuck in the belt.

This keeps everything nice and clean. So I'm going to go ahead and unplug that. So this is our ammo can. And this is, I believe, a 1,000-round ammo can. I have some half turn locks. And we can remove the cover and here you have it divided into two segments. And there is a trick to perfectly loading the 1000 round continuous belt here so that it feeds without any problems. Now let's load up... I think we'll do a 200 round belt this time. So we won't need to mess with this, we can just use the cover. So let me put this back on.

What I'm going to do here is open the top of this and... this funnel is here so you can feed from this side or this side, and the belt will slide to the center position where it goes up into the feed chute. There we have a nice plastic roller oflow friction. So let's put in our feed pipe and there we go. Lift the top cover. As with US military machine guns, we want the brass to face down, or as they say, the brass against the grass. that there The nice thing about this is that, because they are contained in the feed chute, I can push this belt and it will push the bullets up the chute, into the gun.

Alright, I can see the end of... the belt on the parachute. So I only have a little bit of belt left, which has been bent. I had it bent down there and I bent a link. That's why it's important on a Minigun that you don't have an end link like this, because that... will block the delinker. So I'm going to put a loose bullet in that back link and then we'll slide it down. Because I have so little belt in the can, I don't need to worry about making sure it's folded neatly. It barely reaches the bottom of the can.

So go ahead and close this. Close it. Now we are ready for the next loading step. (There we go.) Rotate the barrel until the clutch opens fully. OK. Now, locking this in place will allow me to rotate the barrels, which I have to do to manually feed the belt at first. So I've got my belt down here, let's pick it up. You want to make sure everything goes perfectly straight and parallel here, you don't want the rounds to plummet forward or backward. So we have it all the way up, I'm going to keep some pressure up, turn the cylinder group counterclockwise, which will rotate the delinker clockwise.

And lift that first round until you hear a click. There is one click, we want two clicks. So keep the pressure on, make sure they're still nice and even. There's our second click. Now that the delinker holds the belt under its own power, I can release it. (I'll go ahead and put this back in place.) And now I want to continue clicking on the group of barrels until I see... the first link coming out of the chute. Now we will continue clicking on this until the first link appears. Once that happens, we will know that the belt has completed the unbinding process.

Well, here we go. Very important, now we remove the pin and re-engage the clutch. If I don't do this, the ammo will continue to the barrel group and after a couple of clicks it will fire a bullet. As long as the clutch is engaged here, the barrel will remain still, and what we'll do here is simply turn the strap up and in until the gun is completely ready to fire. ...You saw the second link came out, now we are in the whole unlink cycle. And I can spin the barrel as much as I want, because the clutch is engaged and the ammo is not entering the gun.

However, at this point the gun is hot. And as soon as you turn it on and press the trigger, the clutch disengages and allows the gun to fire. Alright, here we go. Master ignition. That was a little high. And that's 100 rounds. So, there is no... optic on this weapon and... you aim by observing the impact. And the most complicated thing is that it shoots so fast that you run out of ammunition. You have to be pretty quick to pick up "OK, where am I hitting?" and adjust. With a normal machine gun, 500 rounds per minute, it's not that difficult to go right, you know, dag dag dag dag dag, and aim at the target.

With this, by then you will have fired a belt of 250 rounds. He went away. So you have to get pretty quick reaction times on that. Which means I need a little more practice. I don't normally shoot ridiculous targets like old trucks, but the Minigun is a different beast and requires something like that. So I'm going to see if I can really pull it off. We will start from the bottom and aim the gun at the target. Its on. Well, I was hitting it there. Let's take a look and see what happened? So, as a guy without much experience shooting a Minigun, I was able to successfully puncture the snot out of this truck, including both tires.

And I think there will be an attempt to set this thing on fire, which will be very easy because the gas tank is also now completely punctured and drizzling onto the ground. So I'll stay a little further back than this. It's interesting to note that that rate of fire actually makes it a bit difficult to shoot because you have very little time to track your target and attack before you run out of ammo. So we can take... a little real-world lesson from a silly exercise like this, which is to say, you'll notice that I have bullet holes fairly well distributed across the front of the truck, including a few here on the front.

That tire blew out. However, if we look at the back of the truck, we have a lot of bullet holes coming out of the back, but we don't really have any in front. I have two there in front of the tire and one clearly went down enough to puncture it, but, while I wouldn't say there's a safe way to hide behind this from a Minigun, you'll die a little later if you hide behind the engine block. Thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video. I'd really like to thank Modern Arms of Tempe, Arizona for letting me get my dirty hands on this thing, showing them how it works and what it actually looks like on film.

Tune back in to ForgottenWeapons.com and have fun.