![Reffye mitrailleuse 1867 blueprint](https://kumkoniak.com/50.jpg)
![reffye mitrailleuse 1867 blueprint reffye mitrailleuse 1867 blueprint](https://www.bevfitchett.us/machine-gun-v1-repeating-weapons/images/3517_105_40-weapons-franco-prussian-war.jpg)
And due to the whole “wonder weapon” buildup, the Prussians tended to greet any Mitrailleuse battery with the heaviest possible artillery counterbattery fire as soon as they were spotted coming into action. The officers commanding were no better informed.Īs such, because it looked like a cannon, in combat, they tried to use it as artillery at long range. The French General Staff made it known that they had this Ultimate Weapon, but otherwise kept it so tightly under wraps that the crews didn’t even get to see the manual before they were issued the guns for combat deployment. The major fault in the Montigny in combat was the whole “secret weapon” buildup. De Reffye in Belgium did likewise his version substituted a fore-and-aft moving, throw-over lever for the crank to do up the breech, thus making loading and extraction faster and even giving a bit more mechanical advantage. The French Army had Montigny design a more refined version with fewer barrels. Rather miffed, Vandenberg took it to France. Army Ordnance tested the 88-barrel version in 1860, and turned it down because it wasn’t all that accurate and it took entirely too long to clean after only a few volleys. It was originally an 88-barreled design, and he even proposed one with 150 barrels. The American Vandenberg came first, in 1859. 1), the history of the “Montigny/de Reffye” gun is a bit convoluted. There is also a fellow on YouTube who has posted an excellent video showing how the Reffye functions, using a computer generated 3D model:Īccording to Chinn (Machine Gun, vol. The footage comes to us courtesy of Julien Lucot, a writer for the French arms magazine Cibles. This Reffye is a reproduction, here shown firing blanks. In this role, they were utterly outclassed by the Prussian Krupp artillery, leading to a general European disdain for the effectiveness of machine guns that would last until the First World War. However, there was little experience worldwide in how best to use a weapon like this, and the French commanders chose to use them like artillery, firing at long range where they were inaccurate and underpowered. The Reffye was a top-secret weapon used by the French in the Franco-Prussian War, which was expected to be a huge game-changer. The two most common types were the Montigny (a Belgian design fired by a lever) and the Reffye (a French design fired by crank). “Mitrailleuse” is actually a general name for a volley gun – one with many barrels in a cluster, which are fired sequentially. The mitrailleuse was one of the early types of mechanical machine gun, along with the Gatling, Gardner, Nordenfelt, and others.
![Reffye mitrailleuse 1867 blueprint](https://kumkoniak.com/50.jpg)