The MAC 1934 is a machine gun of French origin. It is effectively the aircraft variant of the Reibel machine gun.

History

In 1934, the ''Manufacture d'Armes de Châtellerault'' (

Châtellerault Châtellerault (; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''Châteulrô/Chateleràud''; oc, Chastelairaud) is a commune in the Vienne department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in France. It is located in the northeast of the former province Poitou, and the re ...

weapons manufacturing company, often shortened to ''MAC'') completed the development of the MAC 1934 machine gun to replace the Darne mod. 1933 machine gun aboard aircraft of the ''

Armée de l'Air The French Air and Space Force (AAE) (french: Armée de l'air et de l'espace, ) is the air and space force of the French Armed Forces. It was the first military aviation force in history, formed in 1909 as the , a service arm of the French Ar ...

''. Essentially a faster-firing variant of the mitrailleuse mle 1931, and using the same 7.5 mm MAS ammunition, the MAC 34 worked by gas operation and was fed from drum magazines. Two main variants, sharing common parts, were introduced: * the ''type tourelle'' (turret model), fed from 100-round replaceable magazines, was used in flexible mountings, where it was generally fitted with an Alkan 1935 reflector gunsight. * the ''type aile'' (wing model) fed from a 300- or 500-round drum magazine, was used for fixed mountings. Because it used an

open bolt A firearm is said to fire from an open bolt if, when ready to fire, the bolt and working parts are held to the rear of the receiver, with no round in the chamber. When the trigger is actuated, the bolt travels forward, feeds a cartridge from t ...

action, the MAC 34 could not be fitted with

synchronization gear A synchronization gear (also known as a gun synchronizer or interrupter gear) was a device enabling a single-engine tractor configuration aircraft to fire its forward-firing armament through the arc of its spinning propeller without bullets str ...

, and was more expensive to manufacture than comparable weapons; but it was compact and had excellent reliability. Originally the ''Armée de l'Air'' favoured magazine-fed weapons, but it eventually accepted that the feeding system of the MAC 34 would require too frequent reloadings for dorsal gunners, and was impractical for wing mountings, so it required the development of a belt-fed variant. The resulting weapon was introduced in 1939, and designated as MAC 1934 M39.

Overview

The MAC 1934 machine gun equipped French aircraft from 1935 until the later 1940s. Like other rifle-calibre machine guns, the MAC 34 proved to be too light for combat in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. A weakness of the MAC 34 was its operation at high altitudes. It was found that at altitudes past the guns had a tendency to freeze up. Heaters were added to the guns on the Morane-Saulnier M.S.406 to allow high altitude use. The ''Armée de l'Air'' had plans to use several types of heavy aircraft machine guns, including an 11 mm variant of the MAC 34, but none could be completed before the

Armistice An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace. It is derived from the ...

Post World War II usage

The MAC 1934 was used in Algeria on Morane-Saulnier MS.500 light aircraft for anti guerilla operations around 1957. The Armée de l'Air installed the MAC 1934T as a defensive weapon aiming through the back window was dropped, although some aircraft have then been modified on the field to fire through one of the side windows.

Users

Sources

* Danel, Raymond and Cuny, Jean. ''L'aviation française de bombardement et de renseignement 1918-1940'' Docavia n°12, Editions Larivière * Pelletier, Alain. ''French Fighters of World War II''. Carrollton, TX: Squadron/Signal Publications, Inc., 2002. .

External links