The Nordenfelt gun was a multiple-barrel organ gun that had a row of up to twelve barrels. It was fired by pulling a lever back and forth and ammunition was gravity fed through chutes for each barrel. It was produced in a number of different calibres from rifle up to 25 mm (1 inch). Larger calibres were also used, but for these calibres the design simply permitted rapid manual loading rather than true automatic fire. This article covers the anti-personnel rifle-calibre (typically 0.45 inch) gun.

Development

The weapon was designed by a Swedish engineer,

Helge Palmcrantz Helge Palmcrantz (July 7, 1842 – November 22, 1880) was a Swedish inventor and industrialist. Biography Palmcrantz was born at Hammerdal in Jämtland, Sweden. He was the son of Per Gustaf Palmcrantz (1806–1905) and Lovisa Ulrika Nordenmark. ...

. He created a mechanism to load and fire a multiple barreled gun by simply moving a single lever backwards and forwards. It was patented in 1873. Production of the weapon was funded by a Swedish steel producer and banker (later weapons maker) named

Thorsten Nordenfelt Thorsten Nordenfelt (1 March 1842 – 8 February 1920), was a Swedish inventor and industrialist. Career Nordenfelt was born in Örby outside Kinna, Sweden, the son of a colonel. The surname was and is often spelled Nordenfeldt, though Thorsten ...

, who was working in London. The name of the weapon was changed to the Nordenfelt gun. A plant producing the weapon was set up in England with sales offices in London and long demonstrations were conducted at several exhibitions. The weapon was adopted by the British Royal Navy, as an addition to their

Gatling The Gatling gun is a rapid-firing multiple-barrel firearm invented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling. It is an early machine gun and a forerunner of the modern electric motor-driven rotary cannon. The Gatling gun's operation centered on a ...

and

Gardner gun The Gardner gun was an early type of mechanical machine gun. It had one, two or five barrels, was fed from a vertical magazine or hopper and was operated by a crank. When the crank was turned, a feed arm positioned a cartridge in the breech, th ...

s. During a demonstration held at Portsmouth, a ten-barrelled version of the weapon, firing rifle-calibre cartridges, fired 3,000 rounds of ammunition in 3 minutes and 3 seconds without stoppage or failure. However, with the development of the

Maxim gun The Maxim gun is a recoil-operated machine gun invented in 1884 by Hiram Stevens Maxim. It was the first fully automatic machine gun in the world. The Maxim gun has been called "the weapon most associated with imperial conquest" by historian ...

, the weapon was eventually outclassed. Nordenfelt merged in 1888 with the Maxim Gun Company to become

Maxim Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company The Maxim-Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company was the result of a takeover by Hiram Maxim of Thorsten Nordenfelt's Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company in 1888. Rothschild issued £1.9 million of shares to finance the merger. Nathan Rothsc ...

Limited. At least one Nordenfelt was re-activated for the 1966 film ''

Khartoum Khartoum or Khartum ( ; ar, الخرطوم, Al-Khurṭūm, din, Kaartuɔ̈m) is the capital of Sudan. With a population of 5,274,321, its metropolitan area is the largest in Sudan. It is located at the confluence of the White Nile, flowing n ...

'' and can be seen firing in the river boat sequence.

Users

* * * *

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...

*:Seven were in use at the time of the Balkan Wars * * * Qajar Dinasty:Had a battery of four guns in the 1890s

Conflicts

Egyptian-Ethiopian War

War of The Pacific The War of the Pacific ( es, link=no, Guerra del Pacífico), also known as the Saltpeter War ( es, link=no, Guerra del salitre) and by multiple other names, was a war between Chile and a Bolivian–Peruvian alliance from 1879 to 1884. Fought ...

Mahdist Wars

Federalist Revolution The Federalist Revolution ( Portuguese: ''Revolução Federalista'') was a civil war that took place in southern Brazil between 1893 and 1895, fought by the federalists, opponents of Rio Grande do Sul state president, Júlio de Castilhos, seeki ...

Revolta Da Armada The Brazilian Naval Revolts, or the Revoltas da Armada (in Portuguese), were armed mutinies promoted mainly by admirals Custódio José de Melo and Saldanha da Gama and their fleet of rebel Brazilian navy ships against the claimed unconstitu ...

First Matabele war The First Matabele War was fought between 1893 and 1894 in modern-day Zimbabwe. It pitted the British South Africa Company against the Ndebele (Matabele) Kingdom. Lobengula, king of the Ndebele, had tried to avoid outright war with the compa ...

War of Canudos The War of Canudos (, , 1895–1898) was a conflict between the First Brazilian Republic and the residents of Canudos in the northeastern state of Bahia. It was waged in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery in Brazil (1888) and the overt ...

Boxer Rebellion The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an Xenophobia, anti-foreign, anti-colonialism, anti-colonial, and Persecution of Christians#China, anti-Christian uprising in China ...

Balkan Wars The Balkan Wars refers to a series of two conflicts that took place in the Balkan States in 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War, the four Balkan States of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria declared war upon the Ottoman Empire and def ...

References

* George M. Chinn,
The Machine Gun. History, Evolution, and Development of Manual, Automatic, and Airborne Repeating Weapons
', Volume I, Washington, 1951. * C. Sleeman, "The Development of Machine Guns", ''The North American review'', Volume 139, Issue 335, October 1884 * Ellis, John. 1975. ''The Social History of the Machine Gun''. New York: Pantheon Books.

External links

Handbook for Gardner and Nordenfelt rifle calibre machine guns. 1889, 1891

Handbook of the 0.45 inch 5 barrel Nordenfelt guns, marks I and II, 1888
at State Library of Victoria
Handbook of the 0.45 inch, 5-barrel Nordenfelt guns, Marks I and II 1894
at State Library of Victoria
Handbook for the 0.303" Nordenfelt 3-barrel, and Gardner 2-barrel, converted from 0.4 and 0.45" M.H. chamber (magazine rifle chamber) : mounted on carriages, field, machine gun, infantry and carriage, parapet, machine gun. London : H.M.S.O. 1900

(Requires QuickTime and not suitable for slow-speed links)

��video of Nordenfelt machine gun firing
video of mechanism
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nordenfelt gun Victorian-era weapons of the United Kingdom Early machine guns Multi-barrel machine guns Weapons of the Ottoman Empire

Development

Users

Conflicts

See also

Weapons of comparable role, performance and era

References

External links