Just playing Call of Duty and noticed the death machine spins and I always wondered why.
In: Engineering
I’ll attempt an actual ELI5 answer:
A Gatling gun is actually several guns glued together. The ammo has to go into each gun. The guns are turned around in a circle so the ammo can go into each gun.
For an in depth, non-ELI5 answer, check out Forgotten Weapons video about the modern version of a Gatling gun: the M134 minigun: https://youtu.be/rIlwHT4IdRc
Also side note: you referred to “machine guns”and Gatling guns as though they are the same when they aren’t really. (To commenters: don’t get super pedantic on me) A typical “machine gun” is something like an M249, M60, or PKM with a single barrel and the bolt cycles forward and back using the gas from the firing shot. A minigun has multiple barrels and is electrically driven rather than gas operated.
Because it’s how they work?
Boom, one barrel, reload, cooling time, boom, next barrel reload cooling time..
Then do this really fast.
As others have mentioned, only gatling guns have to spin to shoot. While heat dissipation and the rate of fire are affected by the rotation, they aren’t really the reason why a gatling gun spins.
Modern gatling guns were developed as faster jet aircraft required a greater volume of fire to hit a target. Gatling guns allow for a greater rate of fire to produce the volume needed. The reason they spin, however, is the rotation allows multiple concurrent cycles of operation within the same weapon.
The standard cycle of operation for a gun is feeding, chambering, locking, firing, unlocking, extracting, ejecting, cocking. In a machine gun, all of these steps must happen in order and the entire cycle must be completed in its entirety for every round that is fired.
The rotation of a gatling gun allows for multiple cycles of operation – one cycle per barrel – to happen concurrently. As the gun (an M61 Vulcan in my head) rotates, a different step of the cycle of operations happens at a specific position. There are six breech bolts in an M61 – one per barrel – that rotate along a cam path machined into the housing of the gun.
Feeding happens at about the 4 o’clock position, when a round is fed into the gun in front of a breech bolt. As the gun rotates, the cam path drives the breech bolt forward, chambering the round and locking at about the 2 o’clock position. Firing happens at about the 12 o’clock position. As rotation continues, the cam path drives the breech bolt back, extracting the brass at about the 10 o’clock position. Then, the brass is ejected at the 8 o clock position.
Because there is a separate barrel and breech bolt at each point, all five of those steps happen simultaneously. On each rotation, each barrel completes a full cycle of operation in its entirety; which also means that on each rotation, the gun completes six individual cycles of operation concurrently.
Aiming for the 5yo answer, though many here are great.
Think like an old clothes washer. The dial turns around.
Load water
Wash
Empty water
Same deal for gatling guns. They could have a single barrel. Imagine it going in its circle. Load-fire-empty.
Now just add more barrels so that it can have more shots per minute. (Or multiple shots every circle)
Not every machine gun with rotating barrels is a Gattling gun. The Gattling gun was the crank operated machine gun used in the mid 1800’s to early 1900’s. Modern rotary guns have their own names and models.
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