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During World War One, the machine gun played an important role in the military for all sides during the war. The machine gun was used in a variety of ways, varying from trench defense to airplane armament. The machine gun created an impact on WW1 so great it turned the tides of war.

During the war, the machine gun came in two variants; water cooled and, later on, air cooled. First presented to the British army by Hiram Maxim, the British army rejected his proposal. However, the Germans saw Maxim's technology and took hold of it, creating their own version of the machine gun named the Maschinengewehr 08. By August 1914, the German army had around 12,000 at their disposal, which eventually inflated to about 100,000. However, the British and French only had a mere few hundreds when the war kicked up.

The theory in 1914 of the machine gun was that it would be mounted on a flat tripod, and have four to six men operating it. It would have a gallon of water to cool it if it was water- cooled, and could spew out four hundred to six hundred rounds per minute, via a fabric belt or a metal strip. However the weapons, wether air- cooled or water- cooled, would overheat in about two minutes of sustained fire. This led to operators firing in short bursts, rather than a sustained fire. Even then, the guns would overheat, and it was not known for the soldiers to urinate into the jacket to cool down the weapon. For a trench to be protected by a machine gun, there would have to be multiple gun emplacements to cover a certain area. This was because the guns would easily jam and overheat, causing the emplacement to be overrun by charging soldiers.

Nevertheless, the machine gun was highly effective against oncoming soldiers. The French's plan XVII, or seventeen, was a charging attack, which turned out very deadly to the attackers. The machine guns would essentially mow down rows of oncoming enemies. On the first day of the British offensive, the British suffered a record of casualties in a single day- sixty thousand British soldiers died in a single battle against a well- defended German emplacement armed with machine guns. This invention tuned the tides of war for all sides.

Some attempts to make a portable machine gun, such as the Lewis Light Machine Gun and the Bergmann MP18. Furthermore, the Germans invented the Vickers synchronized gun system. It was for aircraft, and would make the machine guns shoot through the propellor. However, these attempts at a portable machine gun were relatively unsuccessful. Machine guns were mounted on armored cars and, later on in the war, tanks.

Overall, the machine gun was an essential weapon of war, and changed history forever.

Link to credit source: http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/machineguns.htm