At the end of the 19th century, the Maxim MG-08 heavy machine gun was born, which was a heavy machine gun from the hands of the British American Maxim, which had unparalleled firepower output at that time, and was favored by many countries at the beginning of its existence, and Britain was one of the earliest beneficiary countries of the Maxim heavy machine gun.
Makqin appears
In 1891, the British colonial army sent a small detachment armed with Maxim machine guns to Rhodesia, where there was a fierce battle with the Zulus. At that time, the strength of this British squad was only 50 men, while the Zulu troops were as many as 5,000, and the ratio of strength reached a huge difference of 1:100.
With such a disparity in strength, the Zulus thought they were the victors, but it was only after the two sides actually fought each other that they realized how wrong they were. It turned out that the British colonial army squad set up four Maxim machine guns and began to fire wildly at the Zulus, and the final result was that the British squad was victorious, and the Zulus suffered more than 3,000 casualties in this battle.
Why is the Maxim machine gun so powerful? Because this machine gun weighs about 27 kilograms, the barrel is water-cooled, and it can continue to fire for a long time. After improvements, smokeless black powder was used, which further improved the sustained ability of Maxim's shooting, and by the time the British team applied Maxim to warfare, it could theoretically reach a rate of fire of 450 rounds per minute.
Although the Zulus had an absolute superiority in numbers, they were far behind the British in terms of firepower, which led to a surprising result. After this war, the reputation of the Maxim machine gun was completely launched, and the countries that did not pay special attention to it also purchased it one after another, so that the production line of the Maxim machine gun was in short supply for a time, and the orders were always backlogged and thick.
Among many countries, Germany attached the greatest importance to Maxim, and ordered a large number of Maxim machine guns at that time. In the eyes of the Germans, Maxim's use of gunpowder gas energy to realize the automatic action of machine guns is simply a great feat, and if Maxim can be equipped with the whole army, it will inevitably greatly enhance the combat effectiveness of the army.
Kaiser Wilhelm II held a machine gun competition with famous machine guns such as Maxim, Gatling, Gardner, and Nordenfeld. But after a fierce comparison, Maxim won in almost every way, and this result made Wilhelm II very emotional, and his affection for Maxim reached the highest: "This is the machine gun I want, and nothing else!" ”
Raise the muzzle of the gun a foot
With the full support of Wilhelm II, Maxim was soon massively deployed in the German army. At the beginning of the use of Makqin, in order to get the support of officials at all levels in the army, he even did not hesitate to pay out of his own pocket to take the lead in equipping the German Guards Infantry Regiment with Makqin, and then used the performance of the Guards Infantry Regiment to prove the power of Makqin.
However, the German General Staff at that time did not seem to be interested in Maxim, even if Wilhelm II appealed, it could not achieve the goal in a short time, until the British used Maxim to achieve extraordinary results on the battlefield, the German General Staff realized that it quickly armed a large number of Maxims.
The German General Staff soon found that Maxim was really a good thing, but it was really heart-wrenching that such a large number of orders were earned by others, and finally decided to set up its own arsenal to produce Maxim, which was the predecessor of the later German Arms and Ammunition Factory, and finally satisfied the number of Maxims in Germany.
With the number of German troops equipped with Maxim, the German army's victory rate on the battlefield skyrocketed, and this almost crazy machine gun caused the armies of other countries to frequently lose in confrontations with Germany.
Moreover, the Germans were very rigorous, and they did not stop there after getting the Makqin, but continued to conduct in-depth research and developed a lot of new tactics based on the Makqin, and what would happen if the muzzle of the Maxim heavy machine gun was raised by one foot? It has also become one of the important topics of their research.
Finally, driven by curiosity, the scheme of using the muzzle of the Maxim machine gun was raised by one foot was quickly implemented on the battlefield. After the muzzle of the Maxim heavy machine gun, which had a high rate of fire, was raised by one foot, the range immediately increased by a large amount, and the bullets flew out in a parabolic form and landed on the enemy positions farther away.
But what is the practical effect of such an approach? The answer is "beyond shooting". The so-called overshoot actually means that the bullet passes over the front of one's own position and lands on the local position. This method of firing can effectively move the Makqin firepower output point back, and can cooperate with the forward position to output fire on the enemy's position at the same time.
Prior to this, one of the reasons why the Makqin position was not valued by other countries was that the Makqin position had to be forward, so that the Maxim position could be destroyed with artillery.
Germany's initial method was to place Makqin in the trenches to avoid enemy shelling, but the effect was not obvious, and the firepower was also greatly limited, and the "Beyond Shooting" reversed the situation, allowing the raindrops of bullets to fall wildly on the enemy's positions, causing huge casualties to the enemy, and Britain was the biggest victim of Germany's use of this method of warfare, and the army suffered huge casualties.
It is difficult for an English girl to marry
The overwhelming majority of the infantry in the British army were young men, because of the German transcendent tactics that killed a large number of people on the battlefield, which indirectly led to the sharp decline in the number of young men in Britain after the end of World War I, and more than a million young girls wanted to marry but could not.
At that time, there was a principal of a British girls' school, in order to encourage the female students to study hard, directly told the female students a fact: "Among you, one in five people will not be able to marry in the future, so if you don't want to die alone, you have to study hard to make yourself more competitive!" ”
The female students did not pay attention to the principal's words at the time, thinking that such a statement was too alarmist. It's just that what they didn't expect was that when they reached marriageable age, the situation would be even more terrible than what the principal said back then. According to one female student, when she grew up, half of her female classmates failed to get married, and she herself was one of them.
The post-war decline in the number of men was far more damaging, as the post-war economic downturn led to a scarcity of jobs, and young men who had risen in status because of their small numbers began to resentfully the women, believing that they were taking more jobs, calling them "predators", and believing that the British sent them to colonies because there were more men.
In order to alleviate this dilemma, Britain specially selected outstanding men from the colonies and brought them back to Britain to solve the urgent need and stabilize the British social order.