Why Gatling machine guns are out of date?

Maxim machine gun is the first truly successful automatic weapon powered by gunpowder and gas in the world. It shines brilliantly in World War I and World War II, and it is definitely a milestone in the history of weapons.

Compared with Ma Keqin, the fate of gatling is ups and downs. Let's talk about why we are down and out. 1860, gatling invented a multi-barrel, self-loading rapid-fire weapon powered by a hand crank, which was named "Gatling machine gun". Before Ma Keqin invented the internal energy machine gun that used the recoil of gunpowder to complete the automatic cycle, Gatling machine gun was simply synonymous with tall. The theoretical rate of fire is more than 200 rounds, which seems nothing now. /kloc-in the second half of the 0/9th century, it was a great achievement in the era of single-shot crossbow rifle carrying beam. However, at the turn of the century, when Ma Keqin appeared with his newly invented sharp weapon, the Gatling machine gun plummeted immediately. In the face of Ma Keqin's simple and clear shooting method, gatling, who shakes the handle, is like a popcorn, which is heavy, complicated and difficult to control (the shooter should keep a constant speed when shaking the handle, and once he shakes it too fast, it will get stuck, which is almost inevitable in a tense battlefield environment). Gatling gave way to a rising star, Ma Keqin.

The first turning point appeared in the late 1940s. Aviation powers are generally equipped with jet fighters. The speed of military aircraft is getting faster and faster, and the "shooting window" left for pilots in air combat is getting narrower and narrower. The acceleration of air combat rhythm makes it more and more difficult for slow large-caliber artillery to adapt, and it is also difficult for traditional single-barrel machine guns to shoot enough projectiles to kill enemy planes. In order to increase the odds of close air combat, the US Air Force launched the "Vulcan Project", and General Electric Company was responsible for developing an automatic weapon with ultra-high firing rate. Gm developed M6 1 Vulcan aviation gun by using gatling principle one hundred years ago. Veterans are back in the rivers and lakes again!