Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Italy's WW1 Heavy Machine Gun: FIAT-Revelli Modello 1914" video.

  1. This MG has very few parts actually, even by modern standards. They are big. Like any industrial tool design of the time.
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  2. That of the Hotchkiss was longer.
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  3. Actually the Perino worked really well by any account. The problem was that it was complex to make, Especially the machining of the bolt.
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  4. They have yet to upload the clip on the Villar-Perosa despite Othais literally snatched the gun from Ian's hands more than a year ago, so I'm not holding my breath.
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  5. They have yet to upload the one on the Villar-Perosa despite Othais literally snatched the gun from Ian's hands more than a year ago, so I'm not holding my breath.
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  6.  @zoiders  Are you abvle to point out any real problem with this design?
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  7. This MG has very few parts actually, even by modern standards. They are big. Like any industrial tool design of the time. In WWI only the Hotchkiss had less parts.
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  8.  @zoiders  So you didn't point out any. Again, are you able to point out any real problem with this design?
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  9. 1) THE FIAT-REVELLI 1914 DIDN'T USE A DELAYED BLOWBACK SYSTEM. It's a breechlock short-recoil system. Infact it has what you call a "locking block". 2) The cammed locking block's hub doesn't act by modifying the force, but the time. The farther back the hub of the locking block is, the more the barrel has to travel back to unlock it.
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  10.  @zoiders  You are not a WWI veteran, so you can stop talking down to people "from the field". Yours are no more than armchair guessing. Metallic link belts and magazines won, sorry. Canvas belt became obsolete. Metallic and canvas belt are not the same. There were no metallic belts in WWI. Magazines are still used. Canvas belt are not. The FIAT-Revelli magazine was a way to have a 50 rounds magazine in an era where simply staggered 50 rounds magazines would have been unreliable. A belt doesn't work everywere. A canvas belt easily collect mud and get wet. wetting the ammos too and mantaining them wet Storage and transport of canvas belts requires special attention. Refilling canvas belt in the field requires time and precision. Much more time and much more precision than refilling magazines. Canvas belt are damaged quite easily, and are easily subject to stretching or shrinking due to the weather. All the simplicity of the belt is paid in terms of complexity of the gun, since a cartridge has to be extracted backwards form the belt, then rised or lowered out of the way of the belt, then pushed into the chamber. A cartridge only has tro be pushed out of the magazine or strip. Belts require much more time to be changed than magazines or strips. To discard a damaged belt that causes feeding problems costs all the ammos in it. A damaged magazine or strip costs less ammos. Canvas belt are so problematic than even the advent of synthetic fibers, that would have solved some of their problems, didn't manage to save them from becoming obsolete.
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  11.  @hendriktonisson2915  Unfortunately, much of the surviving guns had been turned into Fiat-Revelli 1914/35, and then used in N.Africa until exhaustion (it was conceived to be a stopgap weapon anyway, until the full adoption of the Breda 37), so there are very few surviving samples, generally in museums, that don't allow to shoot them.
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  12.  lass kinn  It's not like belts are closed to the elements.
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  13.  @rookpl7877  He's wrong. Here's a 3D animation of the MG. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SwNqvUZSW8&t=7s George M. Chinn in "The machinegun" (1951) wrongly described the mechanism as delayed blowback. It's not it's only mistake (he described hundreds of machineguns in that book, and of most of them he could not have seen a single sample), but, since is't practically impossible to examine a FIAT Revelli 1914 outside italy, all the English literature about this MG in the last 70 years simply repeated Chinn's article, so it became "the truth" that a working principle no really different from that of a Browning 1917-1919 becomes a delayed blowback when it's into a FIAT Revelli 1914. Notice that this action is a scaled-up version of that of the Glisenti 1910 pistol, that's always described as short recoil locked breech (IE by McNab, Chris, The Great Book of Guns 2004).
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  14. Actually that action is simple even by modern standards (it's a scaled up pistol action, still used in the FN Fiftyseven and Ruger 57). In WWI only the Hotchkiss was simpler. The magazine is actually cleaner than a cloth belt and, as any magazine, it doesn't actually enter into the gun. The bolt only picks up the top cartridge.
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  15. It's a short recoil weapon infact. Depending on the shape of the loking block, you an have the bolt recoiling exactly at the same speed of the barrel until they are unlocked, or the bolt recoiling at a slightly higher speed. That was useful to give a little primary extraction to the case, that avoided the need to oil the cartridge or flute the chamber.
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  16. Actually this one was of a pretty simple design and worked pretty well.
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  17. Really not. You can very well open the inspection window and throw a handful of mud directly into it. It will probably keep on going like never happened. WWI HMGs were like the heavy industrial tools of the time. Massively overbuilt and stupidly reliable. There was very little than dirt, mud, ice or wear could do to them. dirt had all the space of the world to go without locking the surfaces, and the inertia of the parts was so big that they were self-cleaning in their movement.
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  18.  @sandrodunatov485  Actually those things tended to be stupidly reliable. This, the Maxim, the MG08... Like the industrial tools of the time, they were so massively overbuilt that dirt, mud, ice, wear and so on, had little impact on them, and they went on firing thousands and thousands of rounds all day long. Those became problems when portability became a requirement, and so MGs had to be made lighter.
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  19. The designer is the same infact.
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  20. Actually there was no real problem with the 100 rds magazines. They were not used on the field because they had no real advantages (while a damaged magazine meant to discard 100 rounds instead of only 50). Even a 200 rds circular magazine was experimented for aerial use. https://i1.wp.com/www.forgottenweapons.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fiat-magazine.jpg?resize=1024%2C567&ssl=1
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  21. You can very well open the inspection window and throw a handful of mud directly into it. It will probably keep on going like never happened. WWI HMGs were like the heavy industrial tools of the time. Massively overbuilt and stupidly reliable. There was very little than dirt, mud, ice or wear could do to them. dirt had all the space of the world to go without locking the surfaces, and the inertia of the parts was so big that they were self-cleaning in their movement.
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  22.  @firepower7017  The Browning worked well, but was not a simple design by any means. BTW the main problem of the Chauchat was the locking of the action caused by thermal expansion, not springs. That despite the magazines of a LMG (that has to be used in prone position in no man's land) are much likely to see mud than a fixed position HMG. The design is magazine fed MG. It had been quite succesful.
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  23. It worked, and the feeding was way simpler than in any canvas belt fed MGs, so...
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  24.  @yarborough137  I looked at them. The Vikers is way more complicate than this, like ANY canvas belt fed MG (a cartridge has to be extracted from the canvas belt backward, then rised, or lowered, out of the way of the belt, then pushed into the chamber). Infact the Hotchkiss, the only WWI MG simpler than this, was not belt fed. The MG42 is not a WWI MG, it had been introduced during WWII. But do not think it's so much simpler than this. Only the bolt of the MG42 is made of 19 parts.
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  25. Not only poor italians, since the system had been copied, after the war, by practically any power that mantained water cooled MGs in service (that's why, as Ian stated, we tend to think it was common in WWI, while only the Italians had it during the war).
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  26. Actually this is a simple action even by modern standards. In WWI, only the Hotchkiss was simpler than this.
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  27. In WWI, among the HMGs, only the Hotchkiss was simpler than this.
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  28. Mind that's a scaled up action originally made for a pistol (the will-be Glisenti 1910), and it's still used on the FN Fifty-seven and Ruger 57.
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  29.  @kevintang5473  You are welcome. There's a great animation of the working of this gun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SwNqvUZSW8
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  30.  @zoiders  By WWII water cooled MGs were obsolete. The Vickers the British Army used in WWII were simply relics of WWI, and had been used for no other reason than because they were there. That's the reality. The operating mechamism of the Vickers is complex, due to the abovementioned reason. The fact that you like it doesn't change reality. Of all the operating mechanisms of WWI HMGs, only one was so simple that it could be scaled down to pistol dimensions. Guess which one.
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  31. Belts are closed?
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  32. It's a short recoil system infact. 3d animation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SwNqvUZSW8
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  33. Actually it worked pretty well.
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  34. He said that it fired from a closed bolt. For a water-cooled gun it didn't make any difference, but, when it was turned into air-cooled before WWII, it caused some problem.
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  35. Actually it's simple even by modern standards. In WWI only the Hotchkiss was simpler than this.
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  36.  @SoWe1  Yes, there is that mechanical piece. The locking block. The locking block mechanically links the bolt with the barrel. It's face is in contact, with the bolt and it's pushed rearward by it, but its back is in contact with the barrel extention, so it pushes back the barrel at the same speed until it rotates out of the way. It's exactly the same working principle of the Browning 1917-1919. Only the block rotates instead of falling. Here's a 3d animation of the functioning of the gun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SwNqvUZSW8&t=8s Notice that's a scaled-up version of the action of the Glisenti 1910 pistol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NplYrBFTWrA&t=2s
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  37. It's enough to see the animation to spot why it had not been adopted. https://youtu.be/X0mBbDTPfFo?t=128 It was reliable, but to machine that double-eared rotating locking block was a nightmare. What's incredible is that, in all that development time, they didn't come up with something with a simpler shape.
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  38. This MG worked perfectly.
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  39. For a water cooled MG there's no risk. The Browning 1917 too fired from a closed bolt.
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  40.  @lairdcummings9092  It's simply the way to have a 50 rounds magazine in an era when a simply staggered 50 rounds magazine would have been unreliable.
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  41. 6.5 Carcano in WWI Then 8mm Breda (Fiat Revelli 1914/35, belt fed).
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  42. Only loaded magazines were supposed to reach the first line, like only loaded belts. To manually reload the magazines of this gun during the action was like to manually reload the cloth belt of a Maxim.
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  43.  @robertpacific8319  You'll have exactly the same problem with an M60 or a SAW. As already said,the part count of this MG is low even by modern standards, and the parts being big facilitate disasembly and reassembly. Do you really think that to reassemble am MG42-MG3, so praised for its simplicity, is easier? Have you ever seen of how much parts only the bolt is made? Not by chance, of all the WWI MGs, only this action had been scaled down to pistol dimensions. (is still used on the FN five-seven and ruger 57).
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  44.  @rookpl7877  You are welcome!
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  45. It's a short recoil breechlock. The locking block keeps the barrel and the bolt linked togheter during their rearward movement, until it rotates out of the way. It work exactly like a Browning 1917-1919, but the locking block rotates instead of falling.
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  46. It was adopted and widely used. Actually this is a simple action even by modern standards. In WWI, only the Hotchkiss was simpler than this.
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  47. Actually this is a simple action even by modern standards. In WWI, only the Hotchkiss was simpler than this.
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  48. This MG has very few parts actually, even by modern standards. They are big. Like any industrial tool design of the time. In WWI only the Hotchkiss was simpler.
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  49.  @tiortedrootsky  Despite the fluted chamber being originally a patent of Giovannino Agnelli, owner of Fiat, no version of the Fiat Revelli 1914 had a fluted chamber, nor is known for case separation issues.
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  50.  @lairdcummings9092  Canvas belts (the only available in WWI) became obsolete, magazines didn't. Actually canvas belts are EXACTLY the reason why this MG is way simpler than any WWI belt-fed one since, using a canvas belt, the weapon has to extract the cartridge form the belt rearward, then move it up or down, out of the way of the belt, then push it into the chamber (Rube Goldberg design). The Madsen magazine never held 50 rounds.
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  51.  @lairdcummings9092  Cloth belt were so satisfactory that they became obsolete with the end of WWI, magazine didn't. they are still used. There is nothing "Goldbergian" in a magazine. Thanks, infact it is.
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  52. It's practically a scaled-up Glisenti 1910 pistol action, so yes.
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  53.  @tiortedrootsky  Bolt and barrel are locked even if the bolt retreats slightly faster than the barrel, because their relative movements are geometrically determined. You can shape the locking block to avoid any relative movement before separation, but that would actually be a minus. The slight movement provides primary extraction that prevents a too abrupt separation of the case from the chamber (that's indifferent for a pistol, but important for a bottleneck rifle cartridge).
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  54.  @commando552  It only depends on the shape of the front and rear surfaces of the locking block if the distance between the bolt and the barrel remains the same for all the rearward movement, until they are unlocked, or the bolt is free to slightly accelerate in respect to the barrel, so providing to the case a bit of primary extraction, and avoiding the need to lubricate it or fluting the chamber. In any case the bolt is not free to move indipendently from the barrel, it’s geometrically linked to it, and so the breech is locked. The shape of the rollers in roller locked systems make so that the bolt is even more free to move, but they are roller locked anyway (and they works well with bottleneck cartridges exactly for that slight degree of movement allowed).
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  55. Short recoil breechlock action.
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  56. The locking block locks the gun and bolt rigidly until it rotates out of the way.
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  57. Mud is going to be much more of a problem for cloth belt fed MGs. In reality, like any industrial tool of the time, those MGs were so overbuilt that dirt couldn't really do anything to them.
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  58.  @MichaelBerthelsen  Into the mechanism there is an incredible amount of space where the dirt can go instead of locking it, and very few ways it can actually do damages. That thing would probably keep going even opening the inspection window and throwing a handful of mud into it. As said, this was no different from industrial tools for the time, that worked in workshops that were really not that clean.
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  59. It'a actually extremely simple and, as long as WWI HMG are considered, quite practical.
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  60.  @LifeisGood762  Yeah. It's because I have eyes that I can say it's operating mechanism being the simplest among WWI HMGs, bar that of the Hotchkiss.
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  61. Among WWI MGs, only the Hotchkiss is arguably simpler than this.
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  62. Actually this is a simple action even by modern standards. In WWI, only the Hotchkiss was simpler than this.
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  63. The Type 11 was simply flawed. This was not really worse than any cloth-belt fed MG of the time.
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  64. Actually several LMGs adopted the Revelli action. It was infact scalable down until pistol dimensions (the FN Five-Seven and the Ruger 57 still adopt it).
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  65. Like any WWI HMG, they were stupidly reliable. They were like heavy industrial tools of the time. Massively overbuilt. There was very little than dirt, mud, ice or wear could do to them.
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  66.  @nonamesplease6288  There were tested 50 rounds magazines at the time?
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  67. ? Actually that action is pretty simple even by modern standard. Among WWI HMGs, only the Hotchkiss was simpler.
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  68. Among WWI machineguns, only the Hotchkiss is marginally simpler than this.
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  69. Cloth belts had a lot of issues, and made MGs action really complicate (a cartridge has to be extracted from the belt rearward, then rised or lowered out of the way of the belt, then pushed into the chamber). Not by chance, they were pretty much obsolete at the end of WWI. Using a magazine, or a strip, simplified a lot of things. Not by chance this and the Hotchkiss (a strip fed MG) are the simplest actions among WWI HMGs. But manufacturing a staggered 50 rounds magazine with WWI technology meant to be in search of problems. So, here's a box of ten very simple 5 rounds magazines.
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  70. Infact this was simpler. Canvas belt, other than a lot of other problems, means that the MG has to extract the round backward form the belt, and then push it into the chamber. That added a lot of complexity to any belt-fed WWI MG design. In WWI, among the heavy MGs, only the Hotchkiss (a strip-fed design) was simpler than the FIAT.
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  71. Actually this is a simple action even by modern standards. In WWI, only the Hotchkiss was simpler than this.
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  72. ? Actually this is a simple action even by modern standards. In WWI, only the Hotchkiss was simpler than this.
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  73. It's a short recoil mechanism. The barrel and bolt are linked by a solid piece of metal. There's no power of the cartridge that can squash the locking block and unlock the mechanism in advance.
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  74.  @TheArklyte  It's not like canvas belt have less problems. They carry dirt into the mechamism, they can present the cartridge in wrong position, they get wet and wet the cartridges, they stretch and shrink due to the weather, they easily get damaged, they requires more time to be changed... and if one damaged belt causes feeding issues, you have to discard an entire belt instead of a single magazine. How many more "ifs" were there? You are only more used to see belts, but canvas belts became obsolete, magazines didn't. Actually the mechanism is composed of few parts even for current standards. In WWI only the Hotchkiss (not by chance, another not-belt-fed mechanism) was simpler.
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  75. For a water cooled MG, open or closed bolt is indifferent. The Browning 1917-1919 too fired from a closed bolt, and belts are no less exposed.
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  76.  @firepower7017  Carcano rifles had been used in recent conflicts. You use everything if you have nothing better available.
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  77. Actually this is a simple action even by modern standards. In WWI, only the Hotchkiss was simpler than this.
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  78. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SwNqvUZSW8&t=12s 3D working
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  79. It's continuous.
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  80. This is an HMG, the Breda 30 is a LMG. This had been replaced by the Breda 37 (that Allied reports deemed to be "exceptional") and the Fiat Revelli 14/35, that's this very same weapon adapted to belt feeding and 8mm Breda cartridges.
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  81. They are so overbuilt that a little dirt can't really do anything to them. They are like all the industrial tools of the time. Workshops were really no tidy places.
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  82. Any pistol has an exposed bolt slamming back and forth at great speed.
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  83.  @zoiders  and that's the end of your attempt to provide some real argument.
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  84. You have to imagine the magazines with the ammos in them. https://modernfirearms.net/userfiles/images/machine/mg85/fiat-revelli_m1914_2.jpg
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  85. ? Actually that action is simple even by modern standards. In WWI only the Hotchkiss was simpler.
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  86. There is a reason cloth belts became obsolete at the end of WWI, and magazines didn't.
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  87. Actually this is a simple action even by modern standards. In WWI, only the Hotchkiss was simpler than this. For a water cooled MG, open or closed bolt is indifferent. The Browning 1917-1919 too fired from a closed bolt.
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  88. Any semiauto pistol has an exposed bolt that violently slaps back and forth. Simply people don't put their body parts in the way.
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  89.  @SoWe1  At 1:48, the small red arrow points to the point where the locking block is in contact with the barrel extension. At 1:50 the locking block rotates enough to disengage bolt and barrel.
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  90. Actually this is a simple action even by modern standards. In WWI, only the Hotchkiss was simpler than this.
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  91. Actually this is a simple action even by modern standards. In WWI, only the Hotchkiss was simpler than this.
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  92. The locking wedge is pretty beefy for what it has to do.
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  93. You can very well open the inspection window and throw a handful of mud directly into it. It will probably keep on going like never happened. WWI HMGs were like the heavy industrial tools of the time. Massively overbuilt and stupidly reliable. There was very little than dirt, mud, ice or wear could do to them. dirt had all the space of the world to go without locking the surfaces, and the inertia of the parts was so big that they were self-cleaning.
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  94. It's a short recoil breechlock. The locking block keeps the barrel and the bolt linked togheter during their rearward movement, until it rotates out of the way. It work exactly like a Browning 1917-1919, but the locking block rotates instead of falling.
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  95. They are like any industrial tool ot the time. On the other hand, like any industrial tool of the time, they are so overbuilt that a little dirt can't really do anything to them.
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  96.  @PapaSchultz74  The tool was provided. but it was not supposed to be used during action. To load magazines was an activity to do during rest time.
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