If you conduct a survey of today's youth and ask who invented the first machine gun, then the most popular answer will probably be “Mikhail Kalashnikov”. In the best case, the names of the inventor of the Soviet machine gun PPSh during the Great Patriotic War Georgy Shpagin or the German Hugo Schmeisser will be named. But the name of the Tsarist General, and then the Red Army, Vladimir Fedorov, who created the machine gun almost 100 years ago, will be remembered only by the most curious.
Mosin rifle
The creator of the world's first machine gun, Vladimir Fedorov, was born on May 15, 1874 in St. Petersburg. After graduating from the gymnasium, he entered the Mikhailovsky artillery school located in his hometown, after which he commanded a platoon in one of the artillery brigades for two years. In 1897, the officer again became a cadet, but this time at the Mikhailovsky Artillery Academy.
During his training practice at the Sestroretsk Arms Factory, Fedorov met his boss and inventor of the famous "three-line" in 1891, Sergei Mosin. It was with an attempt to improve the "Mosin" rifle, turning it into an automatic, which many gunsmiths were actively engaged in, that Vladimir began his career as an inventor. He was helped by the service in the Artillery Committee and the opportunity to study technical and historical materials telling about various types of modern and ancient small arms.
Six years after graduating from the academy, in 1906, Fedorov submitted to the Artillery Committee his own version of the "three-line", converted into an automatic rifle. And although he received the approval of the military authorities, the very first shooting proved that it is easier and cheaper to create a new weapon than to try to change and improve an existing one. And the trouble-free rifle of the factory chief, Sergei Mosin, lived and fought safely until the middle of the last century, and remained without fundamental extraneous changes.
Prototype-1912
Putting the "three-line" aside, Vladimir Fedorov, together with a mechanic from the officer's school workshop at the Sestroretsk training ground and the future famous Soviet weapons designer, inventor of a personalized machine gun and submachine gun and also General Vasily Degtyarev, began work on his own automatic rifle. After four years of successful field tests, Fedorov's rifle was named "Prototype 1912".
The inventors have made two types of it. One - chambered for the standard cartridge of the tsarist army of 7.62 mm caliber. The second - chambered for 6, 5 mm, designed specifically for an automatic rifle, which greatly improved the speed and accuracy of fire. Unfortunately, the outbreak of the First World War and the opposition of the War Ministry prevented Fedorov and Degtyarev from completing work on their creation and giving the army new small arms. Work on it was declared untimely and stopped. And mainly with infantry weapons of the tsarist army, followed by the Red Army and White Guards, the "three-line" remained for a long time.
General's assault rifle
The significant successes of the inventor, however, did not go unnoticed. In 1916, 42-year-old Vladimir Fedorov received the epaulettes of a major general and the opportunity to continue his weapons experiments. And in the same year, the general invented a shortened and lighter weight mixed rifle and machine gun, which received the neutral name "automatic". At the training ground in Oranienbaum, 50 automatic rifles and eight Fedorov automatic rifles withstood the tests perfectly and were accepted into military service.
A huge advantage of the first assault rifle was the Japanese cartridge used in it, a smaller caliber than its Russian counterpart - 6.5 mm (Fedorov's cartridge was never modified). Thanks to this, the weight of the weapon was reduced to five kilograms, the precision firing range increased to 300 meters, and the recoil, on the contrary, decreased. And on December 1 of the same year, the marching company of the 189th Izmail regiment, armed, including with Fedorov's invention, went to the Romanian front. And the plant in Sestroretsk was ordered at once 25 thousand Fedorov assault rifles that proved to be excellent in the war. But later the order was reduced to nine thousand, and then completely canceled.
The now red general Vladimir Fedorov was able to return to work on the machine gun only after the end of the Civil War. In July 1924, the improved model passed regular tests, the results of which were again recognized as positive. However, only 3,200 copies got into the Red Army, since the leaders of the Soviet People's Commissariat of Defense unexpectedly quickly cooled off to the novelty. Perhaps in vain. Indeed, although the machine gun was officially in service only until 1928, in fact it was used even 12 years later, during the military conflict with Finland. And then he did not cause any particular complaints from the fighters.
