The gun is fully operational & built from the original Gatling drawings & specifications. The Colt 1877 is a 5 or 10 barreled, fully brass encased direct drive gun. The barrel length is 18 1/4” and the overall length of the gun is 34”. The feeding device is the Bruce Feed design which is not a magazine. The Gatling Gun an early rapid-firing weapon invented by American Richard Gatling, and a precursor to the modern machine gun and rotary cannon. The term Gatling gun is still used today to refer to these rotary cannons. The Gatling gun is the first support weapon to possess a mechanical cycle of.
The Gatling gun, precursor to the fearsome modern machine guns that have wrought gruesome havoc on global battlefields since World War I, was invented by Richard Gatling in 1861. The introduction of a rapid-firing marvel like the Gatling early in the war should have given Union officials plenty of time to acquire and deploy it in combat. But, despite the lethal potential of what Gatling called his “Revolving Battery-Gun,” it is possible only a handful were ever used during the conflict. To his credit, Gatling energetically promoted his revolutionary weapon, even appealing directly to President Abraham Lincoln, but he was largely ignored.
![Rotating Rotating](/uploads/1/2/4/1/124138336/395182300.jpg)
Union armies would continue to fight without this groundbreaking device—what may well have become the Civil War’s deadliest weapon.Richard Jordan Gatling was born September 12, 1818, in Hertford County in northeastern North Carolina, near the Virginia line. Although he received a medical degree in 1850, Gatling never practiced medicine. Instead, he worked at a variety of jobs, including schoolteacher, county clerk’s assistant, dry goods store merchant and self-employed businessman. Yet Gatling’s consuming, lifelong passion was inventing, and he proved to be prodigious. From his first known invention at age 21 (a steamboat screw propeller) until his death on February 26, 1903, at age 84, Gatling churned out dozens of ingenious inventions for improving daily life in the home and on the farm. These ranged from more efficient toilets to rapid planting devices (notably a rice-sowing machine and a wheat drill) to steam-powered farm implements.
A Passion for Invention: Although educated in medicine, Richard Jordan Gatling remained devoted to inventing throughout his long life. (Universal History Archive/UIG/Bridgeman Images)In 1854, at age 36, he moved to St. Louis, and by 1861 was living in Indianapolis. The war’s outbreak turned the inventor’s attention from farm fields to battlefields. In a postwar letter, Gatling revealed:It occurred to me if I could invent a machine—a gun—which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a great extent, supersede the necessity of large armies.By the end of 1861, he had designed his “Revolving Battery-Gun” prototype.When Gatling received U.S. Government Patent No. 36,836 for his gun on November 4, 1862, it was not the Civil War’s first rapid-firing weapon.
The most notable of the Gatling’s competitors was inventor Wilson Agar’s Union Repeating Gun—nicknamed the “Coffee Mill Gun” because its top-mounted hopper-loader and hand-crank firing mechanism resembled that kitchen utensil. After Agar (sometimes spelled “Ager”) demonstrated his single-barreled, two-wheeled carriage-mounted weapon to Lincoln in 1861, the president advised its purchase—several dozen Coffee Mill Guns (capable of firing 120 rounds per minute) were obtained, a few of those eventually used in combat. Rapid firing, however, tended to overheat the gun’s single barrel, and its hopper and breech often jammed.In fact, the Civil War Gatling had several common features with Agar’s gun: Both had similarly style top-mounted hopper-loaders (what Gatling called “reservoirs”) for feeding loose rounds of ammunition into the weapon; each was mounted on a two-wheel gun carriage; and firing was by a hand-crank. But Gatling’s innovation was to use six ordinary rifle-musket barrels, each with its own breech, revolving around a central horizontal axis.
A brief interval between firing rounds through each barrel prevented overheating, allowing a remarkable rate of fire of 150 rounds per minute.Like the hopper-loader, carriage, and hand-crank it shared with Agar’s gun, the Civil War Gatling fired the same ammunition—standard.58-caliber rifle-musket paper-wrapped cartridges containing bullet and black powder charge. Each cartridge was placed inside its own specially constructed “cartridge chamber”—a steel tube, open on one end (to load the cartridge), and closed on the other end with a rifle-musket nipple for a standard percussion cap.
After firing, each empty cartridge chamber fell to the ground by gravity when the fired barrel rotated to the bottommost position. Empty cartridge chambers were collected and subsequently reloaded with new paper cartridges and percussion caps—a laborious, time-consuming process.
Gatling’s innovation allowed for a 150-round-per-minute rate of fire that could be sustained indefinitelyAlthough patented in November 1862, the Gatling already had been successfully demonstrated, notably on July 14, 1862. On that day, T.A. Ballweg, and D.G. Rose tested the gun at Indiana Governor Oliver P.
Morton’s direction. Their enthusiastic report: “The discharge can be made with all desirable accuracy as rapidly as 150 times a minute, and may be continued for hours without danger, as we think, from over-heating.” Unfortunately for Gatling, Morton declined to buy the weapon, a pattern of refusals to be repeated throughout the war.Gatling’s innovative firearm faced a firmly entrenched roadblock: Brig. James Wolfe Ripley, Union Army chief of ordnance.
Ripley (born in 1794) considered repeating weapons unnecessarily expensive inventions that encouraged ammunition waste, thereby overburdening the Army supply system. Already the creator of innovative home and farm implements, Gatling turned his prodigious creative talents to warfare in 1861. (PF-USNA/Alamy Stock Photo)A direct appeal by Gatling produced no U.S. Government contract during the war. Still, it remains widely claimed that at least some Gatlings saw combat use. Publications mentioning Gatling guns typically insist they “were first used in combat in the Civil War.” The mostly anecdotal evidence offered to substantiate this, however, is suspiciously thin and undated—hardly conclusive proof.It is asserted that Union Army of the James commander Maj. Butler personally bought 12 Gatlings (for $1,000 each, though Gatling’s agent embezzled the money) and that he briefly used a few to fire on enemy forces “near Richmond” during the siege of Petersburg.
Butler allegedly mounted up to eight on Union James River gunboats. Even then, no claim has been made that those gunboat Gatlings were fired in anger during combat.After the war, Gatling would boast: “Ben Butler took the guns he had with him to the Battle of Petersburg and fired them himself upon the rebels. They created great consternation and slaughter.” Obviously, Gatling was not a disinterested party. He, of course, had a financial stake in promoting his weapon as vigorously as possible. Tellingly, Civil War firearms historian William B. Edwards points out that Butler, a notoriously self-promoting individual who seldom missed a chance to brag of his accomplishments, “neglects to mention this colorful use of an important novel weapon of war.” The failure by Butler to mention Gatlings “is conspicuous” by its absence, Edwards concludes. Lethal Potential: After the Civil War, these magazine-fed, self-contained metallic cartridges allowed the Gatling to realize its full killing potential.
(Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo )Although Admiral David Dixon Porter purchased a small number of Gatlings (likely only one) to mount on Navy river gunboats in the West, there is no record of any combat use. All models, such as this postwar version, featured multiple revolving barrels to prevent overheating.
![Gatling Gun Rotating Magazine Gatling Gun Rotating Magazine](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/borderlands/images/8/84/Fry_gatling_gun.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121217232250)
Approximately 146 years ago, Richard Gatling patented his famous multiple barrel invention in 1862 and became the ruler of the battlefield due to its fearsome firepower. When the Gatling gun was used in Vietnam, it was given the nickname of “Puff the Magic Dragon” because it fired red tracers that gave the appearance of a dragon breathing fire.
However, a lot of innovation occurred over the span of 146 years, and Dillon Aero has taken the concept of the Gatling gun to a whole new level.The Dillon Aero M134D is an electronically powered, multi-barreled Gatling gun that uses its six rotating barrels that can fire 3000 to 4000 rounds of 7.62mm per minute when each barrel reaches the one o’clock position. It has magazine capacities of 1500, 3000, or 4400 rounds. It can be powered by AC/DC sources and because it’s designed as a modular system, it can be easily adapted to any existing platform. With an average of 50 shots a second, the ability to hit targets up to a mile away, an average of 30,000 rounds between stoppages, and system life in excess of one million rounds, it is one of the most reliable weapons in the world, as it should be considering each gun ranges from $50,000 to $75,000 depending on accessories.The M134D is the fastest 7.62mm weapon available and exhibits unique capabilities because of its remarkable speed. It is more accurate than a slower firing weapon because the high cyclic rate essentially eliminates recoil. Consider the following – in the amount of time it takes to fire one round from an M240, four rounds are fired from the M134, resulting in dense shot grouping.
Moreover, because there is a four-fold reduction in the amount of time it takes for a gunner to see his hits and accordingly adjust his aim.In addition, faster guns lead to faster error correction. With an increased amount of shots per second, the amount of time between each observed impact is greatly reduced. The M134D is nine times more likely to score hits due to the combined effects of high rate of fire, high weapon stability, and extremely dense shot grouping.Seeing as how Gatling guns are more effective and reliable than traditional gas-operated guns, fewer weapons (in turn fewer operators and platforms) are required to cover a target area. This results in major cost savings.On land the M134D is currently deployed worldwide for convoy escort, border patrol, and VIP protection. In addition to its more traditional roles, Dillon Gatlings are supplanting M2.50 caliber heavy machine guns and M240s on a number of US Army vehicles. In the naval role, Gatling guns are used for force protection on board the US and Royal Navy blue water fleet, and as fire support on SpecOps boats.
However, while available for a variety of platforms, the M134D is most commonly found on helicopters, such as the Bell UH-1, Bell-212, AH-6, H-60, and many others. For critical applications, Dillon created the M134DT, which is the newly designed Titanium Gatling Gun. Dillon redesigned the steel M134D for users operating helicopters at high altitudes and under hot conditions where aircraft weight is critical. Skeletonized components and titanium were combined to reduce the gun’s weight by almost twenty percent, which amounts to twelve to fifteen pounds per gun. This weight reduction was accomplished without diminishing the Gatling’s outstanding performance and reliability.The M134D is currently used by the US Army, US Navy, US Marine Corps, US Air Force, the UK, as well as several other nations. Dillon also offers Service Life Extension kits for older generation General Electric GAU-2B/M134 Miniguns. To find out more contact Dillon Aero at or call them at 800-881-4231.