Vickers machine gun - an inverted Maxim. Steampunk machine guns We have a maxim machine gun

“Everything will be the way we want.
In case of various troubles,
We have a Maxim machine gun,
They don’t have Maxim”
(Hilary Bellock "New Traveller")

Two materials published in a row about machine guns of the first and second world wars aroused great interest among the VO readership. Someone even said that there is no better “Maxim”. And is it possible to argue here, when after the battle of Omdurman the approximate number of killed dervishes was calculated, and it turned out that out of 20,000, at least 15,000 were killed by fire from “Maxims”. Naturally, the British, and after them the armies of other countries, urgently began to adopt this machine gun for service. And here it is interesting, so to speak, how national approaches to this new thing were embodied in metal and what came out of it as a result. Moreover, we will only take Europe for now, because in America machine gun operations were somewhat different from European ones.

Vickers Mk I machine gun, WWI period. Museum of Horse and Field Artillery. Australia.

Here it should be noted that the only country where the Maxim was able to really improve and improve its performance characteristics was, again, Great Britain. Thus, in the British armed forces, the Vickers Mk I became the main heavy machine gun. A classic machine gun that can still be found in the most remote corners globe. "Vickers", in essence, was the same machine gun "Maxim", produced for british army previously. But it also had some differences. For example, Vickers engineers reduced its weight. Having disassembled the Maxim, they discovered that some of its parts were unreasonably heavy weight. They also decided to reverse the lever mechanism so that it opens up instead of down. Thanks to this, it was possible to significantly reduce the weight of the shutter. Well, the reloading system remained “Maksimov” - reliable and durable, it was based on the principle of barrel recoil. The middle hinged bar, when straightened, locked the barrel at the moment of firing. However, when fired, some of the gases were diverted into the muzzle device, pushing back the barrel coupled with the bolt. The sleeve also pushed it back, and the joint movement of the barrel and bolt back continued until the rear shoulder of the hinge bar hit the figured protrusion on the box and folded upward. Then the bolt was disengaged from the barrel, and then the usual cycle went on: extracting and removing the cartridge case, cocking and reloading.

The weight of the Vickers Mk I machine gun reached 18 kg without water. Typically it was mounted on a tripod machine weighing 22 kg. As on the Hotchkiss machine gun machine, the vertical installation of the machine gun was carried out by a screw mechanism. Sights allowed indirect fire and shooting at night. The 7.7 mm cartridges were fed from a 250-round cloth belt.

The machine gun could fire at a rate of 450–500 rounds per minute as long as the casing was refilled. Continuous fire was often practiced in the first period of the war, although the streams of steam escaping from the casing unmasked the position. The casing contained four liters of water, which boiled after three minutes of firing at a speed of 200 rounds per minute. The problem was solved by using a condenser, where the steam was diverted, which turned into water there, and the water returned back to the casing.

At the beginning of the war, machine guns were distributed in twos per infantry battalion. However, the need for these weapons was so great that special machine gun troops were formed to meet it.

These were well-trained units, able to quickly eliminate delays in firing, which were assigned to infantry battalions. Another useful skill for machine gun soldiers was the ability to quickly change barrels. After all, even with constant addition of water, the barrel had to be changed every 10,000 shots. And since in battle such a number of shots were sometimes fired in an hour, a quick change of barrel became vitally important. A trained crew could replace the barrel in two minutes, with almost no loss of water.

The presence of its own troops, trained crews and servants also caused growing tactical requirements for the use of machine guns in trench warfare. It is not surprising that the Vickers machine gun was then considered as a model of light artillery. This point can be illustrated by the role of heavy machine guns in the First World War, in the operation carried out by the 100th Machine Gun Company at the Battle of High Wood during the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916. On August 24, it was decided that the infantry attack would be supported by the fire of 10 machine guns of the 100th Machine Gun Company, secretly placed in the trenches. Two infantry companies gave their ammunition to the machine gunners. And during the attack, the soldiers of the 100th company fired continuously for 12 hours! Naturally, the fire was fired from carefully placed positions in targeted areas. The barrels were changed every hour. The first and second crew numbers were replaced at short intervals so that the company could conduct continuous hurricane fire to support infantry attacks and prevent German counterattacks. That day, in 12 hours of battle, 10 machine guns of the 100th machine gun company spent about one million rounds of ammunition!

Russia, which fought on the side of the Allies, also had its own modification of the Maxim machine gun in service, which received the official name “Maxim Machine Gun Model 1910.” It was similar to the machine gun of the 1905 model, only it differed in the presence of a steel rather than a bronze casing. Heavy and expensive Maxim machine gun mod. 1910, however, was an excellent weapon that met Russian requirements for simplicity and reliability. This fact confirms that the Maxim machine gun was produced in Russia until 1943; this is a kind of record for the production of Maxim machine guns. The machine gun weighed 23.8 kg, and it is interesting to compare it with the 18 kg Vickers. The Russian machine gun was mounted on a small wheeled machine, which together with the shield weighed 45.2 kg. The caliber of the machine gun was 7.62 mm, the supply of cartridges was also carried out from a cloth tape and also for 250 rounds. The rate of fire was 520 - 600 rounds per minute, that is, higher than that of the Vickers machine gun. The fact that the Russian Maxim machine gun did not have a modified lever mechanism explains the increased size of the receiver below the barrel level.

To ensure the effectiveness of the automation, it was necessary to ensure reliable recoil of the barrel. For this purpose, the British screwed a cup onto its muzzle, which, together with the barrel, was inside a spherical muzzle. When fired, the gases coming out of the barrel forcefully hit this cup, which increased the recoil of the barrel. The shutter spring (in the photo it is removed from the box), like on the Maxim, is located on the left. For confident shooting, the force of its tension should be regularly measured and, according to a special table, either weakened or, on the contrary, tightened. For example, if it was planned to shoot at airplanes, the spring should be tightened, and if it was necessary to fire from top to bottom, it should be loosened somewhat. It also depended on the time of year!

The German machine gun Model 1908 (MG08) was also a Maxim machine gun. Like the Russian version, it used the mechanism without any changes, as a result receiver turned out to be high. The machine gun was produced under the standard German caliber 7.92 mm, and the cartridges were fed from a 250-round belt. The rate of fire of 300-450 rounds per minute was lowered, as the Germans believed that it was not the rate of fire and massive fire that was important, but accuracy and efficiency.

This approach made it possible to alleviate problems with ammunition supply and changing the barrel. The machine gun was known as "Spandau" after the name of the plant where it was produced. The weight of the machine gun reached 62 kg with a tripod and spare parts. The Germans mounted a machine gun on a sled to increase mobility. German machine gunners were selected very carefully; the command, taking into account the events of the end of 1914, believed that the machine gun had become the ruler of the battlefield. The machine gunners were distinguished by an excellent level of training and skillful skills, which is confirmed by the losses of the French and British in the battles of Chem-des-Dames, Loz, Nu Chapelle and Champagne.

All these machine guns: the Vickers, MG08 and the Maxim machine gun of the 1910 model - were created on the basis of the same design. However, the Vickers machine gun had an initial bullet speed of 744 m/sec with a barrel length of 0.721 m. The German bullet speed was 820 m/sec with a barrel 0.72 m long, but our machine gun had 720 m/sec with a barrel 0.719 m The Austro-Hungarian Schwarzlose machine gun, which was already discussed at VO, worked satisfactorily, but the 0.52 m barrel was too short for the 8 mm cartridge. As a result, the Schwarzlose machine gun was often identified by the powerful flash of the muzzle flame when fired. The food was supplied from a 250 round belt, starting speed the bullet was small - 620 m/sec. Rate of fire 400 rounds per minute.

As for the Vickers, this machine gun still remains in service in some countries of the world. For its time, it was a successful and reliable weapon, capable of firing for hours and conducting indirect fire. The French of that time rightfully enjoyed the fame of avid creators of all kinds of modifications. As variations of the Hotchkiss machine gun, the Puteaux, Saint-Etienne and Benet-Mercier machine guns appeared. Only they were all unsuccessful copies, mainly due to unjustified changes in the design. Hotchkiss's best machine gun was the Model 1914, which used all the improvements of previous models to create a truly successful machine gun with a relatively low weight.

Now Italy somehow does not seem to us to be a “great machine-gun power.” But at the dawn of their creation, it was in Italy that one of the most brilliant examples of all time appeared - the Perino machine gun of 1901. The Italians were very pleased with the new machine gun, but preferred for a long time keep its creation a secret. The purchase of a large batch of Maxim machine guns, just to hide the fact of the presence of new weapons, shows what a veil of secrecy was surrounded by the Italian machine gun. This air- or water-cooled machine gun had an original power supply system using clips of 25 rounds each, which were fed in turn from a cartridge box installed on the left, and came out on the right placed in the same clip! Since the cartridges in such a power system were aligned, there were practically no delays in their supply. Any delay was quickly resolved by pressing a button, which removed the problematic cartridge. The weapon demonstrated many other remarkable qualities, but the Italians were delayed in its production, which forced them to use Maxim machine guns and 6.5 mm Revelli machine guns - mediocre weapons, the operation of the mechanisms of which was carried out due to the recoil of the barrel and the semi-free bolt. The shutter, of course, could be called locking, but that would be said loudly.

At that time, there were other types of machine guns. But the types of weapons described above dominated the battlefields of the First World War. It was a grandiose battle, in which, during positional battles, the superiority of this type of weapon was finally proven, which led to characteristic ways conducting combat operations.

Good grandfather Maxim.

In 1870, an unknown Swedish lieutenant D. H. Friberg patented the operating principle of an automatic weapon, which would later be called a machine gun. The oldest surviving drawing dates from 1883. The inventor was noticeably ahead of his time, presenting a design unsuitable for the era of black powder. At that time, no one was interested in this. Only in 1907, another Swede, Rudolf Henrik Kjellman, combined a long-standing patent with new cartridges on smokeless powder and received an Fm/Kjellman light machine gun, quite reliable, but produced in a series of only 10 pieces due to the high cost of production. But a bolt based on the principle of D. H. Friberg will in the future appear in such iconic machine guns of the next era as the DP and MG-42.
But let's go back to the 1880s... Famous American inventor Hiram Maxim ( Hiram Stevens Maxim) of his more than two hundred inventions, among other things, he invented a mousetrap, a vacuum cleaner, a gas generator, a bulletproof vest, acorn coffee, a pocket inhaler, a “flying car” - an attraction that brought him a fair income, sued Edison over the authorship of the invention of the electric light bulb, and received According to his contract, annual payments for refusing further invention in the field of electricity, he thought about using recoil energy to reload weapons. We all know what came of it:

Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not.
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc

Roughly translated as: We will answer any of your questions We answer: " We have a machine gun, and you are not there!"

For several years he worked unsuccessfully on the invention of an automatic rifle. In the end, he managed to design all the main components of an automatic weapon, but it turned out to be so bulky that it looked more like a small cannon. I had to give up the rifle. Instead, in 1883, Maxim assembled the first working model of his famous machine gun. Soon after this, he moved to England and founded his own workshop here, which later merged with the Nordenfeldt arms factory.
The first machine gun test was carried out at Enfield in 1885. In 1887, Maxim offered the British War Ministry three different models of his machine gun, which fired about 400 rounds per minute. In subsequent years, he began to receive more and more orders for it. The machine gun was tested in various colonial wars that England was waging at that time, and excellently proved itself to be formidable and very effective weapon. Great Britain was the first state to adopt a machine gun into service with its army. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Maxim machine gun was already in service with all European and American armies, as well as the armies of China and Japan.
At the same time, we should not forget that the machine gun is standing crazy money and is a real high-tech of the era. There, the accuracy of processing parts is in thousandths of an inch, which requires high-quality machines and, most importantly, workers. .....Cartridges must also meet the requirements.
Most interesting options The Germans and British had Maxima. In addition to Maxim, several other machine gun systems appeared, including light ones....
Well, now - GALLERY!

Friberg/Kjellman 1907 light machine gun

The Maxim family.

Maxim machine gun prototype.

Swiss Maxim machine gun model 1894

Early British air-cooled Maxim, Boer War.

Early Maxim-Nordenfeld 1890s.

Maxim-Nordenfeld on a machine - a tripod, which became the calling card of the British.

Early Vickers-Maxim, WWI.

Vickers Mk1.

German "Maxim" MG-08

The machine-sled is clearly visible.

Machine gun and gunner armor.

With a large armored shield.

Without flame arrester.

On a lighter later machine.

Early Russian Maxim-Sokolov.1905. Pay attention to the abundance of brass in the design.

A story about machine guns of that time cannot do without the French Hotchkiss machine gun. Its characteristic feature was a solid plate holder.

Pancho Villa with Hotchkiss.

Its direct predecessor is the St.Etienne M1907.

General view of a late machine.

The clips are clearly visible.

There was also an advanced version with tape power, but its reliability was poor.

The machine is a tripod.

Air cooling.

Another independent machine gun was the Colt-Browning 1895. Nicknamed by soldiers as a “potato digger” for the movable system under the barrel, it became the first machine gun of the US Army.

A wheeled modification used in 1898 in Cuba.

On a high tripod.

And on low.

Lightening the design and abandoning the machine led to the appearance of “light” machine guns that could be operated by one soldier.

The most massive, but with a high firepower, was the German Maxim MG 08/15, converted from an easel one.

Here you can clearly see the differences between the easel and light models.

In fact, this is the first rather unsuccessful ancestor of single machine guns...

The French followed a similar path - their Hotchkiss 1909 system in a lightweight version, also produced in the USA as Benet-Mercie, was essentially the first converted machine tool.

In this case, this is the American version on a bipod.

Light British The Hotchkiss 1909 Portable machine gun featured a small tripod and a replaceable barrel.

But the first truly successful light machine gun was the famous Lewis Lewis (in this case with a 63-round disc)

Look... admire.

It was this machine gun that first made small groups of infantry a force.

Characteristic aluminum casing on the barrel - business card systems.

Others, sadly, famous light machine gun became the French Shosh Chauchat...

IN public opinion the conviction of its extreme unreliability was firmly established.

Which is 50% typical for the French version and 100% for the American one.

The first truly successful light machine gun was Madsen.

The production model was released in 1902.

It’s paradoxical but true - this machine gun, which did not receive much recognition, was in service with many countries for almost the entire twentieth century...

On November 24, 1916, 95 years ago, American-born Hiram Maxim, who invented the world's first full-fledged heavy machine gun. No one in the world noticed this loss. On the fields of Europe that day, the First World War continued to rumble, during which the participating countries lost 12 million people. A significant part of this mournful list fell on the share of Maxim’s “hellish mowers”. They served many armies on both sides of the front line with equal success.

What happened before

It's no surprise that the machine gun was invented in America, a country that (if Western movies are anything to go by) is obsessed with rapid fire! Although, in fairness, attempts to make bullets fly out of the barrel were made more often before this. The previous one was called mitrailleuse and was a block of 5-7 barrels (sometimes there were as many as 20!), manually rotating around an axis. The cartridges were also fed manually using a special handle. God forbid, the crew began to turn the handle too quickly - this caused the mitrailleuse to jam.

In the USA, it was used during the war between the North and South, in which Maxim lost two brothers and because of this was not drafted into the army. Mitrailleuses (we called them kartchnitsy) also served in Russia. However, at the end of the century before last, the weapons industry developed at such a pace that while the last mitrailleuses were finishing service on the Russian destroyers in Port Arthur, the first Maxim machine guns were already trying their hand at the infantry near Mukden.

Machine gun and man

Hiram Stevens Maxim was born on February 5, 1840 near the town of Sangerville in Maine. His school education was reduced to five classes, but his father, a talented carpenter and mechanic, taught the boy everything he knew. And young Hiram’s ability to invent was, obviously, abundantly rewarded by the enterprising American God himself. Among the thousands (!) of his inventions are watches, steam engines, new types of gunpowder, an echolocator, an inhaler (he himself suffered from bronchitis all his life), a spring mousetrap, an airplane, which, however, never took off... But now we are talking about a machine gun .

Maxim later said that he was inspired by the idea of ​​automatic reloading childhood experience. When he and his father were hunting a bear, an English Lee-Enfield rifle, when fired, hit him in the shoulder so hard with the butt that the boy became angry at the wasted recoil energy. The first development of a machine gun was carried out by Maxim in 1873, but then the matter was limited to drawings. For some reason, the inventor lost interest in his brainchild for a whole decade.

Evil tongues later said that in the early 1880s, Maxim returned to the development of automatic weapons due to the fact that he was mortally offended by another American inventor, Thomas Edison. Tom managed to patent a new electric lamp for two days before Maxim. By the way, it was precisely this circumstance that forced Maxim to emigrate to England. He never returned to his homeland. This is an asymmetrical answer...

Be that as it may, the Maxim machine gun of the 1883 model used the recoil force to perform several operations at once: opening the bolt, throwing spent cartridge case, cocking the firing pin, loading the chamber with a new cartridge, locking the bolt and releasing the firing pin, that is, firing the next shot. The first Maxim design was designed for the British 11.43 mm rifle cartridge. This model still suffered from all the childhood diseases of new weapon systems, primarily low reliability. But already in 1885 Maxim received a patent for his new invention.

“They don’t have Maxim…”

First experience combat use"maxim" refers to 1893, when a force of 50 British soldiers, armed with rifles and four machine guns, repelled attacks by natives in southern Africa for an hour and a half. There were wars that went down in history as the Zulu War. After the machine gun barrels cooled down, the British counted 3 thousand corpses of brave but technically backward black warriors on the battlefield.

Soon there were rumors of a weapon firing 600 bullets per minute (this is the technical rate of fire of the Maxim with continuous - as in computer "shooters" - machine gun belt, the true rate of fire in combat conditions is half that), even reached China. Li Hongzhang, one of the most influential and odious dignitaries of the Qing Empire, was sent to England, awarded by Empress Qixi with a yellow jacket, a peacock feather and the title of educator of the heir to the throne. Li Hongzhang was impressed, but asked Maxim just one question:

— Dear master, how much does it cost to fire such an amazing, superbly made machine gun?

“130 pounds sterling per minute,” Maxim answered laconically.

“Perhaps this wonderful machine gun fires too fast for China,” the courtier finally said after a long thought and departed back to China. That is why, when in 1900 the troops of several European powers, including England and Russia, had to suppress the Yihetuan uprising (Boxer Rebellion), the Chinese did not have machine guns.

Where are the cheeks of a machine gun?

Everyone remembers the scene from the cult film “Chapaev”, in which Petka introduces Anka to the Maxima device and at the same time reaches under her skirt. But how did a foreign machine gun become one of its kind in Russia for several decades?

Just like in other countries: they bought the right to produce. If in Germany the “Maxim” was called “Schwarzlorse”, in America “Vickers”, then in our country the machine gun was left with its native name, slightly changing the emphasis in it. The caliber of the Russian “Maxim” was reduced to 7.62 mm, more than 200 changes were made to the design, and it was put into service at the turn of the century. In 1905, the first batch of their own machine guns was assembled at the Tula Arms Plant. They fought in the First World War, the Civil War, Soviet-Finnish war, but in 1940 the veteran machine gun in the USSR was discontinued. It turned out that we were in a hurry...

On the one hand, it was impractical to keep in service an obsolete machine gun with a total weight of more than 60 kg (20 kilos for the machine gun itself, 8 for the shield, 36 for the wheeled machine, 5 for water in the casing for cooling) - despite the fact that the German “machine gun” MG- 34 weighed half as much). However, the DS-39, designed by Degtyarev, adopted to replace the Maxim, did not live up to expectations and was also discontinued. After June 22, 1941, the People's Commissariat of Armaments, under the leadership of Dmitry Ustinov, made heroic efforts to return the 19th-century machine gun to service! In 1942 alone, the front received more than 55 thousand “maxims”, which eventually reached Berlin. The last use of the veteran machine gun was during the Korean conflict and even at the beginning of the Vietnam War!

In general, the machine gun designed by Hiram Maxim went down in history as a classic example of an automatic small arms, from which any Anka machine gunner can fire. Of course, if you explain to her in time where the “Maxim”’s cheeks are. By the way, you will not find such a designation on any drawing of the “Maxim”. Let's reveal a secret: this is the colloquial name for the side walls of the machine gun box, which is located immediately behind the shield.

“Everything will be the way we want.

In case of various troubles,

We have a Maxim machine gun,

They don’t have Maxim.”

Hilaire Bellock, "The New Traveler"

The Maxim machine gun is one of the most recognizable characters Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century: revolution and civil war, half-forgotten in Soviet time The First World War and even the 1920-1930s. Although it was used during the Great Patriotic War and even, according to some evidence, during the conflict with China on Damansky Island in 1969. In some countries, these machine guns are in service and are used in various conflicts to this day.

"Maxim" in the Russian army, Georgy Narbut, 1916

From the name it might seem that "Maxim" is of Russian origin and named after some Maxim. The soldiers even jokingly came up with the name “Smertin” for this Maxim. But Maxim is not a first name, but a surname (with emphasis on the first syllable) of an American designer who moved to Great Britain at the end of his life, and his deadly invention was in service with almost all the leading armies of the world, and the Germans had especially many such machine guns at first.

First world war, when there were no tanks in its early years, the machine gun made significant adjustments to the military art that had been developed over centuries: neither the left flank, nor the right, nor infantry, nor cavalry - nothing played a role if the Maxims hit from the enemy: it is impossible to advance , the attackers are mowed down in a matter of minutes by entire regiments. Sometimes only this machine gun allowed the same Russian soldiers to hold positions that were completely hopeless for defense when they were attacked by the Germans, known for their belligerence and training, but without the “maxim”. And then even the Germans, famous for their impeccable offensive tactics war machine began to show indecisiveness and stall.

Hiram Stevens Maxim himself offered his own armory automatic system chambered for the British 11.4 mm rifle cartridge back in 1883-1884, and in 1888 he moved to Great Britain to produce a machine gun, where he teamed up with the Swedish engineer Thorsten Nordenfeld, the owner of a well-equipped arms factory near London. The banking house Rothschild and Sons lent money for lethal weapons. But still, at first the British did not order many machine guns for their army, and the new weapon achieved triumph only in Germany. Emperor Wilhelm II, who was passionate about technology, highly appreciated the machine gun at the first viewing, and soon the Germans bought a license for its production.

Stills from the film "Django", 1966

In Russia, as in Great Britain, there were also few Maximovs at first, although they showed their high effectiveness already in the country’s first major war of the new century - the Russo-Japanese. As historian Nikolai Lysenko writes, more than half of the Japanese losses in 1904-1905 were ensured efficient work Russian "Maximovs".

The greatest saturation of Russian infantry units with machine guns was achieved by the beginning of 1917 - these were “Maxims” of their own production, and purchased in the USA and from the Entente allies, but then the revolution broke out, Civil War and the Russians began to shoot from them, alas, not at the Germans, but at each other. A third of the supply of machine guns was lost in the warehouses of Kazan during a fire in the same 1917 - otherwise they would have shot and killed each other even more.

"Maxim" continued to be produced in Soviet Russia at the Tula and Izhevsk factories until the end of the 1940s. The machine gun was also made abroad later: even in the mid-1960s, repairs of Maxim machine guns, as well as custom production of this type of weapon, could be ordered in Mexico and Argentina.

But where did “Maxim” receive its first serious baptism of fire, which allowed it to win a major victory with minor losses of its troops? This happened after all to the British during their second conquest of Sudan, on September 2, 1898 at the Battle of Omdurman. The 25,000-strong Anglo-Egyptian army fought there with the 50,000-strong Sudanese army, which consisted mainly of irregular cavalry and fanatical dervishes. All Sudanese attacks were repulsed by massive machine gun fire; they lost more than 10 thousand in killed alone. The British and their allied Egyptians lost 47 soldiers.

On September 2, 1896, early in the morning at about 6 o'clock, the first shot was heard in the Battle of Omdurman, or as it should have been called initially, the Battle of Khartoum. At this time, the first ranks of the caliph's troops rushed towards the British through the valley through Kereri. The military order of the Mahdists was formed by two columns: warriors under the Green and Black Banners moved to attack the left flank of the British. Closer than the Green Banners to the British were the Black Banners, who were literally swept away by the fire of rapid-fire weapons (howitzers, machine guns, Lee-Metford rifles). The Mahdists failed to get closer than 300 yards to the Anglo-Egyptian troops!

On the right flank of the British, the Green Banners occupied the Kereri hills and thereby forced the Camel Corps and cavalry located there to withdraw. General Kitchener, two hours after the start of the battle, gave the 21st Lancers the order to attack the Dervish troops on the right flank, and his order looked somewhat strange: “Cause them as much inconvenience as possible on the flank and, as far as possible, close their path to Omdurman.” . The military unit that received this order numbered only... 450 people!..

450 people of the 21st Uhlan Regiment found themselves on the very flank, and, according to the strange order they received, went on the attack. And then the lancers were faced with an unexpected turn of events: a group of horsemen, led by commander Osman Din, one of the few who knew military craft, took refuge in the dry Kor Abu Sant stream and ambushed the British, cutting down the enemy with swords and daggers, cutting up horses and jerking riders out of their saddles. The British traditionally used Uhlan pikes, but many, without even taking up their sabers, opened fire on the enemy with rifles and revolvers. Young Winston Churchill also preferred shooting from a Mauser. He managed to shoot four, and hit the fifth and last one on the head like a hammer with the handle of his Mauser!

As a result of this battle, 46 people were wounded, 21 lancers were killed, more than 150 horses ran away or were killed and wounded. It was here that the other lancers realized that the times of saber fights had already passed, and they began to shoot from carbines at Osman’s people. Maxwell's brigade had by then cleared the Black Banners from the hill. Also on the right flank, enemy forces were defeated. For the occupying British army and its Egyptian and Sudanese allies, the path to Omdurman was now open...