"5-barreled" Model 1873 Nordenfelt

"5-barreled" Model 1873 Nordenfelt

This super rare, very early production, "5-barreled" Model 1873 Nordenfelt crank handle, volley firing machine gun. This very early 1873 Hiram maxim London Made Nordenfelt Battery Gun was captured by U.S. fleet action off Santiago Harbor Cuba during the Spanish American War. This rare gun with Bannerman provenance as this gun is also described in one of the Bannerman catalogs. This piece was salvaged from the Spanish battle cruiser Almirante Oquendo after the battle of Santiago Harbor and on display on Bannerman's island for many years.This weapon was designed by Thorsten Nordenfelt in the early 1870s and it actually uses the earlier "Palmcrantz" system of a multi-barreled, volley firing weapon, which was developed by H. 

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Palmcrantz of Sweden. Thorsten Nordenfelt was an early inventer and designer of multi-barreled automatic style machine guns in the late 1860s and early 1870s. His designs were eventually overshadowed by other early pioneers of multi-barreled or multi-firing weapon systems such as Hotchkiss, Gatling, Gardner and Maxim. Although some example are known in significant museums throughout the world his designs never became a big success and any surviving example known today is extremely rare. The weapon basically functions by simply moving the side mounted crank handle backwards and forwards. The initial operation of the weapon is by retracting the crank handle to the rear, this movement retracts the breech bolts rearward, which in turn allows five rounds to drop from the gravity feed hopper magazine located on top of the weapons (which is missing) through the cutouts on top of the receiver/top cover, which position the rounds behind the barrel/chambers. Upon pushing the crank handle forward, this advances the breech bolts, which chambers and fires the five rounds. The operation is repeated with the addition of the extraction and ejection function for each cartridge. The speed or cyclic rate of firing appears to be determined only by how fast the operator can move the crank handle forward and backwards.