Swiss Faurel light machine gun of mountain people.

Swiss Faurel light machine gun of mountain people.

Fourel M25, the main light machine gun equipped by Swiss army before World War II and even before World War II.

First of all, Fourel is named after his designer Adolf Fourel, who is the chief weapon designer of bernier Arsenal in Switzerland. The official name of this machine gun is LMG25, which is the abbreviation of German (Leichte Maschinengewehr), which means light machine gun (just in line with English light machine gun ...), and 25 is the year of finalization-1925.

In other words, Switzerland was not involved in World War I, but as an observer, watching the fierce fighting in France, it naturally saw a new mode of war. Especially in World War I, the heavy machine guns of the defending side often occupy an absolute advantage, while the attacking side lacks enough automatic firepower to suppress the opponents in the opposite direction. Although automatic weapons that can be held by individual soldiers, such as Barr, Shaosha and Lewis, appeared in World War I, the perfection of the concept of light machine gun has to wait until after the war.

The 1920s was the period when the first generation of light machine guns appeared. The well-known long-haired DP saute spicy chicken, ZB in Czech Republic, crooked stick in Japan and FM24 in France all appeared in this era, and Switzerland is no exception. It's just that the structure of LMG25 is a little different from others.

At that time, most of the light machine guns used long piston air guide+bolt offset/iron clamping offset/wedge latch, but the Swiss creatively adopted long recoil+elbow latch. ...

First of all, this toggle lock is familiar to everyone, and the Luger P08 pistol is this routine. Ruger's automatic principle is that the barrel is short and recoil, that is to say, its automatic circulation process is that the barrel and bolt sit together first, then tilt the elbow through a machine support, and the barrel stops recoil after unlocking, and then the bolt sits alone.

However, the barrel and bolt of LMG25 are integrated, and they sit back to the end together, while the toggle locking device is opened and closed in the frame. The advantage of this is that the whole recoil is very large (after all, the weight of the barrel is added), which makes his operation very reliable. But the disadvantage is that the whole barrel+bolt moves back and forth, which leads to its unsatisfactory firing rate, only 500 rounds per minute.

We also know that the Swiss demand high accuracy, so on the one hand, they don't want to put the magazine on it, on the other hand, they don't want to put the wrist movements on it. After all, it will block the door and align. Therefore, their elbows move on the left side of the magazine, and accordingly, the magazine is placed on the right side ... although this ghost is ugly.

Another interesting detail is the multifunctional monopod.

At that time, many machine guns had a rear tripod design (in fact, many sniper rifles also have it now), in order to make the guns have better stability without adjusting the high and low shooting boundaries.

The rear tripod of LMG25 can also be disassembled and installed in front of the current grip, which is convenient for soldiers to shoot in a standing position. This design has the flavor of "marching and shooting" during World War I.

In addition, it can also be mounted on a tripod as a guest "heavy machine gun", which has the concept of a general machine gun. Moreover, they also pressed a horizontal shooting ruler similar to a protractor on the tripod ... this operation is very Swiss.

LMG25 produced a total of 23,000 pieces from 1925 to 1946, and it was not completely retired until the 1970s. However, it was useless because Switzerland had not fought at that time. ...

Parameters:

Total length-1163mm

Barrel length -585 mm

Diameter-7.5x55mm

Magazine capacity -30 rounds

Initial speed-760m/s

Rifle -4 line

Winding distance -270 mm

Effective range -800 meters

Scale range-100-2000m

Maximum range-3500m

Rate of fire-500 rounds per minute

Empty weight -8.65 kg