Brownells Gun Tech™ Keith Ford is in heaven.... well, as close as you can get while still having a pulse! He's at Rock Island Auction Company surrounded by early 20th century belt-fed machine guns, all of them designed by that American firearm genius, John Moses Browning. The Colt-Browning M1895 "Potato Digger" was the first successful gas-operated machine gun, and the first machine gun adopted by the U.S. military. Production was limited, so only small numbers of these served in both the Spanish-American War and World War I. Early M1895s were chambered in .30-40 Krag and 6mm Lee Navy; the Rock Island gun is a later example chambered in .30-06. Keith explains how the Potato Digger's gas system works (essentially a lever action machine gun!) and its tendency to overheat. Next, a Browning M1917 water-cooled machine gun; in an early demo for the military, an M1917 fired 23,000 rounds continuously without a stoppage! A few thousand M1917s saw service in WWI. The air-cooled M1919 dispenses with the water jacket and is much lighter and easier to tote around. The M1917 served until the Korean War, while the M1919 was a mainstay in WWII and made it to the early stages of the Vietnam Conflict before being supplanted by the M60.
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