Maximum Maxims
The Russians have long been in love with the Maxim gun. One of the largest early users of the Gatling, but then moved to upgrade to belt-fed water-cooled Maxims in 1899, later contracting with Vickers in 1902 to manufacture the design in Russia, which led to the easily identifiable PM M1910 with its “Sokolov” shield.
I give you: Pulemyot Maxima
Made in quantity, the gun was present in Port Arthur and with Gen. Kuropatkin’s forces in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War, then in WWI (where the Russian Army actually started the conflict with some 4,000 machine guns of all type, a fact not commonly known).
The Russians and later Soviets used them in armored trains:
Maxims inside Russian armored train
From motorcycles:
Tsarist Russian soldiers with bike-mounted Maxim
In anti-aircraft mounts:
Maxim P1910 Sokolov on AAA anti-aircraft mounting Red Army, 1936
From Tachanka gun carts, a practice honed in the Russian Civil War.
Russian tachanka horse-drawn machine gun cart 1941 Tehran, Iran
The M1910 continued to see much service through WWII and then was shuffled to the reserve and given away as military aid.
A popular mounting was in Russian naval service:
Soviet navy with GAZ-AA 1931 model, a quad AA machine gun Maxim
Soviet GAZ-AA navy mount composed of four 7,62 mm maxim served by Sgt. D. Janowski aboard an armored train
A GAZ-AA quad Maxim in propaganda art. “Meet enemy planes with a shower of fire from the ground !”
However, the Russians never threw anything away and lots of Maxims have been pressed into service in the Ukraine, where they no doubt still work just as well as they did at Port Arthur.
Ukrainian soldier mans an M1910 Maxim gun at a checkpoint on the road leading to separatist-controlled Yasynuvata, Donbass.
Twin-linked Maxim guns, with red dot sight, Ukrainian Conflict.
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