Mitrailleuse de Reffye a.k.a. 'Canon a Balles' (1866) | |
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Reffye mitrailleuse Le Général Hanicque ('Canon à balles modèle 1866'), manufactured in 1867, on display in Les Invalides | |
Type | Volley gun |
Place of origin | France |
Service history | |
In service | 1866–1908 |
Used by | France |
Wars | Franco-Prussian War Yaqui Wars |
Production history | |
Designer | J.B. Verchere de Reffye |
Designed | 1865 |
Manufacturer | Meudon and Nantes government facilities |
Produced | 1866–71 |
No. built | About 400 |
Specifications | |
Mass | 340 kilograms (750 lb) with carriage: 855 kilograms (1,885 lb) |
Length | 1.75 m |
Shell | elongated shotgun shell configuration, center fire, 50-gram (770 grain) patched bullet |
Maximum firing range | 3700 yards |
Variant name | Barrels | Barrel arrangement | Caliber | Date1 | Notes |
Fafschamps | 50 | Clustered | 1851 | Needle fire, paper cartridges. Prototype and drawings | |
Christophe-Montigny | 37 | Clustered | 11 mm (0.4 in) | 1863 | Privately developed and used primarily by the Belgian Army |
Reffye | 25 | In five rows (5 × 5) | 13 mm (0.5 in) | 1865 | Widely used by the French Army during the Franco-Prussian War |
Bollée | 30 | Two circular rings (18 in the outer ring, 12 in the inner) | 13 mm (0.5 in) | 1870 | Used by the French Army of the Loire during the Franco-Prussian War[5] |
Chevalier et Grenier | 16 | Two horizontal rows (2 × 8) | 11 mm (0.4 in) | 1870 | |
Gabert | 04 | Four barrels each with two chambers. While four chambers are in use, four are reloaded.2 | 11 mm (0.4 in) | 1870 | Tripod-mounted, unlike the other carriage-mounted variants |
Notes: [1] Date developed [2] Translated from the website: www.mitrailleuse.fr/Historique/Aballes/Aballes.htm |
Subject of all this secrecy was the twenty-five-year-old Fafschamps-Montigny Mitrailleuse, warmed over by De Reffye. This weapon was invented in 1851.
In 1851, some twenty years before the outbreak of the Franco–German War, Captain Fafschamps, a Belgian officer, offered drawings of an invention to a fellow countryman, Monsieur Montigny.
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