by
Visniewski
Welcome all, this is my first post here, so please forgive me if I fail.
Actually this Browning wz.30 with a gas bottle is one fitted with a pneumatic insert, shooting BB pellets at reduced targets for machine gunner training and practice. These were based on a design by Karol Maciejewski, who has secured a Polish patent Nr. 19881 dated March 22, 1934. Similar kits were also used for ckm wz.08 (ex-German Maxim MG 08), lkm wz.08/15 (likewise, ex-German MG 08/15) and air force Browning machine guns (of course for ground-based marksmanship training, not for dogfighting :-)
To insert one, the machine gun had to stripped like for barrel exchange (which meant really thoroughly - a quick-change barrel was alien idea at that time. One had to remove rear plate of the receiver, locks, bolt, barrel) - essentially all that left was an empty hull on tripod. Then you inserted the pellet kit, consisting of:
smoothbore barrel, inner dia. 5,75 mm
valve chamber
drum magazine for 500 pellets
reduction valve with security override and gauges
air hose
two steel compressed air flasks
At 1.46 MPa pressure and barrel elevation of up to 40 degrees, the BBs were thrown out to 300 meters! And fully automatically at that, as the needle valve controlled the air flow, rotation of the drum magazine, and pellet supply.
In 1934 the insert passed the military testing, and as of 1937 production started, with first units to reach units in 1937/38 - one pneumatic kit per machine gun company, first in the infantry, then as of May 1938 in the cavalry and artillery units. On April 19, 1938 provisional "Pellet Insert Machine Gun Marksmanship Training Program" was issued, together with a request for feasibility report on the device, to be returned at the latest by December 1, 1940. It is thus safe to assume, that the order hasn't been implemented to the full extent...
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