peashooter85:The Experimental World War I Minigun —- The Fokker-Leimburger gun,Developed by the Fokk
peashooter85:The Experimental World War I Minigun —- The Fokker-Leimburger gun,Developed by the Fokker Aircraft company in 1916, the Fokker-Leimburger was an externally powered 12 barreled Gatling type machine gun developed for the German military during World War I. Chambered in 8X57mm and belt fed, it was claimed that the gun could produced a firing rate of 7,200 rounds per minute. Whether this was an exaggeration or fact is unknown, however it far outshot common machine guns of the day such as the Maxim and Vickers Machine Gun, which fired around 500 rounds per minute. It was intended to be used as an aircraft machine gun, and was designed to be powered by an airplanes engine.Certainly a revolutionary and futuristic design, World War Era ammunition quality and manufacturing technology were far outpaced by its functioning. The most common type of malfunction were case ruptures (ruptures of the cartridge casings withing the chamber), which caused severe jams. The Fokker-Leimburger gun never went into production. The first successful externally powered multibarrel machine gun designs were created by General Electric in the 1960’s. -- source link