Mitragliatrice Fiat-Revelli 6.5mm MOD.14

The main Italian Heavy Machinegun of WW1 was the 6.5mm Fiat-Revelli M1914. (Other MG's also used by the Italians were the French M1907 Etienne and the American M1905 Colt.) One of the main motives behind its adoption appears to have been the desire to give the army a weapon manufactured in Italy. The gun was a modification of the Maxim type. The gun was water-cooled like the Maxim, with an action being a combination of short recoil and delayed blowback. The cartridges was fed by an unusual 50-round box-like magazine divided into 5-round compartments. (These 50 round magazines could be linked together, to permit continuous firing.) The MG had an cartridge extraction mechanism that needed lubication by a built-in oil pump, to prevent case breaks. (The idea of lubed chamber was actually an invention of the german Andreas Wilhelm Schwarzlose, who designed a first practical machine gun with delayed blowback action in about 1900.)

The gun was mounted on a 27kg tripod with both traverse- and elevation mechanisms. This gun was never a popular among its Italian users: for that it had too many jams and broken cartridges. The rear end of the breech-bolt horrified also the most timid machine gunners, although the recoil buffer between "spade handles" stopped its rearward movement. ("Pater Noster in Exelsis: Dona nobis Maxim sclopetum!" (Latin: "Our Father which art in Heaven: Give us a Maxim gun!". This is said to have been a prayer among religious Italian soldiers during the war.) The manufacturer was Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili, Torino (or more well-known: FIAT).

The organization proposed before the war was to attach the MG's to existing units at the rate of one gun for each battalion of infantry or regiment of cavalry - a departure from the soon generally accepted principle that machine guns alawys should work in pairs, making them harder to combat. The guns were all to be carried on pack-saddles, on horses or mules, with a reserve of ammunition being carried in the same way. The Italian Army started the war with 700 MG's, but ended it with 12.000.

In the mid-war years a new model of this HMG, the MOD.14/35, was put into service. It had a 8mm calibre instead of 5.5, and used an air-cooled barrel, a barrel that could be swapped after some thousand rounds.

Technical Data
Note: Some of these data may be wrong, as they are based on the MOD.14/35.