In a London office, within sight of the monument raised to England's great sailor hero, the writer first made acquaintance with the Rexer gun, which, venomous device that it is, can spit forth death 300 times a minute, though it weighs only about 18 lbs.
Its form is that of an ordinary rifle of somewhat clumsy build. The eye at once picks out a pair of supports which project from a ring encircling it near the muzzle. Even a strong man would find 18 lbs. too much to hold to his shoulder for any length of time; so the Rexer is primarily intended for stationary work. The user lies prone, rests the muzzle on its supports, presses the butt to his shoulder, and blazes away. History repeats itself in the chronicles of firearms, though it is a very long way from the old matchlock supported on a forked stick to the latest thing in rifles propped up by two steel legs.
Machine-guns, such as the Maxim and Hotchkiss, weigh 60 lbs. and upwards, and have to be carried on a wheeled carriage, drawn either by horses or by a number of men. In very rough country they must be loaded on pack-horses or mules. When required for action, the gun, its supports and appliances, separated for packing, must be hurriedly reassembled. This means loss of valuable time.
The Rexer rifle can be carried almost as easily as a Lee-Metford or Mauser, and fires the ordinary small-bore ammunition. Wherever infantry or cavalry can go, it can go too, without entailing any appreciable amount of extra haulage.
Before dealing with its actual use as a fighting arm we will notice the leading features of its construction.
The gun comprises the stock, the casing and trigger-plate which enclose the breech mechanism, the barrel, and the perforated barrel cover, to which are attached the forked legs on which the muzzle end is supported when firing, and which fold up under the cover when not in use. The power for working the mechanism is obtained from the recoil, which, when the gun is fired, drives the barrel, together with the breech and the other moving parts, some two inches backwards, thus compressing the powerful recoil-spring which lies behind the breech, enclosed in the front part of the stock, and which, after the force of the recoil is spent, expands, and thus drives the barrel forward again into the firing position. The recoil and return of the breech operate a set of levers and other working parts within the casing, which, by their combined actions following one another in fixed order, open the breech, eject the empty cartridge-case, insert a new cartridge into the chamber, and close the breech; and when the gun is set for automatic action, and the gunner keeps his finger pressed on the trigger, the percussion arm strikes the hammer and the cartridge is fired; the round of operations repeating itself till the magazine is emptied, or until the gunner releases the trigger and thereby interrupts the firing.
A noticeable feature is the steel tube surrounding the barrel. It is pierced with a number of openings to permit a circulation of air to cool the barrel, which is furnished with fins similar to those on the cylinder of an air-cooled petrol motor to help dissipate the heat caused by the frequent explosions. Near the ends of the cover are the guides, in which the barrel moves backwards and forwards under the influence of the recoil and the recoil-spring. The supports are attached to the casing in such a way that the stock of the gun can be elevated or depressed and traversed through considerable angles without altering the position of the supports on the ground. The rear end of the barrel cover is firmly fixed to the casing of the breech mechanism, and forms with this and the stock the rigid part of the gun in which the moving portions work, their motions being guided and controlled by cams and studs working in grooves and notches and on blocks attached to the rigid parts.
Without the aid of special diagrams it is rather hard to explain the working of even a simple mechanism; but the writer hopes that the following verbal description, for which he has to thank the Rexer Company, will at least go some way towards elucidating the action of the breech components.
Inside the casing is the breech, the front end of which is attached rigidly to the barrel, the rear end being in contact with the recoil arm, which is directly operated by the recoil spring lying in a recess in the stock. In the breech is the breech-block, which has three functions: first to guide the new cartridges from the distributer, which passes them from the magazine one by one into the casing, to the firing position in the chamber (i.e. the expanded part of the bore at the rear end of the barrel); secondly, to hold the cartridge firmly fixed in the chamber, and to act as an abutment or support to the back of the cartridge when it is fired, and thus transmit the backward force of the explosion to the recoil spring; thirdly, to allow the spent cartridges to be discharged from the chamber by the extractor, and to direct them by means of a guide curved downwards from the chamber, so that they may be flung through an opening provided for that purpose in the trigger-plate in front of the trigger, and out of the way of the gunner. (This opening is closed by a cover when the gun is not in use, and opens automatically before the shot can be fired.) In order to effect this threefold object, the breech-block is pivoted in the rear to the rear of the breech, and has a vertical angular motion within it, so that the fore end of the block can move into three different positions in relation to the chamber: one, below the chamber to guide the cartridge into it; one, directly in line with the chamber, to back the cartridge; and one, above the chamber, to allow the ejection of the spent cartridge-case by the extractor. The cartridge is fired by a long pin through the breech-block, struck behind by a hammer operated by a special spring.