M1926 machine gun

SAFAT M1926
Type Machine gun
Place of origin Kingdom of Italy
Production history
Manufacturer SAFAT
Variants M1926
M1928
Specifications
Weight 16.5 kg
Length 1250 mm

Cartridge .303 British
Caliber .303
Action Delayed blowback
Rate of fire 720 rpm
Muzzle velocity 745 m/s
Feed system Belt
Sights Iron

The M1926 is a machine gun of Italian origin.

History

The Fabrica Italiana Automobile Torino (Italian Torino car factory), one of Europe's biggest car industries, and it was in World War I one of Italy's main suppliers of ground-based and aviation machine guns, mostly of Revelli designs.

After World War, FIAT created in 1926 a subsidiary devoted exclusively to machine guns, that was the Societa Anonima Fabrica Armi Torino, or anonymous society Torino guns factory, mostly known as its abbreviated S.A.F.A.T designation.

The first aircraft machine gun produced by S.A.F.A.T was the M1928, a scaled-up variant of the M1926 with a belt feed and increased rate of fire. However, its main change was the adoption of the 8 mm Fiat cartridge instead the usual M1891 6.5 mm ammunition. Worth to mention that the "8mm FIAT" designation was in fact a fancy name for the 7.7x56R cartridge (.303 British), both types were completely interchangeable.

The M1928 was installed in some biplane fighters of the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was proven unreliable as sometimes the case ruptured with remains left in the chamber and difficult to synchronize, so it was replaced by the better Breda SAFAT designs.

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 12/14/2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.