A weapon designed by an Italian immigrant for Argentina, the Fittipaldi heavy machine gun
Designer Rafael Fittipaldi designed it for the Argentine military Fittipaldi was an Italian immigrant who lived in Buenos Aires at the time. The machine gun he designed was named after him and was called the Fittipaldi heavy machine gun.
At that time, firearms were transitioning to automation, and the value of heavy machine guns was beyond doubt. Automatic weapons represented by Maxim machine guns were also popular in South America. Fittipaldi naturally wanted to catch up with this trend. Designing an Argentinian "own" machine gun.
Many details of the Fittipaldi heavy machine gun are unclear, because it is only a prototype gun that has not been installed. The gun fires 7.62×53mm Mauser rounds and uses non-dispersible metal bullet belts. This caliber was chosen because the Argentine army was equipped with Mauser 1889 rifles at that time, and the two could achieve unified ammunition.
The heavy machine gun is actually modified from the Mauser 1889, using a modified barrel and bolt. The bolt adopts linear motion that is conducive to automatic shooting. The ammunition supply structure has a rotating drum structure, and the ammunition chain is clamped On top, the drum rotates during automatic firing to move the next round into position.
The heavy machine gun has a spade grip, a tripod with a small cushion, and a sleeve on the barrel. Some articles say it is a water-cooled sleeve, but it is more like an air-cooled sleeve. Similar to the British Lewis machine gun.
The most confusing thing is the automatic mode of the gun. There are two other metal tubes under the barrel. The one close to the barrel jacket seems to be a piston structure, and the connecting rod is connected to the gun barrel jacket. On the mouth part, this part seems to be movable backwards, which may be using the gas from the muzzle when firing. Perhaps this is the source of power for automatic shooting. As for the other metal tube, well, its function is not clear...
The Fittipaldi heavy machine gun may only have built a prototype machine gun, which is currently stored in Buenos Aires In the National Arms Museum in Leith, the specific performance of the gun is unknown. There is no credible information on its weight, rate of fire, effective range, etc. However, some of the machine gun's technologies were successfully patented in the United States in 1914.