The Fiat–Revelli Modello 1914 was an Italian water-cooled medium machine gun produced from 1914 to 1918. It was the standard machine-gun of the Italian Army in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, and was used in limited numbers into

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

Overview

It was very similar to the

Maxim Maxim or Maksim may refer to: Entertainment *Maxim (magazine), ''Maxim'' (magazine), an international men's magazine ** Maxim (Australia), ''Maxim'' (Australia), the Australian edition ** Maxim (India), ''Maxim'' (India), the Indian edition *Maxim ...

in appearance (it had a similar-looking water-cooling jacket and tripod), even though its internal workings were completely different. Some sources claim that it had a cartridge-oiling system, but the weapon manual does not mention its presence, and it seems that only a 1930 version briefly incorporated such a system. It was fed from a 50-round or 100-round magazine referred to as a "strip-feed box" which was divided into in ten or twenty compartments, each fed from a rifle clip, an arrangement that made it rather slow to reload, prone to malfunction and very uncomfortable in sustained-fire role because of this magazine arrangement. It was chambered for the 6.5×52mm Carcano, which eased logistics (as it was the same cartridge of the

Carcano Carcano is the frequently used name for a series of Italian bolt-action, magazine-fed, repeating military rifles and carbines. Introduced in 1891, this rifle was chambered for the rimless 6.5×52mm Carcano round (''Cartuccia Modello 1895''). It ...

rifle, though it could not be loaded using the 6-round en-bloc clips issued for rifles) but made it somewhat underpowered compared to higher-calibre weapons, weighed (the tripod weighed ) and had a firing rate of 400-500 rpm (rounds-per-minute), rather low for this type of machine gun. One feature was the presence of

select-fire Selective fire is the capability of a weapon to be adjusted to fire in semi-automatic, fully automatic, and/or burst mode. The modes are chosen by means of a selector switch, which varies depending on the weapon's design. Some selective-fire we ...

, which allowed for the choice between single shot, "normal" fire and full automatic fire. It was developed into the

Fiat–Revelli Modello 1935 The Fiat–Revelli 35 was an Italian machine gun, a modified version of the Fiat–Revelli Modello 1914, which had equipped the Italian Army of World War I. Overview The gun has an overall length of 1700 mm, including its 650 mm barr ...

. The machine gun saw some use within armored vehicles, such as the Ansaldo Light Tank Prototype 1931, a precursor to the L3/33 tankette.

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External links

YouTube Animation showing mechanism of Fiat-Revelli machine gun

YouTube Animation illustrating some additional features of Revelli mechanism

Overview

References

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Further reading