Re: Re: FN F2000

[Gurth <Gurth@xxxxxxxxx>]

According to srydzews@ix.netcom.com, on Wed, 04 Jul 2001 the word on the
street was...

> Oh now it can't be *that* bad.  It reminds me more of a WWII Italian
> medium MG (designation escapes me at the moment, but it's real) that
> used rigid sheet metal 'belts' of 20 or so rounds, thus neatly 
> combining the disadvantages of a magazine-fed and a belt-fed weapon.

That's a much older system, developed for the Hotchkiss machine guns of the
late 19th century. The final types of Hotchkiss used 3-round "plates"
articulated together to form a 48-round (IIRC) "belt," but all the earlier
models used the plates you describe, as did many of the weapon's
derivatives.

> Further, after the action removed a round from the 'belt' and fired
> it, the empty cartridge case was then extracted from the chamber 
> and lovingly re-inserted *back into* the sheet metal strip, thus 
> approximately doubling the complexity of the feed mechanism in an
> apparent attempt at promoting recycling and battlefield neatness.

This is the 8 mm Breda Model 37 machine gun.

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