Category: War
A painting by Hugh Charles McBarron, portraying American troops in the American War of Independence (Wikimedia Commons)
As the world prepares to commemorate this coming Saturday’s 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, new historical and archaeological evidence and analyses are allowing both academics and the public at large to more fully understand how and why the American War of Independence was even more violent than often popularly believed.
Research over the past few years has shed new light on the massacres, ethnic cleansing and extreme maltreatment of prisoners that occurred during the war.
Although most western European conflicts of the 18th century (such as the Wars of Spanish and Austrian Succession) were on much greater scales, they had much lower atrocity rates.
The American War of Independence was particularly atrocity-prone because it had a unique combination of features: it was an anti-government insurrection, a civil war and an ethnic conflict all combined into one particularly brutal war.
Because it was a rebellion, the British regarded American troops as treason-committing rebels and traitors and treated them with unimaginable cruelty.
Because it was also a civil war (the American population was split between pro-independence and pro-British camps), it was a particularly bitter domestic internecine struggle – and because both sides used Native American tribes as allies, indigenous people were subjected to extraordinarily violent racism expressed through appalling massacres, ethnic cleansing and, in one case, what would today be considered a genocide.
A book published in 2023 (Memory Wars: Settlers and Natives Remember Washington’s Sullivan Expedition of 1779) reveals the ways in which indigenous and European-originating Americans have, over the years, remembered George Washington’s invasion of the Haudenosaunee [Iroquois] Confederacy, a military campaign now regarded by numerous historians and others as an act of genocide.
And last year, another US academic (Professor Joshua Catalano of Clemson University, South Carolina) published a study of the mass execution of dozens of Native American men, women and children by American pro-independence forces in the Gnadenhutten Massacre of 1782. The new research evaluates how myth-making and cover-ups were weaponised to enable frontier land grabs. And, over recent years, archaeological and ethnographic investigations have shed important new light on the 18th-century village where the massacre took place.
Other research (including two books: Relieve Us of This Burthen: American Prisoners of War in the Revolutionary South [2012] and The American Revolution on Long Island [2017]) has investigated disturbing new evidence about Britain’s treatment of American prisoners of war.
The disease-ridden prison ships in which the British mistreated American prisoners of war and allowed many to starve to death, have been compared to concentration camps by some historians.
Inside a British prison ship. At least 12,000 American prisoners of war died, while incarcerated in such vessels (Wikimedia Commons)
Indeed almost twice as many Americans died in those virtual death camps as in battle.
Around 30,000 African-Americans served in the war (on both sides), but research has revealed that, largely due to shocking racially discriminatory practices, their death rate was roughly four times greater than that of white troops.
Very recent research by US scholars (in 2022, 2023 and early 2026) has also shed important new light on how the British military almost certainly used or planned to use germ warfare (smallpox) against pro-independence Americans.
Significantly, over very recent years, several museums have been launched or expanded, providing coverage of the atrocities. The Museum of the American Revolution (in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), which opened in 2017, includes material on the more appalling aspects of the conflict.
The American Revolution Museum in Yorktown, Virginia reopened in 2016 with equally objective coverage of the brutality of the war.
And throughout the 2000s, the very moving Prison Ships Martyrs Monument in New York was totally restored and modernised with new and detailed explanatory displays.
And, in London, the British Museum is launching an exhibition of three key artefacts linked to Native American peoples involved in the conflict (Declaring Independence: USA 250 will run from 30 June to 29 November in the Museum’s Room 3). The three Native-American-linked exhibits are:
- The 1777 Washington Peace Medal (presented to a key native American ally of George Washington, but later confiscated by the British)
- A shell-bead wampum belt used in 18th-century diplomacy between two Native American nations, who then suffered civil war, betrayal and destruction at the hands of both the British and the Americans
- A ceremonial pipe-tomahawk, given by a British aristocrat to a pro-British Native American leader (Thayandenagaa [Joseph Brant]), who the British Crown had largely betrayed.
And from mid-September, the exhibition will also include the only known ceremonial copy of the Declaration of Independence itself. It is owned by West Sussex Record Office, which will be loaning it to the museum. It will be the first time that the document has ever gone on general public display.
Research by Professor Danielle Allen of Harvard University suggests that it was given as a present by the American revolutionary Thomas Paine to an aristocratic British sympathiser, the Duke of Richmond in late 1787 or early 1788. Professor Allen has just published a book in the US on the subject, entitled Radical Duke (due out in the UK in August).
Significantly, the full-size ceremonial vellum copy of the declaration, due to go on display at the British Museum in mid-September, is actually much better preserved than the original 1776 Declaration in the National Archives Museum in Washington DC. Sadly, the writing on that original is no longer legible – but the one in Britain still is.
(I myself am just shocked by this. Seeing that both sides fought dirty etc. Bottom line – War means fighting and fighting means killing. Seeing that it’s always been that way and sadly it will always be that way! Grumpy)
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Some 650 to 950 rounds per minute. That is the exact mathematical formula required to turn an enemy formation’s fighting spirit into a desperate desire to simply survive. The United States military has spent decades crafting and perfecting this formula and has ensured its fighting men and women are well versed in its many uses and applications.
The official U.S. Army Technical Manual describes the M240 as “a belt-fed, air-cooled, gas-operated, fully automatic machine gun that fires from the open bolt position.” While that definition is technically accurate, it fails to capture what the weapon actually is. It is the heartbeat of American fire superiority, and the defining sound of that heartbeat over the last four decades has been the steady, rhythmic, unstoppable chugging of the M240.
It’s heavy, brutal to carry, and it is the undisputed heavyweight champion of medium machine guns because it does the one thing a machine gun absolutely must do without fail, no matter what: it never stops firing. Many people forget that the M240 didn’t start its legendary U.S. military career in the hands of the infantry. Long before ground troops were humping this 27-lb. behemoth up the mountains of Afghanistan or through the streets of Baghdad, it was doing dirty work inside the steel carapace of American armored vehicles.
This is the story of how a tank’s coaxial machine gun proved so ridiculously reliable that the infantry had no choice but to steal it for themselves.
Retiring “The Pig”
To understand the M240, you first have to look at the weapons it was brought in to replace, starting with the legendary M60 machine gun. The M60 was one of the most iconic faces of the Vietnam War. It served with distinction in the hands of infantry squads and as the premier weapon for helicopter door gunners who specialized in hurling lead at the enemy while raining brass from the sky. It is an icon of American might, a Hollywood favorite, and an all-around pleasure to shoot.
However, even though it has its strengths, it is important to be honest about its faults and weaknesses. Troops affectionately (and sometimes aggressively) referred to it as “The Pig.” It was a maintenance-heavy weapon, requiring constant upkeep and cleaning to ensure reliability in the field.
Changing a red-hot barrel in the middle of a firefight required clumsy asbestos gloves, and as parts wore down in harsh environments, it became notorious for jamming at the worst possible moments. This was unacceptable and resulted in the loss of American lives, losses that the military hoped to prevent when searching for The Pig’s replacement.
While the infantry was struggling with the quirks of the M60, the armored community was dealing with an entirely different nightmare: the M73 and M219 machine guns.
Those weapons were used as the coaxial machine guns in early armored vehicles like the M48 and M60 Patton tanks, and their reliability was absolutely abysmal. A coax lives an incredibly unforgiving life. It is mounted inside a steel box that violently bounces across the earth at 40 miles per hour, surrounded by extreme heat, carbon and dust.
When you are buttoned up in a tank during a mechanized assault, you cannot easily reach over to clear a complicated malfunction. The military desperately needed a coax that was functionally indestructible without sacrificing lethality and reliability.
The Army looked outward for a solution and found it in the Belgian-designed FN MAG. In the late 1970’s, the military put the weapon through a grueling series of evaluations against its competitors. The results were undeniable. The new weapon’s Mean Rounds Between Stoppages (MRBS) absolutely embarrassed the competition and proved it could run filthy and hot without skipping a beat.
The Army officially adopted it in 1977 as the M240, specifically to serve as the coaxial machine gun for armored vehicles like the incoming M1 Abrams and Bradley Fighting Vehicle. For nearly two decades, this ultra-reliable powerhouse was the armored community’s best-kept secret, running flawlessly in the turrets while the infantry continued to slog it out with the M60.
Under the Hood: M240 Reliability
To understand why the M240 dominated those reliability trials, you have to look at the mechanics driving the gun. The secret behind its sustained suppression capability comes down to three critical design features: the open-bolt operating system, the adjustable gas regulator and the quick-change barrel mechanism.
Open-Bolt Operating System
The M240 fires from the open-bolt position. For the uninitiated, this means that when the gunner releases the trigger to stop firing, the bolt assembly travels backward and physically locks to the rear. The chamber is left empty and completely exposed to the open air. This is a vital safety and reliability feature for a weapon designed for high volumes of fire.
When a machine gun sends hundreds of rounds downrange in a matter of minutes, the chamber temperature skyrockets. If a live round were left sitting inside that white-hot chamber, the ambient heat would eventually cause the gunpowder to ignite on its own. This dangerous malfunction is known as a “cook-off” and can result in serious injury to the operator or those nearby. Locking the bolt to the rear allows the weapon to vent that massive heat buildup and keeps the ammunition safe.
Adjustable Gas Regulator
The cyclic fire rate of an AK-47 is around 600 rounds per minute. The M3 Grease Gun shoots 450 rounds per minute. The fire rate of the M240 isn’t a single static number like many other weapons systems. In fact, the technical manual officially lists it as a sliding scale from 650 to 950 rounds per minute.
This variance is entirely by design, courtesy of an adjustable gas regulator located at the front of the gas cylinder. Under normal conditions with a clean weapon, the gun is fired on the first setting, churning out around 650 to 750 rounds per minute. However, as you may know, combat is notoriously dirty.
When the weapon gets choked with carbon, sand, and grime after sustained firefights, the gunner can physically adjust the gas plug to the second or third setting. This forces a higher volume of expanding gas into the system, violently driving the piston backward to punch through the filth and keep the gun cycling.
Quick-Change Barrels
Unlike the cumbersome barrel changes of the M60 era, swapping a barrel on the M240 is executed with a simple push-button release on the left side of the receiver. It should be noted that the physical reality of executing that swap depends entirely on where the gun is mounted and which variant you are operating. For the infantry variants (like the M240B or the Marine Corps M240G), the barrel features a built-in carrying handle. The gunner simply depresses the release, lifts the handle to strip the hot barrel out, and slams a fresh one in.
For an armor crewman, it is a completely different story. The M240 used as the coaxial machine gun in the Abrams strips away the heat shield and the carrying handle entirely to fit inside the tight confines of the gun mantlet. There is no handle to grab. When a loader has to swap a red-hot coax barrel in the middle of an engagement, they are grabbing raw steel using a heavy heat mitten in the cramped interior of the turret, relying on pure muscle memory to get the tank back in the fight.
Compared to the M73 and the M219 however, this was a cakewalk, as those weapons systems had archaic barrel change procedures involving the swiveling of the entire receiver, which was near impossible to do in a stressed environment.
M240 Family Tree: Tailoring the Heavyweight
Once the U.S. military realized they had an absolute masterpiece of reliability on their hands, they began tailoring the weapon to fit the specific needs of different combat units throughout the fighting force. Today, the M240 exists in several distinct configurations, but they all share the exact same rugged DNA.
The Armor Variants: M240, M240C, and M240D
As a tanker, these vehicle variants are my bread and butter. While they are fundamentally the same weapon, employing them feels entirely different based on where they sit. The standard M240 (with no letter designation) is the coaxial variant mounted directly next to the 120mm main gun in the Abrams.
Because of its placement in the mantlet, the loader feeds the ammo belts from the left side, over the cannon, and into the machine gun. It lacks a traditional trigger group or buttstock, firing instead via an electronic solenoid controlled by the gunner’s cadillacs. (To accommodate other platforms like the Bradley Fighting Vehicle that require a right-hand feed, the military utilizes the M240C).
The M240D is the brawler. This is the variant mounted on the skate mount at the loader’s hatch. It feeds from the standard left side and is operated manually using spade grips and a butterfly trigger. Additionally, the “Delta” model comes with an egress kit. If the tank is disabled and the crew has to abandon ship, pulling two retaining pins allows the loader to rip the gun off the mount, slap on a traditional buttstock and trigger assembly, and take it to the ground as a highly effective infantry weapon.
Marine Corps Pivot: The M240G
By the mid-1990s, the Marine Corps had finally had enough of the M60. Being naturally resourceful (read: broke), they looked at the incredibly reliable M240’s already mounted in their LAVs and tanks and realized the solution to their infantry problem was already in the armory.
They pulled the weapons out of the vehicles, slapped on a buttstock, bipod and iron sights, and fielded it to the infantry as the M240G (the “Golf”). It’s all about pure function and no nonsense. It lacks a heat shield, which saves weight, and retains the three-position adjustable gas plug from the vehicle variants, giving Marine machine gunners total control over their cyclic rate of fire
Army Infantry Standard: The M240B
Seeing the Marines successfully running the Golf model in the dirt, the Army finally retired the infantry’s M60’s in 1997, adopting the M240B (the “Bravo”). The Bravo is the heaviest of the ground variants, weighing in at roughly 27 lbs. The Army added a heat shield, a modernized front sight, and Picatinny rails for mounting optics and lasers.
Most importantly, the Bravo features a hydraulic buffer system integrated into the buttstock. This buffer absorbs a massive amount of the weapon’s recoil, making it incredibly controllable during sustained bursts. It is a grueling piece of equipment to ruck up a mountain, but the second the bipod hits the dirt, it becomes the uncontested base of fire for the Army infantry squad.
Death from Above: The M240H
The aviation community couldn’t let the ground guys have all the fun. The M240H (the “Hotel”) was developed to replace the M60D as the standard door gun on helicopters like the UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47 Chinook. Like the tank’s Delta model, it features spade grips and a butterfly trigger, and it can be rapidly dismounted with an egress kit if a bird goes down and the crew needs to fight their way out.
The Maritime Solution: The M240N
The Navy needed a piece of this reliability for their own operations, leading to the M240N (the “November”). Designed specifically for waterborne environments, the November model lives its life on pintle mounts aboard small patrol crafts, rigid-hull inflatable boats (RHIBs), and ship decks. Because it isn’t meant to be humped through the mountains or fired from the dirt, it completely strips away the integral bipod found on the infantry variants.
Maritime environments present the unique hurdles of constant exposure to saltwater, sea spray, and corrosive ocean air. This can be notoriously brutal on weapon systems, but the exact same rugged mechanics that keep the gun cycling through the sand and carbon of a battlefield keep the November model chewing through belts on the open water.
The Operator’s Perspective of the M240 Machine Gun
Regardless of your job or in which capacity it’s used, operating the M240 is intensive and grueling work. If you are an infantryman humping a 27-lb. Bravo model plus heavy belts of 7.62 up the side of a mountain, your knees and back will absolutely hate you. If you are an armor crewman wrestling a jammed, red-hot coax in the pitch-black turret of an Abrams moving at 40 miles per hour, your knuckles will be busted and your hands WILL inevitably get burned (ask me how I know). The weapon demands a steep physical toll from anyone who is tasked with wielding it.
However, the second you make contact and need to establish immediate fire superiority, every ounce of that weight, every scorch mark, and every drop of sweat is instantly forgiven.
As the military continues to modernize and looks toward the future with lighter, Next Generation Squad Weapons like the XM250, some might wonder if the M240’s days are numbered. The truth is, you can’t easily replace a masterpiece of reliability.
For almost 50 years, from the turrets of armored dreadnoughts to the trenches of the infantry, the M240 has done exactly what it was designed to do — never stop firing. As long as there is a need to lay down an unbreakable wall of lead to dominate the battlefield, the undisputed heavyweight champion isn’t going anywhere.