Moore’s Centrifugal Machine Gun
In June 1918, Major Edward T. Moore and Saul Singer filed a patent for an intriguing new kind of weapon based upon a principle that man had mastered centuries earlier.
Moore and Singer’s machine gun operated using the principle of centrifugal force - an inertial force which appears to act on objects moving in a circular path, and is directed away from the axis of rotation. As such the machine gun required no propellant powder to propel the projectile, or a case to contain it, nor a conventional rifled barrel to stabilise the projectile.
Moore, an alumni of the Princeton class of 1903, an attorney who practised in New York and a Major in the New Jersey National Guard, claimed that the idea for his weapon came from the “story of David slaying Goliath with a stone which he whirled around his head in a sling” according to a piece in Volume 21, No.5 of the Princeton Alumni Weekly. The short article goes on to explain that Moore offered his invention to the War Department shortly before the end of World War One. The cessation of hostilities apparently stalled development but the by late 1920, the gun had been tested.
The weapon itself was powered by a powerful electric motor which spooled up the centrifugal barrel assembly to rotate extremely quickly and impart centrifugal force on projectiles. According to Julian Hatcher the gun could fire steel ball bearing projectiles at approximately 1,200 feet per second. Fire was controlled not by the weapon’s motor but by a stop pin in the ammunition feed tube. Moore claimed the weapon could fire a projectile 1.5 miles with enough force to kill a man. He also suggested the weapon’s rate of fire approached 2,000 rounds per minute. The patent describes the machine gun as “simple and inexpensive and well suited to quantity manufacture.”
Moore and Singer also designed a feed system for their machine gun, with the projectiles fed through a hopper. This system was patented in August 1918, with the inventors claiming:
“Our invention will be found particularly useful in connection with centrifugal machine guns where it is necessary to feed large numbers of bullets in rapid succession to the gun… our improved mechanism no jamming is possible and the bullets are positively fed in rapid succession as long as the mechanism is operated and there are bullets remaining in the hopper”
The system was decidedly more simple than the machine gun itself comprising a hand cranked carousel which regulated the flow of projectiles into the feed tube. This tube can be seen, along with the weapon’s battery powered motor, in image #4.
Moore and Singer’s feed system for their centrifugal machine gun (source)
The patents for the weapon and the feed system were assigned to the Aero Tank Machine Gun Co. Inc., registered in October 1918 in New York. This parent company appear to have continued developing the idea of a centrifugal machine gun into the 1920s. At least one more patent was filled with the company as the assignee, not in Moore or Singer’s name but ascribed to Victor Czegka.
Czegka’s centrifugal machine gun patent (source)
Czegka, a US Marine Corps Technical Sergeant, is perhaps best known as the supply officer of Admiral Richard Byrd’s first two expeditions to the Antarctic. Czegka’s centrifugal machine gun patent claimed to improve the aiming and stability of the projectile as well as attempting to ensure “the safety of the operator.” As such the barrel rotated within a shield with the barrel being aimed with a pinion system. Unlike Moore’s gun which could only be controlled by closing off the ammunition feed tube Czegka’s gun has a more controlled feed with a timing block feeding projectiles into the spinning breech block. It is unclear if Czegka’s gun was officially tested.
The concept of a centrifugal gun has long interested firearms designers and inventors. It is problems with control, accuracy and feeding, however, which have made the concept difficult to realise. Julian Hatcher, a Major with the US Army Ordnance Department during the war, described the accuracy of Moore’s centrifugal machine gun as ‘extremely poor’ and the weapon’s testing did not proceed.
Hatcher’s Notebook, J.S. Hatcher (1962) [image #4]
‘Centrifugal Machine Gun’, E.T. Moore & S. Singer, US Patent #1332933, Mar. 1920 (source)
‘Feeding Bullets and The Like from Hoppers’, E.T. Moore & S. Singer, US Patent #1332993, Mar. 1920 (source)
‘Centrifugal Gun’, V.H. Czegka, US Patent #1404378, Jun. 1922 (source)
Princeton Alumni Weekly, Vol. 21, No.5, 3 Nov. 1920 (source)
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