The Whatziss Answered

Boquisucio sent us this picture and asked us to identify the weapon.  And he stumped most of us, including me. 

All of us except Tom, who figured it out.  I don't feel too bad - there is *nothing* about this weapon in any of my relatively numerous references on machine guns, and there is nothing on the web about it in English (well, until now), and there is only *one* site on the web that mentions this gun - and it's in Italian - Le mitragliatrici italiane della Grande Guerra, or, The Italian Machine Guns of World War One.  And that's all indicative of the relative paucity of material available on the Italian side of WWI, actually.  There is a fair amount in english about the Austro-Hungarians, from the Austro-Hungarian perspective, but the Italian side of the war is badly underserved, at least in english-language publications.

The Perrino machine gun Model 1908 - in an "assault" configuration, probably later in the war.

The Perrino was designed in 1901 by Joseph Perrino, an engineer (Tecnico del Artilleria).  Perrino's design apparently was the first Italian-designed machine gun, and in it's original configuration weighed in at a hefty 27 kg - 60 pounds. It was redesigned in 1910 and brought the weight down to 34 pounds (17 kg), which is more in keeping with other machine guns of its class and era. 

After successful testing the gun was adopted by the House of Savoy (we don't have time to explain Italian political and military organization at this point in their history) and was used along with the Maxim guns in Italian service. 

It was was loaded by metal feed strips of  25 rounds each, using a hopper on the side to hold 5 strips in place at once to achieve continuous fire - as a strip fed through, the loader would simply drop another strip in place on top of the stack.  The gun was a gas-boosted recoil-operated gun like the Vickers and Maxim guns, I have no idea if it used a firing lock or a turning bolt - if it's a lock like the Maxim/Vickers guns, Perrino used the Vicker's approach to the toggle to reduce the size of the receiver.  The nominal rate of fire was 450 rounds per minute.

It was issued in very limited quantities, "while the quality of manufacture was far superior to any other machine gun adopted."  That last bit might be a bit of Italian pride, as the Vickers and Maxim guns used by the Italians were of high quality manufacture as well - and the feed strip system of loading, also used by the French and the Brits, has real problems in service - there's a reason belt-feeding survives to this day... and feed strips do not.

As pictured above, it looks like the Italians were trying to get machine guns into the hands of assault troops, like the Alpini soldier in the picture, just as the Germans did with the MG 08/15. This example doesn't seem to be really workable.  The  MG08/15 wasn't that great a work-around either, though, by the end of the war, it was the most common form of the MG08 - which is a reflection of the conditions of the war, moreso than the virtues of converting a heavy machine gun into a light machine gun....

Having to be able to carry it and fire it meant it had to be fired from the hip (or, in this case, underarm) because it's simply too long and heavy (water-filled jacket around the barrel) for anyone to be able to fire from the shoulder.  Plus, it has to be slung carefully, since the feedstrips are sticking out across the gunner's body - hence the tall sights so that the gunner can have some pretense at aiming.  I'm thinking if this was ever adopted, most gunners just watched the bullet impact and walked the rounds onto the target by eye.  I can't imagine the fumbling this guy would have to do to reload - all while being the target of everybody with a rifle, machinegun and hand grenades on the opposing side...

Update: I think there is another aspect to this, that was nagging at the back of my mind because of the picture - that other aspect of this may well be that this gun has been further modified to fire with belted ammunition - as that's clearly not a feed strip dangling there, and the few rounds you can see on the far side are not aligned as rounds on a feed strip would be.  The belt looks odd, like it might be metal pockets attached to a cloth belt, a compromise made to accomodate the mechanics of the feed strip mechanism while trying to gain the flexibilty of belt-feed.  But that's all conjecture at this point.

The data from the referenced Italian web page comes from this book:  Nevio Mantoan, Weapons and Equipment the Italian Army in the Great War 1915-1918, Gino Rossato Editore, First Edition.  July 1996.  Not available via Amazon or Alibris, sorry.

I see that while I was writing this post, Josh was writing it for me in the comments of the original post.  Heh.