The McCrudden light machine gun was developed by Australian Army Sergeant John Charles Reginald McCrudden between 1919 and 1921. The creator of the machine gun was a participant in the First World War as part of the Australian Expeditionary Force. After being wounded in 1916, McCrudden returned to Australia and then began to create a machine gun of his own design. The first prototype of the McCrudden machine gun was hand-made in an engineering workshop in Randwick, Sydney. Having demonstrated the machine gun to the military at home, the designer managed to send a sample to England to show to the British military. The creator of the machine gun receives patents and creates his own company, expecting that his weapon will compete with the Lewis machine gun
Machine gun caliber - 7.7 mm (.303 British cartridge); rate of fire about 800 rounds per minute, ammunition feed from detachable magazines for 20 and 30 rounds, effective firing range - 1000 meters. Unfortunately, there are not many technical details.
According to a press release in the Daily Telegraph on August 6, 1921, McCruden claimed that his machine gun “had only seven moving parts and had the advantage of having an adjustable rate of fire, which could be set to fire one or 800 rounds a minute as easily as the throttle could be operated.” In addition, the machine gun could easily be water-cooled to allow for sustained fire. But it probably had something to do with the fact that John McCruden was self-taught and designed the weapon primarily from a soldier’s point of view, not a designer’s. McCruden was unable to combine reliability and convenience
In England, the designer encountered a much more complex system for checking and testing his machine gun. The report of the commission that tested the machine gun in 1922 said that the weapon was compact and simple, but had a number of technical shortcomings. Damage to the return spring, unreliable operation of the bolt, cartridge distortions - these are only a part of the identified design problems. And the main inconvenience: the location of the magazine next to the pistol grip (on the right side)
After the tests in 1922, the designer promises to fix everything and rework the design. In 1927, McCruden presents the reworked machine gun to the commission. However, during firing, the weapon jammed and the commission rejected McCruden’s invention. An interesting design, but an unsuccessful construction - this is the final verdict of the commission. The inventor returns to Australia, where he continues to test and improve his machine gun. In 1932, the machine gun was confiscated by the police, where it was stored for the next 30 years, and then transferred to a museum
