A drum magazine.

A drum magazine is a type of magazine that is cylindrical in shape, similar to a drum. In a drum magazine, rounds are stored in a spiral around the center of the magazine. The advantage over traditional box-shaped magazines is that a drum magazine can carry much more ammunition, usually over double that of a box magazine, such as the 71-round magazine for the Russian PPSh-41 submachine gun. The downside is that drum magazines are more prone to jamming. The iconic 1930s-era Tommy gun uses distinctive drum magazines. A current example is the Beta C-Mag. Most firearms have standard box magazines, but a few, like the M31 Suomi are less common with boxes. The M-31 was also more reliable with drum magazines than with boxes. There are also double drums presently available - where normal magazines put rounds in two rows, two drums each have one row, which combine into two rows before entering the receiver. Image File history File links Drum_magazine. ... Image File history File links Drum_magazine. ... A 30-round STANAG magazine. ... Drum carried by John Unger, Company B, 40th Regiment New York Veteran Volunteer Infantry Mozart Regiment, December 20, 1863 Several American Indian-style drums for sale at the National Museum of the American Indian. ... Designed by Georgii Shpagin, the PPSh-41 (Pistolet-Pulemet Shpagina, Russian: Пистолет-пулемёт Шпагина, nicknamed Peh-peh-shah, Shpagin and Burp Gun) was one of the most mass produced weapons of World War II. Finding that PPD was too expensive and time consuming to build, the PPSh was designed as an inexpensive alternate. ... A lance corporal of the East Surrey Regiment, British Army equipped with a Thompson M1928 submachine gun (drum magazine), 25 November 1940 The Thompson, also known as the Tommy Gun, was a family of American submachine guns that became infamous during the Prohibition era. ... The Beta C-Mag is a 100-round capacity magazine designed for assault rifles and submachine guns firing the 5. ... The Suomi-konepistooli KP/-31 (Suomi-submachine gun KP/-31) was a descendant of the M/-22 prototype and the KP/-26 production model, which was introduced to the public in 1925. ...

Drum magazines are also used in aircraft guns such as the M61 Vulcan and the GAU-8 Avenger, although belt-fed guns are more common on aircraft. Unmounted M61 Vulcan The 20 mm M61 Vulcan is a hydraulically or pneumatically driven, six-barreled, air-cooled, electrically fired Gatling-style gun with an extremely high rate of fire. ... The GAU-8 Avenger The General Electric GAU-8/A Avenger is a 30 mm, seven-barrel Gatling-type rotary cannon that is mounted on the United States Air Forces A-10 Thunderbolt II. It is the largest, heaviest and most powerful aircraft cannon in the United States military. ...

Other weapons

• Lewis Gun
• DP
• Ultimax 100

The Lewis Gun was a pre-WWI era American design of machine gun most widely used by the British Empire and Imperial armies that continued to see service all the way through to WWII, it first saw combat with the Belgian Army in WWI. It is visually distinctive because of... The Ruchnoy Pulemyot Degtyareva pekhotnyi (Degtyarev hand-held infantry machine gun) was a light machine gun used by the Soviet Union starting in 1928. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

See also

Magazine (firearm) A 30-round STANAG magazine. ...