Finnicky FIAT

This is the FIAT-Revelli M1914 machine gun. Before WWI, the Italians bought few machine guns and had no domestically produced designs, so when the war came they were severely low. This design, designed by a man named Revelli and produced by the automobile giant FIAT, became the mainstay of the Italian machine guns. It's rather interesting for a machine gun because it fired from a closed bolt and was select-fire. It had a few rather strange features as well. One was the bolt; it reciprocated out into the open area behind the rear sight and in front of the spade grips. This could possibly lead to severe injuries of gunners and crew. Another odd feature was its feed mechanism; it used a 50-round box magazine.

This magazine, fed from the left of the gun, is like 10, five-round magazines combined into one. It could be rather finnicky, especially when dirty. If it was damaged at all the gun wouldn't feed.

Even with all its shortcomings, the FIAT-Revelli M1914 served the Italians through WWI and into the interwar years. In the 1930s it was modernized, with the removal of the water jacket and a few other features, but the modernization was not a success. The gun did, however, serve in its original form well into WWII until the Italian surrender in 1943.