The Nepalese Bira Gun

In the 1890’s Nepalese General  Gehendra Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana designed this double barreled hand cranked machine gun which he called the Bira Gun.  An interesting design, the Bira gun featured a reciprocating bolt which fired each barrel separately one after the other in succession.  The gun was chambered for the .577-450 Martini Henry round, as Nepal was an ally of Britain and had large stocks of the ammunition on hand.  The gun was fed from a large 40 pound pan magazine which held two rows with 60 rounds of ammunition in each.    Altogether the Bira Gun was a very heavy weapon, weighing almost 1000 pounds, it had to be pulled by horse on a caisson.  Unlike all other crank operated machine guns, the Bira Gun’s crank was rotated counterclockwise, rather than clockwise, which supposedly made the gun more reliable.  All Bira Gun’s were handmade and produced in Nepal.  They were never deployed in combat.