If the technology for automatic (or rapid-fire) firearms hadn't progressed much beyond the the Gatling guns used in the previous decades how would that have effected combat and the war as a whole?
Are we talking handcranked only or are we allowing for the application of powered gatlings? Because that is the Minigun:If the technology for automatic (or rapid-fire) firearms hadn't progressed much beyond the the Gatling guns used in the previous decades how would that have effected combat and the war as a whole?
Gatling's electric-powered design received U.S. Patent #502,185 on July 25, 1893.[3] Despite Gatling's improvements, the Gatling gun fell into disuse after cheaper, lighter-weight, recoil and gas operated machine guns were invented; Gatling himself went bankrupt for a period.[4]
During World War I, several German companies were working on externally powered guns for use in aircraft. Of those, the best-known today is perhaps the Fokker-Leimberger, an externally powered 12-barrel rotary gun using the 7.92×57mm Mauser round; it was claimed to be capable of firing over 7,000 rpm, but suffered from frequent cartridge-case ruptures[5] due to its "nutcracker", rotary split-breech design, which is fairly different from that of a Gatling.[6] None of these German guns went into production during the war, although a competing Siemensprototype (possibly using a different action) which was tried on the Western Front scored a victory in aerial combat.[5]
Are we talking handcranked only or are we allowing for the application of powered gatlings? Because that is the Minigun:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minigun#Background:_electrically_driven_Gatling_gun
We could easily have had Miniguns in WW1, they'd just be heavier than the OTL MGs.
Or we'd get earlier adoption of semi-auto rifles or SMGs of the simple blowback variety. Bolt action rifles for long range engagement, semi-auto/automatic light caliber weapons to get the rate of fire up at closer ranges. That and probably a lot more explosive short ranged weapons like mortars and grenade launchers/throwers. Humans are fiendishly ingenious and would be able to figure out things to make defenses possible. Remember even during the US Civil War trenches and other defensive positions were very hard to break without massive application of superior manpower and firepower.Powered gatlings were experimented with bit we're abandoned due to the weight and cost advantages of the Maxim gun.
The weight and cost of gatlings would limit their numbers and deployment, trench warfare might not happen on the Western front seeing as how there might not be enough gatlings available to provide complete coverage of the entire line.
I believe even in an actual automatic mode it'd have still been used more similar to the hand crank variety, where due to size it would've been treated more like field artillery than portable pieces.