Madman said:
I think they said that position had 3000 rounds. But that sounds high to me so maybe that was also meant to feed the other positions as well.
I think that most likely reflects what a PITA it probably is to load the weapon/fill the ready ammo box. That, and the fact that the only way to aim is to hold down the trigger and walk the tracer rounds toward the target. That tends to burn through ammo in a hurry.
A current example: the coaxial machinegun in the M1 tank has a ready box that holds 10,800 rounds. It's a huge pain to load (especially since 7.62 NATO comes in 100 round belts). Although the coax benefits from all the same aiming stuff used for the main gun, and thus can be extremely accurate.
