Lewis Gun

Discussions on all aspects of the First World War not covered in the other sections. Hosted by Terry Duncan.
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Peter H
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Lewis Gun

#1

Post by Peter H » 16 Jan 2004, 05:22

Firepower on the cheap.American technology and British adaptability.
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Peter H
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#2

Post by Peter H » 16 Jan 2004, 05:26

Also used on all fronts.Australian Light Horsemen with Lewis,Palestine 1918.
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Peter H
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#3

Post by Peter H » 16 Jan 2004, 05:27

Jordan Valley 1918:
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Peter H
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#4

Post by Peter H » 16 Jan 2004, 05:29

Australians on the Somme 1916--with their Lewis and German trophies.
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Peter H
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#5

Post by Peter H » 16 Jan 2004, 05:33

A tribute held at the Australian War Memorial.
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Tom Niefer
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#6

Post by Tom Niefer » 17 Jan 2004, 04:03

Nice pictures, Moulded. Here's a little text about the Lewis Gun if anyone is curious.

The Lewis Gun was a pre-WWI era British machine gun that continued to see service all the way through WWII. It is visually distinctive for its very wide diameter cooling shroud around the barrel, and for its top mounted drum magazines, which came in 50 and 90 round sizes. It was invented by an American army officer in 1911 but was never adopted by that country. It was designed with an aluminium barrel casing to use the muzzle blast to draw air into the gun and cool down the internal mechanism. It could fire 550 .303 rounds per minute. The gun weighed only about half as much as the monumental Vickers machine gun and was primarily chosen because it could be carried and used by a single soldier. It was also about 1/6 the cost of a Vickers, and was issued in droves to soldiers on the Western Front. In WW2 it was replaced by the Bren gun for most infantry uses, but the Lewis saw continued service as a vehicle mounted weapon, primarily as a side gunner's weapon on aircraft. Although it was probably obsolete for that role as well, but the British were facing something of a major economic crisis during the war, and had to use their existing stocks in whatever capacity made the most sense.

After WWII the Lewis was officially discontinued and all existing models were retired in favor of the Bren and other models.

Cheers,
Tom

Polynikes
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#7

Post by Polynikes » 28 Jan 2004, 16:39

Could the cooling shroud be removed and so give the soldier something he could handle easier?

I've seen pictures of machine guns resembling the Lewis gun on WWI biplanes.

In WWII, SAS jeeps carried twin mounted guns that also resembled the Lewis gun, again without the cooling jacket.

Cheers from Rich

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Xavier
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#8

Post by Xavier » 28 Jan 2004, 17:13

First recorded military use was in 1912 during the mexican revolution.

One of the shipments of about 10 lewis guns to Pancho Villa's forces got impounded by the us authorities in el paso, and now resides in a class III private collection, all together with provenance (shipping invoices...!!).

the US forces that invaded mexico, after Pancho villa attacked columbus, also used the gun: The US Army acquired eight Curtis Twin JNs in 1916 and early 1917. These armed with 1 Lewis gun saw brief service in northern mexico.

one of the planes was used by the New Mexico National Guard.

regards

Xavier
Instandsetzungtruppfuhrer

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adrian
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#9

Post by adrian » 30 Jan 2004, 02:51

In answer to Polynikes question of before.

During WW2 limited numbers of the Vickers Gas Operated MG (also known as the Vickers 'K' gun) saw service with Commonwealth forces including the SAS and Long Range Desert Group. Externally the 'K' gun can be easily confused for the Lewis Gun as it is very similar to the stripped down Lewis.

adrian

Polynikes
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#10

Post by Polynikes » 03 Feb 2004, 17:08

adrian wrote:In answer to Polynikes question of before.

During WW2 limited numbers of the Vickers Gas Operated MG (also known as the Vickers 'K' gun) saw service with Commonwealth forces including the SAS and Long Range Desert Group. Externally the 'K' gun can be easily confused for the Lewis Gun as it is very similar to the stripped down Lewis.

adrian
I believe that they were designed for use by bomber air gunners so had a very high rate of fire.

The Lewis gun was also used on WWI aircraft - also without a cooling jacket.

Cheers from Rich

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Aufklarung
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#11

Post by Aufklarung » 03 Feb 2004, 17:57

Model 1914 Lewis Gun
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Lewis Gun
Although several automatic rifles or light machine guns had been fielded in the period leading up to the outbreak of war in 1914, only one was to prove itself entirely satisfactory in the shell-blasted mud of World. War I. This was the gun -- an American invention at first rudely spurned by its home country, but enthusiastically embraced by the Belgians and the British. Turned out by the tens of thousands before the war's end, it was far superior to its enemy counterpart, the German "light" Maxim machine gun.

The McLean Gun

In 1910, an American named Samuel McLean sold his mechanical patent rights to the Automatic Arms Company of Buffalo, NY. Among his many inventions was a machine gun so overburdened with gadgets that it was unsuitable for any purpose other than mechanical curiosity. Automatic Arms persuaded U.S. Army Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis, a gifted engineer, to re-work the McLean system. Colonel Lewis wisely retained McLean's basic operating system, consisting of a gas piston that acted on a camming slot in the bolt to rotate it into locking and unlocking. Next, he added a clock-type return, spring, pan magazine and finned air-cooling jacket. Colonel Lewis was not only a good engineer, but also no slouch as a salesman, showman and visionary. His next step was to arrange an event that would excite imaginations all around the world.

On June 7th, 1912, with a prototype Lewis gun resting on the foot bar of his Wright Type B "aeroplane," Captain Charles DeForest Chandler, commander of the U.S. Army airfield at College Park. Md., became the first man in history to fire a machine gun in flight. A posed photograph taken the next day was picked up and printed by newspapers and magazines worldwide as yet another amazing milestone in the new age of invention. Unfortunately for the American soldier, the Army curtly dismissed the whole episode, asserting that aircraft were only suitable for scouting and observation and would never do as platforms for aerial gunnery! It would be just 26 months before that blind arrogance would be violently swept aside.

"Ignorant Hacks"

The Army Ordnance Board tests of the Lewis Gun that immediately followed Captain Chandler's history-making flight were no more positive. Perhaps due to the severity of the tests or even to actual faults in the prototype guns, the Lewis gun was neither accepted nor rejected. According to David Truby in his excellent book The Lewis Gun, the colonel denounced his fellow officers of the Ordnance establishment as "ignorant hacks." Then, rather than continue an exercise in futility against hidebound prejudice, Colonel Lewis turned in his retirement papers and steamed for Belgium in January, 1913.

In Europe Lewis participated in a series of demonstrations held for the Belgian army and various other military representatives. This soon resulted in Belgium's decision to adopt the gun in caliber .303 British, to be manufactured at Liege by a newly formed company to be known as Armes Automatiques Lewis. Soon afterward, the respected English firm of Birmingham Small Arms Co. was granted a license arid the Lewis was in full production at both factories by June 1914.
The Model 1914 Lewis gun weighed less than 28 lbs. with a compact pan load of 47 cartridges. An adjustable clock-type recoil spring could regulate the rate of fire from 500 to 600 rounds per minute. Its rifle-like configuration, adjustable sights and bipod allowed the average soldier to effectively engage enemy targets out to 600 meters. With no flimsy ammo strip, awkward side-mounted feedbox or trailing ammo belt, the Lewis could be grabbed up and fired from the hip during trench-to-trench assaults, delivering suppressive fire on the defenders. The Lewis was the right weapon at the right time and by 1916 more than 50,000 had been turned out by Belgium, Britain and the American Savage Arms Co.

Trial By Fire

The Lewis was also revered in the air. Since cooling was no problem in the slipstream of an airplane or airship, the gun could be stripped of its distinctive barrel jacket and fins. The butt was replaced with a spade type handgrip and magazine capacity was more than doubled. With no flapping belt, wind-catching feed spool, or troublesome feed strip to get in the way, the resulting 19 lb. gun was an obvious winner. At the end of August 1914, a German observation plane became the first aircraft in history to be shot down. This was accomplished by a Lewis gun mounted on a British scout plane over Le Quesnoy, France. Later, Lewis guns loaded with incendiary bullets and mounted on the famous Sopwith Camel biplanes (?), helped bring down hydrogen-filled German Zeppelin dirigibles that had been terrorizing English cities.

The Declining Years

Although the best of its kind until John Browning's soon-to-be-legendary "BAR" became available to American troops in 1917 and 1918, the Lewis was expensive to manufacture, heavy, somewhat awkward, and unnecessarily complicated. While production ceased at the end of World War I, enormous numbers of existing Lewis guns continued to serve.

They were still first-line weapons with many U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Army units in the early years of World War II. The British Army adopted the superlative Bren in the mid-1930s, but many Lewis guns remained in secondary roles and with reserve troops until 1945. Ironically, many British and American Lewis guns were in ground, sea, and air combat during World War II with Japanese models built under license after 1920.

Interestingly, the Germans in World War II revived the Lewis gun's unique bolt and gas piston/camming device as the heart of Rheinmetall's FG 42 paratroop machine rifle. This adaptation traveled back to America in time for the Vietnam War in the form of the M60 machine gun -- which has only recently been rendered obsolete by the M240.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Lewis Machine Gun Manufacturer: Birmingham Small Arms Company, England
Caliber: .303
British Operating System: Gas, open bolt, full-auto only
Cooling: Air, aluminum radiator-finned barrel
Magazine: Rotating pan, 47- and 97-round capacity
Length: 50.5" Barrel: 26.04", 4 grooves, left twist Loaded
Weight: 32.75 lbs.
Sights: Blade front and aperture rear, adjustable for elevation in 100 yard increments from 400 to 2,100 yards
Rate of fire: 500 to 600 rpm
Muzzle velocity: 2,450 fps
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/ClubDJs/british_mgs.html

regards
A :)

alf
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#12

Post by alf » 04 Feb 2004, 13:00

Just as a piece of trivia, in the George Lucas's "The Empire Strikes Back", during the attack on the base in Hoth, an Imperial Storm Trooper who enters the cavern as Hans Solo and crew take off, is armed with a Lewis Gun.

(and no I didnt have a life then either :P )

Polynikes
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#13

Post by Polynikes » 04 Feb 2004, 16:45

alf wrote:Just as a piece of trivia, in the George Lucas's "The Empire Strikes Back", during the attack on the base in Hoth, an Imperial Storm Trooper who enters the cavern as Hans Solo and crew take off, is armed with a Lewis Gun.

(and no I didnt have a life then either :P )
There's also an MG-34 and of course Han Solo himself uses a Mauser C-96.

Cheers from Rich

Tony Williams
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#14

Post by Tony Williams » 20 Feb 2004, 10:13

For aircraft use, the Lewis was available in various versions in WW1, with a slimmer barrel sleeve as well as none at all. It was speeded up to around 750 rpm and was the best MG for flexible mounting in the war (the Germans used all those they could get).

It would have seen even more use but it couldn't be effectively synchronised to fire through the propeller disk. The pan magazine, so useful in flexible guns, also had a much lower capacity than a belt of ammo, so the heavier Vickers was used in fixed fighter armament instead.

Tony Williams

robert knott
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#15

Post by robert knott » 20 Feb 2004, 11:31

I read that the Lewis Gun (nicknamed the "Belgian Rattlesnake" by the Germans who encountered it in 1914) was finally accepted by the U.S. Army in 1917 after their bad experience with the French Chauchat. The Lewis was then manufactured in New York (by Savage?) to use .30 cal ammo.

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