Vickers machine gun - Citizendia

Vickers Medium Machine Gun
Vickers MMG and crew
Type	Medium machine gun
Place of origin	United Kingdom
Service history
In service	1912–1968
Used by	United Kingdom, Commonwealth
Wars	World War I, World War II, Korean War
Production history
Designed	1912
Manufacturer	Vickers
Produced	1912–1968
Specifications
Weight	15 to 23 kg all-up
Length	1,100 mm
Barrel length	720 mm

Cartridge	.303 British
Action	recoil with gas boost
Rate of fire	450 to 600 round/min
Effective range	2,440 ft (740 m)
Maximum range	4,500 yards (4100 m) indirect fire
Feed system	250-round canvas belt

The Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a name primarily used to refer to the water-cooled .303 inch machine gun produced by Vickers Limited, originally for the British Army. A medium machine gun or MMG, in modern terms usually refers to a belt-fed Automatic firearm firing a full-power Rifle cartridge and The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located World War I (abbreviated WWI; also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including The Korean War refers to a period of military conflict between North Korean and South Korean regimes with major hostilities lasting from June 25 1950 until the Vickers was a famous name in British engineering that existed through many companies from 1828 until 2004 For the fictional characters see Gunbarrel (Transformers. A gun barrel is the tube usually Metal, through which a controlled Explosion A cartridge (also known as a "round" packages the Bullet, Gunpowder and primer into a single metallic case precisely made to fit the In Firearms terminology an action is the system of operation used to load rounds and/or seal the Breech. Rate of fire is the frequency at which a specific Weapon can fire or launch its projectiles Water cooling is a method of Heat removal from components As opposed to Air cooling, Water is used as the heat transmitter Please refer to the overview article Vickers for other companies known by this name Vickers Limited was a famous British engineering conglomerate that The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. The machine gun typically required a six to eight-man team to operate: one to fire, one to feed the ammunition, and the rest to help carry the weapon, its ammunition and spare parts. For other uses of the phrase see Machine Gun (disambiguation.

The gun had a reputation for great solidity and reliability. Ian V. Hogg, in Weapons & War Machines, describes an action that took place in August, 1916, during which the 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns continuously for twelve hours. Ian V Hogg (1926 – March 7, 2002) was a notable British author of books on Firearms Artillery, Ammunition, and The Machine Gun Corps (MGC was a corps of the British Army, formed in October 1915 in response to the need for more effective use of Machine guns on the Western They fired a million rounds between them, using one hundred new barrels, without a single breakdown. "It was this absolute foolproof reliability which endeared the Vickers to every British soldier who ever fired one. "^[1]

1 History
- 1.1 Variants
- 1.2 Foreign service
2 Specifications
3 Use
4 See also
5 Notes
6 Further reading
7 External links
8 Gallery of images

History

The Vickers machine gun was based on the successful Maxim gun of the late 19th century. The Maxim gun was the first self-powered Machine gun, invented by the American-born Briton Sir Hiram Maxim in 1884 After purchasing the Maxim company outright in 1896, Vickers took the design of the Maxim gun and improved it, reducing its weight, and adding a muzzle booster. A muzzle booster or recoil booster is a device affixed to the Muzzle of a Firearm, intended to harness the energy of the escaping propellant to augment

The British Army formally adopted the Vickers gun as its standard machine gun on 26 November 1912, using it alongside their Maxims. Events 43 BC - The Second Triumvirate alliance of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus ("Octavian" later "Caesar Augustus" Year 1912 ( MCMXII) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Leap year starting There were still great shortages when the First World War began, and the British Expeditionary Force was still equipped with Maxims when sent to France in 1914. The British Expeditionary Force ( BEF) was the British army sent to the Western Front in France and Belgium on the outbreak of Vickers was, in fact, threatened with prosecution for war profiteering, due to the exorbitant price it was demanding for the gun. A war profiteer is any person or organization that improperly Profits from Warfare or by selling Weapons and other goods to parties at war The price was slashed as a result. As the war progressed, and numbers increased, it became the British Army's primary machine gun, and served on all fronts during the conflict. When the Lewis Gun was adopted as a light machine gun, and issued to infantry units, the Vickers guns, redefined as heavy machine guns were withdrawn from infantry units and grouped in the hands of the new Machine Gun Corps (when 0. The Lewis Gun is a pre- World War I era Squad automatic weapon / Machine gun of American design that was most widely used by the forces of the British The Machine Gun Corps (MGC was a corps of the British Army, formed in October 1915 in response to the need for more effective use of Machine guns on the Western 5" calibre machine guns appeared, the tripod-mounted, rifle calibre machine guns like the Vickers became medium machine guns). After the War, the Machine Gun Corps (MGC) was disbanded and the Vickers returned to infantry units. Before the Second World War there were plans to replace it; one of the contenders was the 7. 92 mm Besa machine gun (a Czech design), which eventually became the British Army's standard tank-mounted machine gun. The Machine Gun BESA was a British version of the Czechoslovakian ZB-53 machine-gun (also designated as the Model 37 machine-gun in some countries and used by However, the Vickers remained in service with the British Army until 30 March 1968. Events 240 BC - 1st recorded Perihelion passage of Halley's Comet. Year 1968 ( MCMLXVIII) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Its last operational use was in the Radfan during the Aden Emergency. Radfan or the Radfan Hills is a region of the Republic of Yemen. The Aden Emergency was an insurgency against British crown forces in what is now the country of Yemen on the southern Arabian Peninsula. Its successor in UK service is the L7 GPMG. The MAG is a Belgian 762 mm General purpose machine gun, designed in the early 1950s at Fabrique Nationale (FN by Ernest Vervier

The Vickers became standard weapons on all British and French military aircraft after 1916, including the famous Sopwith Camel and the SPAD XIII. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. A military aircraft is any fixed-wing or rotary-wing Aircraft that is in the current employ of a Military power WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft. Please see WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft/page content for recommended layout WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft. Please see WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft/page content for recommended layout The gun was usually fitted with a form of synchronizer gear to allow it to fire through aircraft propellers, and slots were cut in the water jacket so that it was cooled by air flow instead of water, a common practice on WWI airplanes. Interrupter gear is a term that covers two related technologies A propeller is essentially a type of fan which transmits power by converting Rotational motion into Thrust for propulsion of a vehicle such as an

As the machine gun armament of fighters moved from the fuselage to the wings in the years before WW2, the Vickers with its fabric belts was generally replaced by the faster-firing Browning Model 1919. The Browning M1919 is a.30 caliber Medium machine gun family widely used during the 20th century Several British bombers and attack aircraft of WW2 mounted the Vickers K machine gun, a completely different design. The Vickers K gun known as the Vickers Gas Operated (VGO in British service was a rapid-firing Machine gun developed and manufactured for use in

Variants

The larger calibre (half-inch) version of the Vickers was used as an anti-aircraft gun on British ships as the 0. 5"/62 Vickers Machine Gun Mark III. These were typically four guns on rotating (360°) elevating (+80° to −10°) mounting. The belts were rolled into a spiral and placed in hoppers beside each gun. The heavy plain bullet weighed 1. 3 oz and was good for 1,500 yd (1,400 m) range (1,300 m). They were fitted from the 1920s onwards but in practical terms proved of little use.

Foreign service

The Vickers was widely sold commercially and saw service with many nations and their own particular ammunition. It was also modified for each company and served as a base for many other weapons. For example:

6. 5 mm Italian
6.5 mm Arisaka
6. The 65x50mm Semi-Rimmed Japanese cartridge was adopted by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1897 along with the Type 30 Arisaka Infantry 5x54R Dutch
7x57 Mauser
7. The 7x57mm cartridge, also known as the 7 mm Mauser, 7x57mm Mauser, 7 mm Spanish Mauser in the USA and. 5x55 Swiss
7.62x51 NATO
.30-06 Springfield
7.62x54R Russian
7. Switzerland (English pronunciation; Schweiz Swiss German: Schwyz or Schwiiz Suisse Svizzera Svizra officially the Swiss Confederation The 762x51mm NATO is a Rifle cartridge developed in the 1950s as a standard firearm cartridge among NATO countries The 762x54mmR Rifle cartridge is a Russian design dating back to 1891 65x53 Mauser
8 mm Lebel

The Vickers MG remains in service with the Indian, Pakistani, and Nepalese armed forces, albeit as a reserve weapon, intended for emergency use in the event of a major conflict. India, officially the Republic of India (भारत गणराज्य inc-Latn Bhārat Gaṇarājya; see also other Indian languages) is a country Pakistan () officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located in South Asia, Southwest Asia, Middle East and Nepal (नेपाल) is a Landlocked country in South Asia.

Specifications

The weight of the gun itself varied based on the gear attached, but was generally between 25 and 30 pounds (11 and 13 kg), with a 40 to 50 pound (18 to 23 kg) tripod. The ammunition boxes for the 250 round ammunition belts weighed 22 pounds (10 kg) each. In addition, it required about 7. 5 imperial pints (4. The pint is an English unit of Volume or capacity in the imperial system and United States customary units. 3 L) of water in its evaporative cooling system to prevent overheating. Evaporative coolers (also called swamp, desert, or air coolers) are devices that cool air through the simple Evaporation of water The heat of the barrel boiled the water in the jacket surrounding it. The resulting steam was taken off by flexible tube to a condenser container—this had the dual benefits of avoiding giving away the gun's location, and also enabling re-use of the water, which was very important in arid environments.

Rimmed, centrefire Mk 7 .303 inch (7. 7 mm) cartridge from WWII.

In British service, the Vickers gun fired the standard .303 inch (7. 7 x 56 mm) cartridges used in the Lee Enfield rifle, which generally had to be hand-loaded into the cloth ammunition belts. The Lee-Enfield Bolt-action, magazine-fed Repeating rifle was the main firearm used by the military forces of the British Empire / Commonwealth A rifle is a Firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves ("rifling" cut into the barrel walls There was also a 0. 5 inch (12. 7 mm) calibre version used as an anti-aircraft weapon and various other calibres produced for foreign buyers. Some British tanks of the early Second World War were equipped with the 0. 5 inch (12. 7 mm) Vickers.

The gun was 3 feet 8 inches (1. 1 m) long and its cyclic rate of fire was between 450 and 600 rounds per minute. In practice, it was expected that 10,000 rounds would be fired per hour, and that the barrel would be changed every hour—a two-minute job for a trained team. Firing the Mark 8 cartridge, which had a streamlined bullet, it could be used against targets at a range of approximately 4,500 yards (4. 1 km).

Use

The Gun and its tripod were carried separately and were both heavy. The original design did not anticipate its being carried up jungle-covered mountains on men's backs, but such was the weapon's popularity, that men were generally content to man-pack it to all manner of difficult locations. The tripod would be set up to make a firm base, often dug into the ground a little and perhaps with the feet weighted down with sandbags. The water jacket would be filled with water around the barrel. The firing of the gun would make the barrel heat up, and conducted heat would then boil the water in the jacket, and steam would be carried away down a rubber pipe, to condense in a metal can. The condensed water could then be poured back into the jacket to top it up, but another function of the condenser tin was to hide the emissions of steam, that might give away the gun's position. This cooling system, though heavy, was very effective, and enabled the gun to keep firing far longer than air-cooled rival weapons.

The loader sat to the gunner's right, and fed in belts of cloth, into which had been placed the rounds. The weapon would draw in the belt, push each round out of the belt and into the breach, fire it, and then drop the brass cartridge out of the bottom, to gather in a pile of spent brass underneath the weapon, while the cloth belt would continue through to the left side and wind up on the ground.

One very unusual feature of the Vickers . 303 MMG (medium machine gun) was that it was often used to fire indirectly at targets, whereas other weapons of similar type would only be used for direct fire. This plunging fire was used to great effect against road junctions, trench systems, forming up points, and other locations that might be observed by a forward observer, or zeroed in at one time for future attacks, or guessed at by men using maps and experience. Sometimes a location might be zeroed in during the day, and then attacked at night, much to the surprise and confusion of the enemy. New Zealand units were especially fond of this use. A white disc would be set up on a pole near the MMG, and the gunner would aim at a mark on it, knowing that this corresponded to aiming at the distant target. There was a special back-sight with a tall extension on it for this purpose.

A British World War Two Vickers MMG platoon typically had one officer in command of four guns, in two sections of two, each with a crew and a small team of riflemen whose job was to protect the gun, and keep it supplied with ammunition.

Notes

^ Hogg, Ian V.; Batchelor, John (1976). The Vickers K gun known as the Vickers Gas Operated (VGO in British service was a rapid-firing Machine gun developed and manufactured for use in The Kjellman LMG was a Machinegun produced in Sweden It is notable in being one of the first fully automatic weapons ever conceived (if not produced and one of the first The Maschinengewehr Patent Schwarzlose M07/12 was a medium machine-gun, and was a standard issue firearm in the Austro-Hungarian army throughout World The Vickers.50 machine gun, also known as the 'Vickers.50' was basically the same as the. Ian V Hogg (1926 – March 7, 2002) was a notable British author of books on Firearms Artillery, Ammunition, and John Batchelor is an English artist and arguably the world's foremost technical illustrator particularly known for his clear and detailed illustrations of vehicles and Weapons & War Machines. London: Phoebus, p. 62. ISBN 0-7026-0008-3.
"The Vickers gun accompanied the BEF to France in 1914, and in the years that followed proved itself to be the most reliable weapon on the battlefield, some of its feats of endurance entering military mythology. The British Expeditionary Force ( BEF) was the British army sent to the Western Front in France and Belgium on the outbreak of Perhaps the most incredible was the action by the 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps at High Wood on August 24, 1916. High Wood is a small Forest near Bazentin le Petit in the Somme département of northern France which was the Events 49 BC - Julius Caesar 's General Gaius Scribonius Curio is defeated in the Second Battle of the Bagradas River This company had ten Vickers guns, and it was ordered to give sustained covering fire for 12 hours onto a selected area 2,000 yards away in order to prevent German troops forming up there for a counter-attack while a British attack was in progress. Two whole companies of infantrymen were allocated as carriers of ammunition, rations and water for the machine-gunners. Two men worked a belt-filling machine non-stop for 12 hours keeping up a supply of 250-round belts. One hundred new barrels were used up, and every drop of water in the neighbourhood, including the men’s drinking water and contents of the latrine buckets, went up in steam to keep the guns cool. A latrine (from Latin lavatrina a privy is a structure (usually small holding a single person for Defecation. And in that 12-hour period the ten guns fired a million rounds between them. One team fired 120,000 from one gun to win a five-franc prize offered to the highest-scoring gun. Origins The franc was originally a French Gold coin of 387 g minted in 1360 on the occasion of the release of King John II ("the good", held by the And at the end of that 12 hours every gun was working perfectly and not one gun had broken down during the whole period. It was this absolute foolproof reliability which endeared the Vickers to every British soldier who ever fired one. It never broke down; it just kept on firing and came back for more. And that was why the Mark 1 Vickers gun was to remain the standard medium machine-gun from 1912 to 1968. "

External links

Gallery of images

British Vickers gun team in action at the Battle of the Somme. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme Offensive, fought from July to November 1916 was among the largest battles of the First World War Both are wearing gasmasks	Rear view of Vickers gun team in action at the Battle of the Somme	Vickers machine-gun of the 1st Manchester Regiment in Malaya, 1941	British Vickers gunners in action in Holland during Operation Market Garden. A gas mask is a Mask worn over the face to protect the wearer from inhaling airborne Pollutants and Toxic materials The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located Holland is a region in the western part of the Netherlands. A maritime and economic power in the 17th century Holland today consists of the Dutch provinces of Operation Market Garden ( September 17, 1944 – September 25, 1944) was an Allied military operation fought in the Netherlands All are wearing the Mk III Turtle helmet
View of the breech of a Vickers gun showing brass feed ramp	Dorsal view of a Vickers gun showing fluted water-cooling tank