Vickers machine gun

Vickers Medium Machine Gun
A typical Vickers machine gun crew in action
Type	Medium machine gun
Place of origin	United Kingdom
Service history
In service	1912–1968
Used by	See Users
Wars	World War I Chaco War World War II Indo-Pakistan War of 1947 1948 Arab–Israeli War Korean War The Troubles Congo Crisis South African Border War
Production history
Designed	1912
Manufacturer	Vickers
Produced	1912–1968
Specifications
Weight	33–51 lb (15–23 kg) all-up
Length	3 ft 8 in (1.12 m)
Barrel length	28 in (720 mm)
Crew	three man crew
Cartridge	.303 British
Action	recoil with gas boost
Rate of fire	450 to 500 round/min
Muzzle velocity	2440 ft/s (744 m/s)
Effective firing range	2,187 yd (2,000 m)
Maximum firing range	4,500 yd (4,100 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 British (7.7 mm) machine gun produced by Vickers Limited, originally for the British Army. The machine gun typically required a six to eight-man team to operate: one to fire, one to feed the ammunition, the rest to help carry the weapon, its ammunition and spare parts.^[1] It served from before the First World War until the 1960s, with air-cooled versions of it serving on World War I aircraft of many of the Allied air forces’ fighters.

The weapon 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 British Army's 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns continuously for twelve hours. Using 100 new barrels, they fired a million rounds without a single failure. “It was this absolute foolproof reliability which endeared the Vickers to every British soldier who ever fired one.”^[2]

History

The Vickers machine gun was based on the successful Maxim gun of the late 19th century. After purchasing the Maxim company outright in 1896, Vickers took the design of the Maxim gun and improved it, reducing its weight by lightening and simplifying the action and substituting components made with high strength alloys. A muzzle booster was also added.

The British Army formally adopted the Vickers gun as its standard machine gun on 26 November 1912, using it alongside their Maxims. 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. Vickers was, in fact, threatened with prosecution for war profiteering, due to the exorbitant price it was demanding for each gun. As a result, the price was slashed. 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 were redefined as heavy machine guns, withdrawn from infantry units, and grouped in the hands of the new Machine Gun Corps (when heavier 0.5 in/12.7 mm calibre machine guns appeared, the tripod-mounted, rifle-calibre machine guns like the Vickers became medium machine guns). After the First World 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 the Vickers gun; one of the contenders was the 7.92 mm (.312 in) Besa machine gun (a Czech design), which eventually became the British Army's standard tank-mounted machine gun. However, the Vickers remained in service with the British Army until 30 March 1968. Its last operational use was in the Radfan during the Aden Emergency. Its successor in UK service is the L7 GPMG.

Use in aircraft

The cockpit of a Bristol Scout biplane in 1916, showing a Vickers machine gun synchronised to fire through the propeller by an early Vickers-Challenger interrupter gear.

In 1913, a Vickers machine gun was mounted on the experimental Vickers E.F.B.1 biplane, which was probably the world's first purpose-built combat aeroplane. However, by the time the production version, the Vickers F.B.5, had entered service the following year, the armament had been changed to a Lewis gun.^[3]

During World War I, the Vickers gun became a standard weapon on British and French military aircraft, especially after 1916. Although heavier than the Lewis, its closed bolt firing cycle made it much easier to synchronize to allow it to fire through aircraft propellers. The belt feed was enclosed right up to the gun's feed-way to inhibit effects from wind. Steel disintegrating-link ammunition belts were perfected in the UK by Prideaux in mid-war and became standard for aircraft guns thereafter.^[4] The famous Sopwith Camel and the SPAD XIII types used twin synchronized Vickers, as did most British and French fighters between 1918 and the mid-1930s. In the air, the weighty water cooling system was redundant, but because the weapon relied on barrel recoil, the (empty) water-holding barrel jacket or casing needed to be retained. Several sets of louvred slots were cut into the barrel jacket to aid air cooling.

As the machine gun armament of fighter aircraft moved from the fuselage to the wings in the years before the Second World War, the Vickers, was generally replaced by the faster-firing Browning Model 1919 using metal-linked cartridges. The Gloster Gladiator was the last RAF fighter to be armed with them, although they were later replaced by Brownings.^[5] The Fairey Swordfish continued to be fitted with the weapon until production ended in August 1944.^[6]

Several British bombers and attack aircraft of the Second World War mounted the Vickers K machine gun or VGO, a completely different design.

Variants

The larger calibre (half-inch) version of the Vickers was used on armoured fighting vehicles and naval vessels.

The Gun, Machine, Vickers, .5-inch, Mk. II was used in tanks, the earlier Mark I having been the development model. This entered service in 1933 and was obsolete in 1944. Firing either single shot or automatic it had a pistol type trigger grip rather than the spades of the 0.303 in (7.7 mm) cartridge.

The Gun, Machine, Vickers, .5-inch, Mk. III was used as an anti-aircraft gun on British ships.^[7] This variation was typically four guns mounted on a 360° rotating and (+80° to −10°) elevating housing. The belts were rolled into a spiral and placed in hoppers beside each gun. The heavy plain bullet weighed 1.3 oz (37 g) and was good for 1,500 yd (1,400 m) range. Maximum rate of fire for the Mark III was about 700 rpm from a 200-round belt carried in a drum. They were fitted from the 1920s onwards, but in practical terms, proved of little use. During the Second World War, the naval 0.5 in (12.7 mm) version was also mounted on power-operated turrets in smaller watercraft, such as Motor Gun Boats and Motor Torpedo Boats.

The Mark IV and V guns were improvements on the Mark II. Intended for British light tanks, some were used during the war on mounts on trucks by the LRDG in the North Africa Campaign.^[7]

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 country and served as a base for many other weapons. For example:

• 6.5×52mm Mannlicher-Carcano
• 6.5×50mmSR Arisaka
• 6.5×53.5mm R Dutch
• 7×57mm Mauser
• 7.5×55mm Swiss
• 7.62×51mm NATO
• .30-06 Springfield
• 7.62×54mmR
• 7.65×53mm Argentine
• 8mm Lebel

The Vickers MG remains in service with the Indian, Pakistani, and Nepalese armed forces, as a reserve weapon, intended for emergency use in the event of a major conflict.

Colt-Vickers M1915

By the early 1900s, the U.S. military had a mixed collection of automatic machine guns in use that included the M1895 "potato digger", 287 M1904 Maxims, 670 M1909 Benét-Mercié guns, and 353 Lewis machine guns. In 1913, the U.S. began to search for a superior automatic weapon. One of the weapons considered was the British Vickers machine gun.

The Board of Ordnance & Fortifications held a meeting on March 15, 1913 to consider the adoption of a new type of machine gun… The Board convened for the competitive test of automatic machine guns at Springfield Armory on September 15, 1913. Seven makes of automatic machine guns were considered and tried out. The Lewis gun during the endurance test had 206 jams and malfunctions, 35 broken parts, 15 parts not broken but requiring replacement as against respectively 23, 0, 0, for the Vickers gun and 59, 7, 0 for the Automatic Machine Rifle .30, Model of 1909, Benét-Mercié. The Board is of the opinion that, with the exception of the Vickers gun, none of the other guns submitted showed sufficiently marked superiority for the military service, in comparison with the service Automatic Machine Rifle to warrant further consideration of them in the field test. The Board is of the unanimous opinion that the Vickers rifle caliber gun, light model, stood the most satisfactory test. As to the merits of the Vickers gun there is no question – it stood in a class by itself. Not a single part was broken nor replaced. Nor was there a jam worthy of the name during the entire series of tests. A better performance could not be desired.

—Captain John S. Butler, Office of the Chief of Ordnance^[8]

Field tests were conducted of the Vickers in 1914, and the gun was unanimously approved by the Board for the Army under the designation Vickers Machine Gun Model of 1915, Caliber .30, Water-Cooled. 125 guns were ordered from Colt's Manufacturing Company in 1915, with an additional 4,000 ordered the next year, all chambered for .30-06. Design complexities, design modifications, and focus on producing previously ordered weapons meant that when the U.S. entered World War I in April 1917, Colt had not completed manufacture of a single M1915.^[8]

Production began in late 1917 with shipments to the Western Front in mid-1918. The first twelve divisions to reach France were given French Hotchkiss M1914 machine guns, and the next ten had M1915s. The next twelve divisions were to have Browning M1917 machine guns, but there was a shortage of parts. By August 1918, thirteen U.S. divisions were armed with the Colt-Vickers machine gun. 7,653 guns were issued during the war out of 12,125 produced in total. War damage losses reduced the number of M1915s in the U.S. inventory to about 8,000 total.^[8]

After World War I, the Colt-Vickers machine gun was kept in reserve until World War II. Several hundred were sent to the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines, which were all eventually lost to enemy action. 7,000 guns were sent to Britain under Lend-Lease to re-equip their forces after the Dunkirk evacuation, which depleted the weapon from the U.S. inventory before their entry into the war. Because the M1915 Colt-Vickers was not chambered for the standard British .303, it was painted to differentiate it and relegated to Home Guard use. After the end of the war, the British had enough domestic Vickers guns to retire the M1915 from the Home Guard, after which they were disposed of.^[8]

Specifications

The weight of the gun itself varied based on the gear attached, but was generally 25 to 30 pounds (11 to 14 kg) with a 40-to-50-pound (18 to 23 kg) tripod. The ammunition boxes for the 250-round ammunition belts weighed 22 pounds (10.0 kg) each. In addition, it required about 7.5 imperial pints (4.3 l) of water in its evaporative cooling system to prevent overheating. 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 cartridge from World War II.

In British service, the Vickers gun fired the standard .303 inch cartridges used in the Lee Enfield rifle, which generally had to be hand-loaded into the cloth ammunition belts. There was also a 0.5 in calibre version used as an anti-aircraft weapon and various other calibres produced for foreign buyers.

The gun was 3 feet 8 inches (112 cm) 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 boat tailed bullet, it could be used against targets at a range of approximately 4,500 yards (4,100 m).

Use

The gun and its tripod were carried separately and both were 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 evaporative cooling system, though heavy, was very effective and enabled the gun to keep firing far longer than air-cooled rival weapons. If water was unavailable, soldiers were known to resort to using their urine.^[9] It was sometimes claimed that crews would fire off a few rounds simply to heat their gun's cooling water to make tea, despite the resulting brew tasting of machine-oil.^[10]

The loader sat to the gunner's right, and fed in belts of cloth, into which the rounds had been placed. The weapon would draw in the belt, pull each round out of the belt and into the breech, 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.

Clinometer for Vickers .303 machine gun

The Vickers was used for indirect fire against enemy positions at ranges up to 4,500 yards (4,100 m). 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. The only similar weapon of the time to use indirect fire was the German MG 08, which had a separate attachment sight with range calculator.

A British, World War 2, 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.

Users

•  Albania
•  Australia
•  Canada
•  Ceylon
•  India
•  Pakistan
•  New Zealand
•  South Africa
•  Southern Rhodesia
•  China
•  Czechoslovakia (used four locally produced Mk 30s (modified Vickers guns) on the Avia B-534)
•  Bolivia
•  Egypt
•  France French air service (SPAD IX and XIII) during WWI.
•  Indonesia Used during Indonesian National Revolution.
•  Ireland
•  Italy Chambered in 6.5 mm for infantry and .303 for aircraft^[11]
•  Luxembourg
•  Mexico
•    Nepal
•  Paraguay
•  Philippines
•  Portugal Produced locally in 1929.
•  United Kingdom
•  United States Issued to the first U.S divisions sent to France in World War I due to the lack of American machine guns.
•  Netherlands

Gallery of images

• 

  British Vickers gun team in action at the Battle of the Somme. Both are wearing gas masks

• 

  Rear view of Vickers gun team in action at the Battle of the Somme

• 

  Vickers gun set up for anti-aircraft purposes during the First World War

• 

  Vickers machine-gun of the 1st Manchester Regiment in Malaya, 1941

• 

  British Vickers gunners in action in the Netherlands during Operation Market Garden. All are wearing the Mk III Turtle helmet

• 

  British Commandos on the outskirts of Wesel during Operation Plunder in 1945

• 

  View of the breech of a Vickers gun showing brass feed ramp

• 

  Dorsal view of a Vickers gun showing fluted water-cooling tank

• 

  An Australian soldier manning a Vickers gun during the Korean War

• 

  Vickers machine gun from Polish Army Museum's collection.

See also

• Vickers .50 machine gun

Weapons of comparable role, performance and era

• Vickers K machine gun
• M1917 Browning machine gun
• Maschinengewehr 08
• Maxim 1910
• Schwarzlose MG M.07/12
• Skoda M1909 machine gun
• Lewis gun

Notes

1. ↑ http://ww2armor.jexiste.fr/Files/Allies/Allies/4-Infos/UK/Guns/Light-Weapons.htm
2. ↑ Hogg, Ian V.; Batchelor, John (1976). Weapons & War Machines. London: Phoebus. p. 62. ISBN 0-7026-0008-3.  Cite uses deprecated parameters (help)
   “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. Perhaps the most incredible was the action by the 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps at High Wood on 24 August 1916. 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. 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. 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.”
3. ↑ Hugh Driver, The Birth of Military Aviation: Britain, 1903-1914, The Boydell Press 1997, ISBN 978-0-86193-234-4 (p.126)
4. ↑ "Metal Belt Links For WW 1 U.S. M1915 Vickers Aircraft Gun, Phosphate Finish". Retrieved 19 January 2014. 
5. ↑ Military History Encyclopedia on the Web: Weapons - Gloster Gladiator
6. ↑ Bishop, Chris, 2002, The Encyclopedia of Weapons of World War II Metrobooks ISBN 1-58663-762-2 (p. 403)
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 http://www.vickersmachinegun.org.uk/
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 U.S. Colt Vickers Model of 1915 - SAdefensejournal.com, 6 January 2012
9. ↑ "Vickers Mk.I machine gun". Royal Armouries. Retrieved September 26, 2012. 
10. ↑ Weeks, Alan (2009). Tea, rum & fags: sustaining Tommy, 1914-18. History Press. p. 19. ISBN 075245000X. 
11. ↑ Italian machine guns of WWI on cimetrincee.it

Further reading

• Anon, Vickers, Sons and Maxim Limited: Their Works and Manufactures. (Reprinted from 'Engineering') London (1898).

Plates showing the mechanism of the forerunner of the Vickers gun, the Vickers Maxim gun as well as numerous plates of the factories in which they and other arms were made.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vickers machine gun.

• British Vickers Gun tactics during the Great War
• Vickers machine gun
• Spartacus Educational - Vickers machine gun