Northumbrian Gunner: Royal Armouries

Monday 25 May 2015

Royal Armouries - Machine Guns

Rapid fire weapons which could be characterised by the ability to provide multiple shots were in existence as early as 1580. The ability to achieve automatic loading and high rates of fire came in 1862 with the American Gatling Gun.

The Gatling gun consisted of multiple barrels on a cylinder which was rotated by hand which provided sequential firing and reloading. Although replaced by the machine gun, modern Gatling guns are able to combine automatic firing with multi-barrelled weapons.

The first automatic weapon which reloaded by the recoil power of the previous round fired was the Maxim gun invented by Sir Hiram Maxim in 1884.

In 1896 the Vickers Company acquired the Maxim Company and improved the design of the Maxim gun to produce the Vickers Machine Gun.

The British Army formally adopted the Vickers gun as its standard machine gun on 26 November 1912.

Vickers Machine Gun Mk III 1913

In 1911, US Army Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis invented the Lewis Gun. Lewis had difficulties persuading the US Army to adopt the gun, so he retired and moved to Belgium in 1913. He established the Armes Automatique Lewis company in Liège to facilitate commercial production of the gun. Lewis had been worked closely with the Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited (BSA), and in 1914 they purchased a licence to manufacture the Lewis machine gun utilising the British .303 round. In 1914, Lewis moved his Belgian factory to England.

The Lewis Gun was approved for service on the 15th October 1915.

Lewis Light Machine Gun Mk 1 1916

The Lewis Gun was adopted as a light machine gun and issued to infantry units. The Vickers machine guns were withdrawn from the infantry units, and grouped together of a newly formed Machine Gun Corps.

Machine Gun Corps

The Long, Long Trail: the British Army in the Great War

The Machine Gun Corps (MGC) was created by Royal Warrant on October 14 followed by an Army Order on 22 October 1915. The MGC would eventually consist of infantry Machine Gun Companies, cavalry Machine Gun Squadrons and Motor Machine Gun Batteries.

A depot and training centre was established at Belton Park in Grantham, Lincolnshire. A total of 170,500 officers and men served in the MGC, of which 62,049 were killed, wounded or missing. Seven members of the MGC were awarded the Victoria Cross.

The MGC was disbanded in 1922.