Perhaps it would be more accurate to call this weapon "thick black pipe". Well, it looks very similar. For its time (1910), this machine gun was a wonderful weapon, of course, far from ideal. But the "remarkability" of this weapon did not immediately win the hearts of the military. There was so much intrigue in the creation and promotion of this machine gun in the army of the world that it is time to write a historical novel on the history of this weapon.

At that time, the Automatic Arms Company in Ohio (AAC) bought the rights to automatic weapons created by the famous American gunsmith Samuel McClean. In this arms firm, Isaac Lewis worked as an adviser, who, without visible success, was engaged in the creation of a light machine gun. Isaac Lewis used McClean's technical solutions when finalizing an already created machine gun. According to other sources, McClean worked under the direct supervision of Isaac Lewis. Two years later, Lewis created a machine gun with a top-mounted disc magazine and the original air-cooled barrel. For the right to produce the Lewis machine gun, AAC gave him control over production, distribution and a controlling stake.

Automation worked on the principle of removal of powder gases from the bore. When fired, part of the gas came out through the transverse hole in the barrel and pressed on the piston. The piston, moving back, turned the gear of the spiral (as in a mechanical watch) spring with a special gear rack, winding it up. At the same time, a special mechanism rotated the store. Then the spring untwisted, sent the cartridge from the magazine into the chamber and another shot was fired.

The store, to increase the ammunition load, is made in two rows. Holds 47 rounds.

And why did this machine gun look like a thick black pipe?

The fact is, the biggest problem with machine guns chambered for a powerful rifle cartridge was overheating of the barrel. It is no coincidence that most machine guns of that time used water cooling. But these were not light machine guns at all! The weight of such a machine gun without water was approximately 30 kg, and sometimes all 50! Usually two people served such a colossus.

But the Lewis machine gun was equipped with an original barrel air cooling system to protect against overheating. So massive in appearance, the machine gun weighed only 12 kg with ammunition! An aluminum radiator with longitudinal plates was put on the barrel, a cylindrical metal casing of a special shape was put on top. From the breech of the barrel, the diameter of the pipe was made larger, and a small part of the “pipe” behind the muzzle was made of a smaller diameter. When fired, a rarefaction was created in the thin part of the pipe and a portion of the "outboard" air from the side of the breech breech, passing along the radiator plates, cooled the barrel. However, this did not help much, a burst of over 20 shots caused the barrel to overheat and the gas piston to jam. In addition, this "pipe" protected the details of the gas outlet mechanism from external mechanical damage. Folding bipods were attached to the same "pipe".

Each machine gun was accompanied by a leather bag with accessories - a tool for minor repairs and elimination of delays in the operation of the mechanism and spare parts (recoil spring and firing pin).

The trigger mechanism allowed only automatic firing. A disk of 47 rounds was shot in just six seconds, so machine gunners were taught to release their finger from the trigger at the count of "three", otherwise the barrel would overheat. Replacing a pre-loaded magazine took approximately 8 seconds. The sound of bursts of shots was like the chirping of a sewing machine or the sound of a rattlesnake "rattle", only very loud. Probably, it was for the characteristic sound in the First World War that the Lewis machine gun received the nickname "rattlesnake". By the way, the Belgians, whose army was the first to adopt this "infernal machine" called it an unpronounceable name, which in free translation meant: "a machine gun with which you can run."

The sights of the infantry version of the machine gun consisted of a folding rear sight and a fixed front sight at the very end of the thick part of the "pipe". The rear sight had two aiming slots, the lower one for firing at a distance of up to 600 yards (approximately 550 m) and the upper one for firing at a longer distance. Aviation and anti-aircraft versions of the machine gun were equipped with special wire spider sights.

Specifications

Weight, kg: - 11.8.

Length, mm: - 1283.

Barrel length, mm: - 666.

Machine gun-rifle ammunition:

English - .303 British (7.7 × 56 mm R);

American - .30-06 Sprinfield (7.62 × 63 mm);

Russian -7.62×54 mm R .

Rate of fire, shots / min: - 550.

muzzle velocity for cartridge.303 British, m/c: 747.

Maximum aiming range, m: 1830.

Store, ammo: 47 (infantry) or 97 (aviation).

A few shortcomings, such as the need for frequent lubrication and jamming of mechanisms after a long burst or when the mechanism is dirty, can be neglected, since almost all light machine guns of that time suffered from this.


The machine gun passed the factory tests "excellent" and was offered to the US Army Ordnance Department as a weapon for airplanes. This is where the real adventure began. To demonstrate the capabilities of the machine gun, Lewis, like a true American, put on a real show. Without informing the military department, he asked a friend, the commander of the reconnaissance air corps, to provide an aircraft for demonstration. Permission has been granted.

Outside the window it has been drizzling for the third day already, and in rare rainless hours everything is covered in thick fog ... It’s just British weather in the yard ... The family is already sleeping, and I’m sitting in an armchair by the burning fireplace, drinking whiskey (very little) and reading “Notes on Sherlock Holmes” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle… It feels like I’m in the British Empire…
I don’t know about you, but the first association that pops into my mind when mentioning Britain is the good old British weapon. First of all, of course, this is a Lewis light machine gun ... That, in fact, I want to tell you about this machine gun today ...

The beginning of the formidable 20th century passed "under the sign" of the active development of automatic weapons, in particular machine guns. This type of weapons was enthusiastically introduced into the troops, the patent bureaus were literally inundated with various projects and ideas in the field of automatic weapons, often very far from the realities of life. However, some developments turned out to be very successful, were actively used in hostilities and took their place of honor on the pedestal of the history of small arms. A similar fate awaited the Lewis light machine gun ...


British-made Lewis light machine gun (Russian order). Right view.

At the appointed time, the biplane entered the range area at a height of 120 meters, and Stellingwerf opened fire on a 7.5-meter square target. The results of this and subsequent firing confirmed Lewis's claims - an average of 28 hits on the target from each cartridge disk.
Weapons specialists from Woolwich carried out extensive tests. Despite the problem with overheating of the barrel, the machine gun was generally rated positively and recommended for adoption. In the same year, the machine gun was officially adopted by the Belgian army.
Of great importance in the fate of the Lewis machine gun were trial aerial firing conducted by the British Royal Air Corps (RFC - Royal Flight Corps) and the Royal Naval Aviation Service (RNAS - Royal Navy Air Service). After them, it became obvious that the Lewis machine gun was one of the best candidates for the role of aviation weapons. However, the British War Office was cautious, and BSA had to start shipping already produced batches of machine guns to Belgium. Focusing on the prospect of a big war in Europe, the BSA management decided to expand production and ordered new machines in the USA.

Literally on the eve of the war, in June 1914, the War Office and the Admiralty of Great Britain, as if “waking up”, urgently ordered 10 Lewis machine guns, and two weeks later another 45. Immediately after the outbreak of hostilities, BSA received an order for 200 machine guns, the production of which was then carried out at a rate of 25 pieces per week. And after the Lewis light machine gun, which was in service with the Belgian army, brilliantly proved itself in battle (the Germans, faced with this formidable weapon, called it the “rattlesnake”), applications for new machine guns fell like a cornucopia.

It soon became clear that the BSA alone could not cope with the growing wave of orders, so the British, together with the Canadians, ordered 12,000 machine guns from the Savage Arms Company, a large American arms company. By the end of 1915, the new production workshops in Burningham were operating at full capacity and the production of Lewis machine guns there reached 300 pieces a week.
In 1915, Savage Arms of the United States refused to work on order and acquired a license to produce these machine guns at its production facilities. In the USA, the production of Lewis machine guns of caliber .30-06 was organized. Machine guns were mainly supplied by government order for the air force and marines, but a small amount also went to the civilian market (Lewis machine guns were liked by travelers going to the wild parts of the world - to Africa, Asia, Amazonia).

In the Russian Empire, Lewis machine guns appeared in 1917 (9600 American and 1800 British-made machine guns), when the tsarist government, concerned about the acute shortage of automatic weapons in the army, ordered their production from foreign contractors. It should be noted that part of the machine guns (according to some sources, about 1200 pieces) were made in 7.62 * 54 caliber - that is, under our standard rifle cartridge. In these machine guns, the number "300" was stamped on the butt plate with a percussive mark.

After the end of the World War, Lewis machine guns remained in service with the armies and participated in almost all armed conflicts until the mid-thirties. Licensed production of machine guns was organized in Japan and Holland, where they were in service. Many countries (Latvia, Estonia, Turkey, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, Australia, China, etc.) purchased these weapons.
The widespread use of "Lewis" during the First World War, along with the significant need for troops in such weapons, was also facilitated by the fact that the cost of one easel "Vickers" was equal to the costs spent on the manufacture of six "Lewis".

In the USSR, during the Great Patriotic War, the Lewises also returned to service - they were armed with militia forces and formed partisan detachments.

In addition, it is known that Lewis was one of the types of weapons carried by Kalev-class submarines (built for Estonia in the UK). After the accession of Estonia to the USSR, these submarines became part of the Baltic Fleet in 1940.

By the way, the Germans also armed their rear units with captured Lewises. They had Ying under the index MG100(h).

After the war, the use of Lewis in the Korean War and in the struggle of the Jewish people for the creation of the State of Israel is noted. And in Africa, Lewis was used in the former British colonies until the 70s of the twentieth century ...

Machine gun device:
Machine gun automation works on the principle of removal of powder gases.
The machine gun consists of the following main parts and mechanisms: a barrel with a radiator and a casing, a receiver with a lid and a feeder, a butt plate with a butt, a fire control handle with a trigger, a bolt, a bolt carrier, a reciprocating mainspring with a box, a magazine and a bipod.
In front of the casing there is a gas chamber regulator, which has two holes for venting gases with letter designations: “L” - a larger hole and “S” - a smaller hole. To move the regulator from one hole to another, it is rotated 180° using the regulator lever.

The barrel bore is locked by turning the bolt, the lugs of which are included in the transverse grooves of the receiver. The rotation of the bolt when locking is carried out by a curved groove on the bolt and the base of the bolt rack.
The percussion mechanism of the striker type is fixed on the bolt carrier. The trigger mechanism allows only automatic fire. The machine gun is fed with cartridges during firing from a disk magazine, which is driven by a feed mechanism. The lever-type feed mechanism is actuated by a protrusion of the bolt tail, which is included in the curved groove of the feed lever. There is a pawl on the feed lever, which, interacting with the transverse ribs of the magazine, rotates the magazine. Keeping the magazine from turning to the right and left is made by two levers, which are located on the cover of the receiver. Extraction of the cartridge case (cartridge) is carried out by two ejectors fixed in the bolt, and reflection is carried out by a lever-type reflector located in the receiver.

The machine gun has a fuse consisting of two strips with cutouts at both ends. The straps are placed on the right and left sides of the receiver. The cutouts are designed for setting the bolt carrier on the fuse in the forward and rear positions. To put the bolt on the fuse, the bar (left or right, depending on which side the charging handle is on) must be moved up.
The connection of the barrel with the receiver is threaded. Air barrel cooling. Cooling of the barrel is enhanced by the presence of a radiator and a casing with a pipe on the barrel. Frame sight, diopter; triangular shaped fly. For the convenience of shooting, the machine gun has a bipod. When using a machine gun as a light machine gun, it is attached to the swinging part of the machine and the butt plate with a butt is replaced in the machine gun with a butt plate with a handle.
The machine gun has a rack type sight. It is mounted on the cover of the receiver and has up to 20 divisions. The greatest range of aimed fire is 2000 yards, which corresponds to 1830 m
The machine gun comes with a set of accessories for disassembly for cleaning and the following spare parts: a bolt, a reflector, a reciprocating mainspring with a gear and a box, a pawl and two magazine locks, a feed lever and a tube for magazine equipment. Accessories and spare parts are placed in a special leather case.

And here is how Maxim Popenker describes the technical characteristics of the machine gun:
“The Lewis light machine gun uses gas-operated automatics with a gas piston located under the barrel with a long stroke. The barrel is locked by turning the bolt on four lugs located radially at the rear of the bolt. Shooting is carried out from an open shutter, only with automatic fire. The features of the machine gun include a spiral return spring acting on the gas piston rod through the gear and gear, as well as an aluminum radiator on the barrel, enclosed in a thin-walled metal casing. The radiator casing protrudes forward in front of the muzzle, so that when fired, air is drawn through the casing along the radiator, from the breech to the muzzle. Cartridges were fed from top-mounted disk magazines with a multi-layered (in 2 or 4 rows, capacity 47 and 97 rounds, respectively) arrangement of cartridges radially, with bullets to the axis of the disk. At the same time, the store did not have a supply spring - its rotation to supply the next cartridge to the chambering line was carried out using a special lever located on the machine gun and driven by the shutter. In the infantry version, the machine gun was equipped with a wooden butt and a removable bipod, sometimes a handle for carrying weapons was placed on the barrel casing. Japanese machine guns of the Lewis Type 92 system (manufactured under license) could additionally be used from special tripod machines.


Shop equipment and preparation for shooting.


Equipped magazine for 97 rounds.

The reliability of the weapon in any, incl. and unfavorable conditions deservedly earned him a reputation as one of the best light machine guns of that time, although the significant weight and laboriousness of maintenance caused certain difficulties for machine gunners. About this machine gun, it is quite possible to say that it was created in "its" time and honorably "served" its service in the armies of many countries of the world. The machine gun was widely used as an infantry machine gun, but its aviation versions received no less fame.

The First World War radically changed the views of the military on the methods of warfare. And if at the beginning of its "deaf" defense did not need highly mobile means of supporting infantry, then by the end of the war they became vital. One of them was light machine guns, among which the Lewis machine gun is considered by many experts to be the best.


History of creation

The technical concept of the new machine gun was developed by Samuel McLean, but only US Army officer Isaac Lewis managed to bring it to a real prototype. He also patented the idea, and the machine gun was named after him - the Lewis light machine gun. However, it did not immediately become “manual”, initially it was a water-cooled easel machine gun, but then Lewis applied the original design of forced air cooling of the barrel, which significantly reduced the weight of the machine gun and made it possible to make it manual (by the way, this system is nowhere else, except for the Russian machine gun "Pecheneg" was not used). The production of weapons was established at the BSA (Birmingham Small Arms) factories in the United Kingdom. The first army to adopt the Lewis machine gun was the Belgian Army (1913). She was the first to test it in battle.

The machine gun turned out to be very successful, especially in comparison with the weapons of the same type of that time, and was soon adopted by many armies of the world. Moreover, not only its infantry version, but also an aviation modification has become widespread. The latter was distinguished by the absence of a cooling system and a larger cartridge disc. In the linear parts of the armies, the Lewis machine gun served until the beginning of the next big war, in which it was also used, but already in small quantities. Production was completely stopped in 1942.

Machine gun design

The Lewis machine gun operates by removing powder gases. The barrel is locked by turning the bolt, which with its lugs enters the grooves machined on the steel box. The rotation itself is carried out due to the curved groove on the bolt and the base of the bolt carrier. Only automatic fire is allowed from a machine gun. Shooting starts with an open bolt, which negatively affects the accuracy of the weapon. Ammunition comes from the original disk, the cartridges in which are arranged in several layers.

Depending on the capacity of the magazine, these layers can be two (47 rounds) or four (97 rounds). There is no supply spring in the store, which radically distinguishes it from other systems. The supply of cartridges occurs due to the rotation of the disk, in which it is driven by automatic machine guns. The rate of fire can be adjusted with a tap on the gas chamber. Reciprocating mainspring - drum type, which allows you to adjust it with a special key.

Machine gun characteristics

The Lewis machine gun fires 7.62 mm rounds at a muzzle velocity of 747 meters per second and a rate of fire of 550 rounds per minute. The effective firing range is 1800 meters. Weight with a disc filled with cartridges, 17.8 kg.

role model

The quality of the new machine gun was appreciated not only by the Entente countries, but also by their opponents. German soldiers nicknamed the Lewis machine gun "rattlesnake". He received this nickname for his high mobility, stealth and characteristic "voice". The Germans converted the captured machine guns under the Mauser cartridge and actively used them. It must be assumed that the experience of getting to know this weapon prompted German designers to create their own version, which we know as the best German machine gun MG-42.









The American Isaac Lewis developed his light machine gun around 1910, based on an earlier machine gun design by Dr. Samuel McLean. The machine gun was proposed by the designer for arming the American army, but in response there was a harsh refusal (caused by an old personal conflict between the inventor and General Crozier, then head of the US Army weapons department). As a result, Lewis directed his steps to Europe, to Belgium, where in 1912 he founded the company Armes Automatiques Lewis SA to sell his offspring. Since the company did not have its own production facilities, an order for the production of the first experimental batch of Lewis machine guns was placed with the British company Birmingham Small Arms (BSA) in 1913. Shortly before the start of the First World War, Lewis machine guns were adopted by the Belgian army, and after the outbreak of the war, they began to enter service with the British army and the royal air force. In addition, these machine guns were widely exported, including to Tsarist Russia. In the United States, the production of Lewis machine guns caliber .30-06 in the interests of mainly the emerging air force and marines was deployed by Savage arms. In the twenties and thirties, Lewis machine guns were quite widely used in the aviation of various countries, while the barrel shroud and radiator were usually removed from them. During the Second World War, a significant number of British Lewis were withdrawn from reserves and used to arm territorial defense units and for air defense of small commercial transport vessels.

The Lewis light machine gun uses gas-operated automatics with a gas piston located under the barrel with a long stroke. The barrel is locked by turning the bolt on four lugs located radially at the rear of the bolt. Shooting is carried out from an open shutter, only with automatic fire. The features of the machine gun include a spiral return spring acting on the gas piston rod through the gear and gear, as well as an aluminum radiator on the barrel, enclosed in a thin-walled metal casing. The radiator casing protrudes forward in front of the muzzle, so that when fired, air is drawn through the casing along the radiator, from the breech to the muzzle. Cartridges were fed from top-mounted disk magazines with a multi-layered (in 2 or 4 rows, capacity 47 and 97 rounds, respectively) arrangement of cartridges radially, with bullets to the axis of the disk. At the same time, the store did not have a supply spring - its rotation to supply the next cartridge to the chambering line was carried out using a special lever located on the machine gun and driven by the shutter. In the infantry version, the machine gun was equipped with a wooden butt and a removable bipod, sometimes a handle for carrying weapons was placed on the barrel casing. Japanese Type 92 Lewis machine guns (manufactured under license) could additionally be used from special tripod machines.