Lewis (7.7 mm)

Description

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General info

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Available ammunition

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Comparison with analogues

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Usage in battles

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Pros and cons

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Pros:

Cons:

History

The Lewis Gun is one of the most famous light machine guns of World War I. Invented by United States Army Colonel Issac Newton Lewis in 1911, the gun was rejected by the Army due to either political differences or unreliability. Retiring from the Army, Lewis left the United States and set up the Armes Automatique Lewis company in Belgium. He got his first order from the Belgian Army in 1913, and a year later, World War I led the British Birmingham Small Arms company to produce the guns under license. With its distinctive long barrel-shroud and pan drum magazine, the Lewis is unusual for using a clock-style spiral spring for the action instead of a coiled recoil spring.

The Lewis is also notable for being the first gun to be fired from an aircraft. On June 7th, 1912, a Wright Model B flyer was fitted with a Lewis and fired by Captain Charles Chandler. For both British and French aircraft, it was mounted in the gunners and observers position or to supplement the Vickers E. A lightweight, air-cooled, and high capacity design, the Lewis gun's only drawback was being open-bolt making synchronization to fire through a propeller arc a difficult task. For use on aircraft, the Lewis has the distinctive barrel shroud removed due to the lower temperatures found at altitude and a much larger 97-round pan drum magazine. The Vickers F.B.5. "Gunbus", the world's first purpose-built fighter aircraft, and later models of aircraft would resolve the synchronization issues by using a pusher configuration where there is no propeller to fire through. Examples include the Airco D.H. 2, Royal Aircraft Factory, F.E.2 and F.E.8. Other alternatives methods were used during World War I. Two early production models of the Bristol Scout C were fitted with Lewis guns mounted on the right side of the fuselage that fired outwards at a 30 degree angle. Another more common solution was to use the Foster mounting where the Lewis gun was placed on the top wing of the biplane such as on the Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 and the French Nieuport 11 Bebé and Nuieport 17 fighters. After World War I, the Lewis would continue to see use as an aircraft weapon for a few years in the Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm, but it would be phased for the Browning .303 or Vickers K. The Italians use the Lewis into World War II with their S.M.79 Sparverio bomber series and the Japanese used a licensed variant designated the Type 92.

Media

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See also

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• reference to the article about the variant of the cannon/machine gun;
• references to approximate analogues by other nations and research trees.

External links

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