THE LEWIS SUPER MACHINE GUN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3251, 5 July 1916, Page 71

THE LEWIS SUPER MACHINE GUN.

■ OUR WONDERFUL NEW WAR WEAPON. Unlike any other engine of war, the machine gun, ever since it was first invented (a good many years ago), has always held as fascinating an interest for the civilian as it has for the soldier —• so much so, indeed, that there are comparatively few civilians who do not know that it is a weapon designed to fire rifle bullets very quickly; that the principle on which it is worked is that the slight gas explosion produced by the firing of one bullet—the recoil, as it is termed—automatically fits the next bullet into the breech and fires that, too; and that this process' can be kept up indefinitely at an extraordinary rate of speed. For instance, the Maxim machine gun, the only kind of machine gun with which the British army was equipped until recently, can fire about 400 rounds a minute —“some” speed, certainly!—‘especially when contrasted with the limit of 15 rounds posable with the ordinary rifle But, if 400 rounds a minute may be regarded as an extraordinarily rapid rate of fire, as what may the achievement of the Lewis, the super machine gun which we have taken into use since the war began, be regarded? It can fire 800 rounds a minute, and, at a pinch, 900! Compared with the Lewis, the Maxim machine gun—and, in fact, any other type of machine gun in use in any army in the world —is, from a speed standpoint alone, hopelessly outclassed.

Why the Lewis is the Super Gun. — However, it is not merely because of its overwhelming speed superiority that we have termed the Lewis gun " the super machine gun." It is because it excels so .vastly, and in so many respects, over every other kind of automatic machine gun that has ever been invented that we have so described it. Since the Lewis gun has come into practical being all other automatic guns have automatically become " back numbers indeed."

To begin with, it is of a lightness hitherto undreamt of in connection with machine guns ; it weighs only and can be carried easily by one man. One man also can work it without difficulty, but, to obtain the maximum fire speed, two men are desirable —one to work it and the other to feed in the ammunition.

As only two men at the very outside are really needed for the gun, it is not difficult to conjure up what tremendous possibilities it possesses as an engine of war. Why, one regiment, armed throughout with Lewises, could absolutely annihilate a couple of army corps armed only with ordinary rifles! Before the outbreak of the present conflict each of our infantry and cavalry regiments was equipped with only two Maxim guns. And two Maxims was about the maximum that could be conveniently handled: for either mules or horses were needed for transporting them—as each Maxim, with its tripod stand, weighed no less than a hundredweight.—and a small section of men had to be specially employed in connection with the working of them, a section consisting of one officer, two non-commissioned officers, and 12 men.

Half a Million Rounds a Minute. — But, by virtue of a Lewis's extraordinary portability, and the fact that only one or two men* are required to manipulate it, the eventual possibility of sending a battalion of. pay, -1000 strong into action armed with 500 such weapons—a firing capacity of nearly half a milion rounds a minute that would be—is no wildly _ improbable one. To make the possibility a practicability, though, the problem of keeping up the "supply of ammunition on such a tremendous scale would first have to be solved.

However, if the idea of 500 Lewises to each batalioir is a bit too ambitious to each battalion is a bit too ambitious to such guns in a battalion is by no means a chimerical notion. Units so armed would: assuredlv work wholesale havoc in the ranks of any enemy to which they were opposed. Besides the great advantages of speed and portability' to which we have referred, the Lewis gun possesses the supremely important merit of being aircooled. As possibly some of our readers mav not be sufficiently well versed in gunnery matters to appreciate exactly the value of this, we may explain that whenever a number of bullets have been fired: rapidly through a rifle the barrel becomes red hot, and even if the heat does not compel the man to stop firing for a few minutes to allow the barrel to cool, the accuracy of the rifle's aim is very considerably interfered with by it. This heating is, of course, intensified considerably in the case of a machine gun barrel, becaiise of the tremendous rapidity of the rate of fire, and must be continually counteracted, or tlfe weapon would become utterly useless in no time—it would, in fact, probably exp n ode.

With the Maxim the counteracting system was water, the water being enclosed in a steel jacket that fitted round the barrel of the gun, and was capable of holding seven ami a-half pints. But the water evaporated at the rate of one and ahalf pints to every thousand rounds fired, and (he question of replenishing it always Created a big difficulty. Where water was unobtainable-—for instance, in the middle of a desert —the Maxim was of necessity put out of action

Keeping the Lewis Cool. —

By the inventor's clever idea of catching a portion of the powder gases thatescape from a bullet as it leaves the barrel of the weapon, and making such gases, with the aid of mechanical arrangements, suck back air into the specially-contrived jacket in which the barrel is encased, the Lewis mm, no matter what the rate of fire may be, is kept remarkably cool —and, of couvse, the worry of water-replenishing is thereby dissipated. The magazine of the gun is a revolving drum affair, .and it does not matter in what position the gun may be, right side ui), upside down, sideways, the muzzle pointing at an angle of 5, 45, 95, 105, or 155 degrees, the magazine works just the same. And because the gun can thus be fired hi any position and at am angle, and becau o of its extreme lightness and speed and accuracy, it is, above all its many recommendations, the idea! weapon for use in an aeroplane. Already in this war our airmen have achieved miraculous results with it. as .the Germans could testify if they only had the pluck to acknowledge the number of their aeroplanes that have been brought down by it. In concluding our remarks about the gun we may say that in appearance it is very much like an ordinary riile that ha* been fattened up greatly. Indeed, it is so much like an ordinary riile that it can be fired from the shoulder just as if it were one. True, not with quite the fame degree of comfort, but certainly with no great degree of discomfort. Ordinarily, however, it may be rested on a small tripod when it is being fired, or, if occasion arises, merely on a sandbag, while in an aeroplane it needs only to be slightly secured by a special clip'to otie of the stays to be usable safely, accurately, and conveniently in all circumstances. Such is the marvellous adaptability of the Lewis gun I —the super machine 'gun, the weapon undoubtedly destined to eventually send all its predecessors—the Colt, the Hotchkiss, the Vickers, etc.— to the scrap-heap. The Inventor —Colonel Lewis. Now, for a few words about the inventor. First of all, he is, like the famous Sir Hiram Maxim, an American. And next he is, or, rather, -was, a distinguished soldier in the United States army — Co'onel I. N. Lewis, of the Coast Artillery. After 35 years' service—including active operations in the Spanish-American war. — during which time he presented the American military authorities with innumerable big gun and other war inventions of his, he retired from the active Lst because of ill-health. At the time of his retirement—only about three years ago —he had perfected his machine 'gun, and patriotically offered it to his own Government first—for absolutely nothing. But, even in the land of Stars and .Stripes, the country of cuteness," it seems that there are fools in high 'places; for, to cut a long story short,' the American War Office, despite Colonel Lewis's previous brilliant inventions record, refused oven to look at the gun—for which we ought to feel much obliged! Thereupon Colonel Lewd:-, hied himself to Europe, and, of all places, to Belgium. In that gallant little country he found friendly sympathy with his 'idea. Soon he succeeded in creating a company to finance it, and the gun was placed upon the market. . Several foreign Governments gave the weapon a trial test, but none was smart enough to snap it up immediately. How- the Germans Nearly Got the Invention.— The Germans, though, did not give it a public test. Instead, with ' usual cunning, they endeavoured to get the. control of the little Belgian company—and thereby the gun—completely into their own hands by surreptitiously buying up as many of the company's shares as they could. But as soon as Colonel Lewis found out their little game, he scotched it promptly by a counter financial move, and then paid a living visit to England, and laid the invention before the famous Birmingham Small Arms Company, who at once arranged a contract whereby they obtained the sole manufacturing rights for the whole of Europe. Thus the first claim on the gun was secured by Britain, though it was within an ace of be.in<r secured by Germanv. Had the Birmingham Small Arms Company not backed the weapon it is absolutely certain the German army would by now have been completely equipped with it. As it is, Britain has "beaten the field." As soon as the Birmingham Small Arms Company took -the weapon under their wing they were not long in impressing its merit? upon the "powers that be" at the War Office, and, as a result, a few months before the outbreak of war the gun was submitted to an exhaustive series of official military tests. Out, of those tests it came with flying colours, and, when the war commenced, the authorities promptly placed a large order with the Birmingham firm. And that order is. we may say, very wisely being repeated constantly ; the weapon is, in fact, being turned out at various factories throughout the country as rapidly as it is humanly possible. Colonel Lewis's T: ; !e and Pleasure.— Naturally, Colonel Lewis—who is in England and in close contact •all the time with the production of the weapon—is highly pleased with the phenomenal success of the gun, and. equally naturally, he also derives thercbv a certain grim amusement from the reflection that his own countrymen wore so lacking in foresight as to reject such a ciipcrbly splendid engine of war when he offered it to them - free. But of all the tributes to his gun Colonel Lewis is proudest of the verdict of the soldiers who actually work the weapon in action. They, one and. all, absolutely swear by it.