Vickers Mk1

Description

Based on the Maxim machine gun (designed by Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1884), of which Vickers owned in 1986 when they bought the Maxim company in its entirety. The Vickers Mark 1 is of a much improved design, including a reduction in weight, a simplified action and far more practical tripod.

The weapon was highly effective in the sustained fire role by utilizing water as a cooling method, which was far more effective than air-cooled designs and allowed near continuous fire for as long the barrels water jacket was kept topped up. In fact there were many instances where in lieu of water (a commodity on the front) urine would be stored up and used on the Vickers in an emergency!

Eventually the barrels would have to be changed to avoid the rifling being stripped out as they heated up, this was rather time consuming, however as a number of Vickers were often used at once, it was possible to simply stagger barrel replacements to ensure a constant barrage of fire is laid down. In fact in 1916 one British Company of the Machine Gun Corps reported that they fired ten guns continuously for 12 hours, firing just short of 1 Million rounds of .303 without a single stoppage and only using 100 barrels (the average life of a barrel was 10,000 rounds).

The Vickers would see service with all Commonwealth forces from World War One to the 1960’s Aden Emergency and continued service with the Indian and Israeli forces until the mid 1970’s.