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The Lewis gun (or Lewis automatic machine gun or Lewis automatic rifle) is a First World War–era light machine gun. Designed privately in the United States though not adopted there, the design was finalised and mass-produced in the United Kingdom, [ 4 ] and widely used by troops of the British Empire during the war.
A Lewis gun on a Foster mounting (of the later, S.E.5 model) fitted to an Avro 504K Night Fighter. The Foster mounting was a device fitted to some fighter aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War. It was designed to enable a machine gun (in practice, a Lewis Gun) to fire over, rather than through the
Initially, the United States Army was not interested in his new gun, but after the British and French had bought more than 100,000 for use in the trenches in France, the US Army did purchase them. Lewis, already a wealthy man, declined the royalties —amounting to at least $1,200,000 ($35,557,320 in 2022 terms)—on guns made for the United ...
Seeing the potential of such a weapon, the British Army adopted the American-designed Lewis gun chambered in .303 British. The Lewis gun was the first true light machine gun that could in theory be operated by one man, though in practice the bulky ammo pans required an entire section of men to keep the gun operating. [40] The Lewis Gun was also ...
The modified Camel, known as the "TF.1" (trench fighter 1), flew on 15 February 1918. Two Lewis guns were fixed to fire downwards and forwards at an angle of 45 degrees and a third gun was mounted on the upper wing. The downward-firing guns proved to be of little use, being almost impossible to aim.
Lewis gun used in an anti aircraft role. The British officially adopted the Lewis machine gun in .303-inch calibre for Land and Aircraft use in October 1915. [27] Despite costing more than a Vickers gun to manufacture, £165 [22] against about £100 for the Vickers, [28] Lewis machine-guns were in high demand with the British military during ...
At 9 kilograms (20 lb), the gun was much lighter than the contemporary portable light machine guns of the period, such as the 12-kilogram (26 lb) Hotchkiss M1909 Benét–Mercié machine gun and the 13-kilogram (29 lb) Lewis gun. It was a selective fire weapon, either on automatic or semi-automatic mode.
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