The Lewis Gun - Product Information

Guns Magazine, March, 2000 by Robert Bruce

At the end of August 1914, a German observation plane became the first aircraft in history to be shot down. This was accomplished by a Lewis gun mounted on a British scout plane over Le Quesnoy, France. Later, Lewis guns loaded with incendiary bullets and mounted on the famous Sopwith Camel biplanes, helped bring down hydrogen-filled German Zeppelin dirigibles that had been terrorizing English cities.

Belgian Rattlesnake

The Germans weren't slow to note the implications of the light, portable machine gun. They bitterly dubbed the Lewis the "Belgian Rattlesnake" because of their enemy's habit of ambushing raiding parties with a sudden, furious hail of copper-jacketed venom. The highly practical Germans were quick to exploit every Lewis they could capture and included its care and feeding as an integral part of instruction of all new machine gunners.

Homecoming

American soldiers had first used .303 British caliber Lewis guns on the Mexican border in 1916. Then, bowing to public pressure built upon more than two years of combat success in Europe, Colonel Lewis' own army finally adopted the .30-'06 caliber Lewis Machine Gun Model 1917, manufactured by Savage Arms Co. of Utica, New York.

The Declining Years

Although the best of its kind until John Browning's soon-to-be-legendary "BAR" became available to American troops in 1917 and 1918, the Lewis was expensive to manufacture, heavy, somewhat awkward, and unnecessarily complicated. While production ceased at the end of World War I, enormous numbers of existing Lewis guns continued to serve.

They were still first-line weapons with many U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Army units in the early years of World War II. The British Army adopted the superlative Bren in the mid-1930s, but many Lewis guns remained in secondary roles and with reserve troops until 1945. Ironically, many British and American Lewis guns were in ground, sea, and air combat during World War II with Japanese models built under license after 1920.

Interestingly, the Germans in World War II revived the Lewis gun's unique bolt and gas piston/camming device as the heart of Rheinmetall's FG 42 paratroop machine rifle.

This adaptation traveled back to America in time for the Vietnam War in the form of the M60 machine gun -- which has only recently been rendered obsolete by the M240.

Real-World Performance

The color action photos presented here were taken at the Great War Association's trench war reenactment site near Shimpstown, Penn. There, World War I enthusiast Mike Knapp put his personal Lewis through its paces, ably assisted by fellow reenactor Steve Altemus.

The gun was a flawless performer, ingesting and firing British 1940s production .303 ammo without skipping a beat and without any adjustment needed in the clock spring or the gas port. Over 600 rounds were fired in various stances from prone to walking hip-fire and at one stage running a full 47 round pan with one long squeeze of the trigger.

Despite the theoretical value of walking fire, more tactically sound results are obtained by shooting from the prone, bipod-supported position, yielding maximum accuracy with minimum exposure. The gun's bipod gives a good account of itself in medium to long range shooting because it is rigidly mounted near the muzzle.