The vickers machine gun or vickers gun is a name primarily used to refer to the water cooled 303 british 7 7 mm machine gun produced by vickers limited originally for the british army the machine gun typically required a six to eight man team to operate.
Water cooled machine gun ww1.
It has also been used by other nations it was a crew served belt fed water cooled machine gun that served alongside the much lighter air cooled browning m1919 it was used at the battalion level and often mounted on vehicles such as a jeep.
The m1917 browning machine gun is a heavy machine gun used by the united states armed forces in world war i world war ii and the korean war.
The m1917a1 became the us army s standard battalion level machine gun up until the middle of the 1950s to which it was then replaced by the m60 general purpose machine gun of 7 62mm caliber itself having origins in the fine german mg42 machine gun series.
The m1917a1 saw service in both world war 2 and the korean war.
A lightened air cooled version of the original water cooled rectangular pattern receiver mg 08 infantry automatic ordnance the lmg 08 was developed by the spandau arsenal as a rigidly mounted aircraft machine gun and went into production in 1915 in single gun mounts for use on the e i through the e iii production versions of the fokker.
Water cooled machine guns would still overheat relatively quickly sometimes within two minutes with the consequence that large supplies of water would need to be on hand in the heat of a battle and when these ran out it was not unknown for a machine gun crew to solve the problem by urinating into the jacket.
The maxim gun design was provided with water cooling giving it the ability to maintain its rate of fire for far longer than air cooled guns.
That canister is a healthy indication that the barrel of the machine gun in question is being cooled by water in the canister and that the water will soon be as hot as the barrel.
The machine gun of the great war made an already bloody war that much more bloodier setting the stage for the second world war to follow.
It was a common sight in world war i the image of a machine gun spewing bullets from a barrel protruding from what looks like a giant canister.
