Author: vickersmg

The equipment needed for a machine gun section in the 1930s was extensive and the 1931 Small Arms Training manual showed just how much was carried in the limbered wagons used at that time, soon to be replaced.

The only change for soldiers in British machine gun battalions was the use of cartridge carriers rather than basic pouches for the 1937 pattern equipment. These limited the ammunition they could carry to chargers for the Lee-Enfield.

Alongside them in that later role was the Vickers ‘K’ Gas-Operated guns that were developed in the 1930s as an aircraft observer’s gun, then used in the earliest of the Royal Air Force’s bombers, before the Browning .303 guns took over their role. They found their more recognisable home fitted to jeeps of the Special Air Service for the remainder of the war, with some limited use as a ground gun by Commandos and light anti-aircraft on some Armoured Fighting Vehicles. Their high rate of fire consumed ammunition at too great a rate for any other application.

With the Vickers machine gun’s reputation built during the war, other countries around the world took advantage of the large amount of government surplus and the arms industry flourished, particularly Vickers Limited – the company – and they became Vickers-Armstrongs in 1927, increasing their market share further. In doing so, they sold the Vickers machine gun and its derivatives globally. Examples of these countries include the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) where two ‘Class C’ guns – as the commercial land service guns were known – in 6.5mm were initially sent in 1921.