To: marcos who wrote (3118 ) 9/24/2002 7:20:48 AM From: E. Charters Respond to La Vicker 303 was Britain's answer to the Maxim automatic rifle field piece. It was made cheap for the brit war effort. As a matter of fact the clever brit socialist government got people to complain about Vickers profiteering during the war (how the hell would they know?) and they had to slash the price of the gun by half. The Vickers was water cooled and had to have water carriers, and expensive alcohol in the winter, but was very reliable and could fire for 24 hours at a time, so it outdid the Maxim or later Browning as an area denial weapon, despite its slower fire rate and unsuitability as both an air mounted weapon and an anti-aircraft weapon. It in fact performed in both those roles as well as the Lewis which was the closest thing to a man portable weapon in WWI at 22 kilograms. The Lewis actually had lots of success stories in the trenches despite its tendency to jam because it could be moved around quickly compared to the Maxim or Vickers. It could be manned by two to three men carrying drums and was often mounted on aircraft. I even saw a lewis mounted on a Cessna on the wings!
