Meine Herren !
"... I saw the pilot hammering onto his machine guns...."
The watercooled Vickers .303 Mg and the aircooled LMG 08/15 (L=leicht /light) are direct copies from Hiram Maxims
invention.
The ammo used was the Lee-Enfield cartridge 0.303/7,69mm and the Mauser K98 cartridge 7,92 mmm
The pressure on the gun lock was very high, some 45.000 to 55.000 pounds per square inch.
Production tolerances were tight.
Both machine guns were sensitive to ammunition quality, climate conditions , mechanical abrasion and failure of mechanical parts.
Compared to WW 2 machine guns the gun lock mechanism looks huge, a real block.
Often large mechanical parts have to endure more stress under very fast movement than smaller parts - likewise in a car engine
for example.
Though well made it was a matter of metallurgy that made them relatively huge, since Maxim still used a lot of expensive brass
parts on his first guns.
When you can't afford the material for mass production or new metals are not yet invented parts cannot be made smaller
having the same ability to endure that same stress.
The combat conditions to the Mg under flying conditions were different and the Maxim was not built for those conditions.
Different expansibilities of the metal parts due to climate conditions and temperature differences produced by the machine itself
are to be taken into account.
To fight icecold temperature the Sopwith Camel used a heating tube to the Vickers guns to keep them warm.
Oil: of course, the lubricating oil for weapons reacts to temperature differences, becoming stiff or loosing the lubricating effect to overheating.
especially long bursts caused the lubricant to evaporate resulting in malfunction.
Those effects made the system prone to jam.
It often occurs and is mentioned by the pilot's reports regularly.
The next "jammer" - a word close to the German word for lamentation = Jammern - and indeed it is a misery when in combat
your guns are jamming - was not the belt but ammo quality tolerance-wise.
Often the cartridge case was out of tolerance and caused jamming.
The next reason was a cartridge that broke apart and the tracer ammunition was prone to plug the barrel.
On the positive side the hammer position clearly indicated the cause of stoppage.
The hammer (this outside visible rapid moving device) made an arc of - 55° to + 55° , meaning a total of 110°.
Jamming caused a stop in 4 positions: #1 backwards #2 vertical # 3 full forward # 4 full forward downwards locking in;
# 1 and # 4: the pilot had to move the hammer total backwards to remove the bad case/cartridge
#2 : the pilot had to use a wooden/metal hammer to hammer the hammer into position #4
#2-stoppage caused by a broken cartridge meant that the next cartridge was moved into the remnants of the broken one
thus pluging the chamber or the barrel; this was not repairable by the pilot, only by the ground crew...
Indeed it is a outrageous thing to clear ones guns amidst a dog-fight....
The phosphorus tracer ammo:
In literature it is often exagerrated- that everyone from every angle was able to see tracer ammo; that is not true.
Normally you see it from behind or the pursued pilot when it comes flying along one's path.
Ballistic curve:
The ballistic curve of a tracer bullet was not the same as the real bullet then; it lost height faster than the normal round.
This often mislead while aiming at an adversary's crate.
Judging the reports it really wasn't just a matter of course to hit anything .
Especially two-seaters were even more dangerous to fight than single-seaters.
viele Grüße, Gunther
