Landships II

Not sure about the boxes, unlike any i've ever seen for WW1 Lewis'

Lewis magazine boxes - I wonder if those were used in aircraft? The two-tier (97-round) magazine and the open bottom of the magazine required careful stowage, according to these guys:

http://thevintageaviator.co.nz/projects/reproduction-guns/lewis-gun

who still use the things, apparently (as well as 1:1 replicas - some good detail photos on that page).

In late WW 2 use by the Japanese (using the type 92 gun, very similar to the Lewis Mk 3 I think), I heard a Japanese observer state that he carried 6 96-round magazines on one of his his missions - and went through the whole lot holding off half a squadron of Corsairs some time in the final few months of the Pacific war (well, he was a surviving kamikaze, that had to have some sort of a story attached to it). Some type of stowage would be necessary with more than one magazine, the boxes would make sense. Incidentally, he stated his face was badly 'banged up' by his own shell-casings, firing to the sides and rear of whatever 2-seater light bomber he was in. Speed would have been much greater than any WW 1 type (and slipstream up-scaled accordingly) but an interesting piece of detail.

Anyway, those boxes may be out of place but there is a possible explanation for their existence.

Steve

Yes, it fascinated me too Kieffer - my enjoyment only slightly tempered by the sickening realisation that our neighbours across the ditch are armed with machine guns, some of them real.  Still - Aukland to Perth is about as far as London to New York so I guess we'd have plenty of warning if they set out to beat us up in their WW 1 replica biplanes

I should have mentioned that Japanese "type 92" Lewis variant or copy was the naval-naval aviation type 92 (and, like the WW 1 Lewis's, apparently came in full shroud, no shroud, small shroud variations), not to be confused with the totally different Japanese army type 92.  Their lack of army-navy standardisation was apparently infamous and persisted through to the end of WW2.

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Wednesday 29th of September 2010 07:42:09 AM