Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here to today at Marstar, up in Canada,
taking a look a number of very interesting firearms,
including this Mark III Vickers-Berthier light machine gun.
Now this is a fairly early design of light machine gun.
Actually it was around for a very long time before it was finally adopted.
This was first designed by a guy named Andre Berthier
who was a Frenchman, also responsible for the Berthier
series of carbines. He designed this after those carbines,
this was initially put together in, like, 1905
and went through a lot of design iterations.
In fact some of his early versions had some interesting kind of weird features like
a pressurised water cooling system so that you didn't have a big water jacket on the barrel,
but you did have water circulating across the barrel to cool it with a pressure system
so that you could use only a little bit of water and circulate it.
Anyway, some weird interesting features that obviously never got adopted
because they weren't really all that practical for serious combat use.
However it was tested by a number of countries, the early version of this probably...
Well, there was a more mainstream version that he came up with in 1908.
Ultimately the US military, the US Marine Corps, actually adopted and ordered a bunch of Berthier light machine guns
late in World War One, but the war ended before they were delivered and the order was cancelled.
After that Berthier had to go on trying to find another customer for his gun.
It was tested by a bunch of people, it was tested by the French,
as part of their development of the Châtellerault light machine gun, which would come in 1924.
And right about that same time, in fact in 1924, the Vickers company in England saw this
and they though it had some real potential, and so they purchased the manufacturing rights from Berthier.
And then they had the Vickers company (which was a quite large arms conglomerate at that point),
then they had the Vickers company acting as the marketing and advertising
company behind this design of light machine gun. They wanted it to have a light machine gun
counterpart, basically, for their Vickers heavy machine gun that they were marketing very successfully.
So, they started manufacturing these and ultimately they only sold them to a couple of places,
I want to say Bolivia, and I think Latvia purchased some, but ... small militaries, very small orders.
They finally got their chance in the late 1920s, early 1930s, when the British started experimenting
around and looking for a replacement for the Hotchkiss and Lewis light machine guns.
Now the Bren Gun would ultimately be adopted for this purpose, but
the Vickers-Berthier was actually a really serious contender in these trials.
In fact, early on in the trials ... it was the best gun in some of the early trials.
It was only when they ... finally went into endurance testing that the Czech guns,
the ZB-26, ZB-30 which would ultimately become the Bren,
only in the endurance trials did those guns catch up and overtake the Vickers-Berthier.
However, during this process there was also the British Army in India which had a lot of independence,
it had its own major factory at Ishapore
(for example the Indian Army would continue to use the SMLE, the Number 1 Mark III rifle, well after World War Two),
and they had some independence in what arms they wanted to choose,
and they got tired of what they saw as a trials process that was dragging on way too long.
They thought the Vickers-Berthier was just fine as it was, and so they ended up adopting it in 1933.
And they actually manufactured a pretty substantial number of these, they used them in World War Two,
they continued apparently to use them through, like, the late 1970s in some roles.
So, this has a lot of visual similarities to the ZB-26 and especially the Bren, because of its curved magazine.
These magazines are not interchangeable with the Bren, we'll take a closer look at that in a moment.
And there were a couple of patterns of these, so there was an early Mark I pattern that Vickers built
that had a couple of distinctive differences, it had fins on the barrel for cooling,
it had a conical muzzle flash hider instead of this kind of odd thing,
and most significantly, to me anyway, it had actually a wooden handguard under here,
very reminiscent of what the Châtellerault light machine gun has.
That was dropped, and a number of changes were made to simplify the manufacture of the gun.
Ultimately by the time the Indians adopted it, it was in its Mark III configuration, and that's what we have here.
So, why don't we go ahead and take this apart and I'll show you how it works on the inside.
And then tomorrow we will go out and do some shooting with it.
It's a little hard to read, but here are the markings on the top of the receiver.
This is a Mark III Vickers-Berthier, by the time the Indian Army adopted them that was the standard pattern.
And this one is dated 1942 production, and GRI indicates that it was manufactured in India.
So the Vickers company made some of these in England,
but the ones for the Indian Army were predominantly made at the Ishapore Rifle Factory.
Couple of controls of note here. This is our safety, but this is actually a push button.
You push in, and then you can rotate, and if we look at the other side you can see the markings.
So the upward position is automatic, and if I push in and rotate, I have 'R' for repetition,
and at the bottom, 'S' for safe. So that's the function of the safety selector.
We then have a couple of different dust covers, so everything up here is folded down and covered up.
And that is the transport sort of position. Now when you charge the charging handle,
that's going to pull back this ejection port cover, like so,
this is a non-reciprocating charging handle, so if you don't push it back forwards
the bolt will slam it forward the first time you fire, so you kinda wanna do that.
Now to get the magazine in, we have a little spring loaded tab here that I can pull forward,
and that releases my magazine latch which normally will sit under this little tab.
And then I pull this back again and I can pull up the magazine cover,
which snaps forward under a little bit of spring tension so it doesn't flop around too much.
Now you can actually load a magazine in the gun.
In order to make this a very multi-purpose sort of weapon, it was intended to be mountable on an anti-aircraft mount,
and so the mounting block for that is located here,
this is a mount that's actually very similar to what Vickers did for the Vickers heavy machine guns.
In this case you rotate it so this flat is facing downward,
and then you can pull it out,
and this will plug right into an aircraft pintle.
and then you push it in, and once you rotate it, it won't come out.
These were also designed with a socket in the butt-stock for a rear monopod,
so we have a little release button right here, and this allowed you to,
in combination with the bipod feet, kind of set up a pseudo-tripod for the gun.
These typically were elevation adjustable, screw it in or out to raise or lower the back of the gun,
and you can get a very precise position.
And lastly we have a carry handle located here in its stowed position. This has a release button,
so if you push ... it's locked in this position until you push the button, and then you can flip it up
into its carry position, and it will be locked there until you push the button again to release it and fold it down.
This has a rear sight kind of ... again similar to what Vickers did on the Vickers heavy machine gun.
Because, of course, these were designed and produced by the same company.
We have aperture sights, both here on the flip up position and right here on the battle sight.
So our flip up sight goes out to 2,000 yards, and you can just lift that up.
And then to adjust this, this is actually a squeeze button. It looks like a rotary knob,
but you actually push it in and you can then set this to whatever position you want for it.
And that gives you your aiming sight and your elevation.
Now these guns do have a detachable barrel, and so disassembly is going to begin by removing the barrel.
And there is a cool element to that, what we are actually going to do is take this and pull it backwards,
and because someone has put this cotter pin in, I am going to use this rag to pull it.
This thing is spring loaded, but when it it's in there it's hard to grab. So, we are going to then rotate this down,
and that allows the barrel to release, and it also disconnects the gas system.
Notice that, when I rotate this, I am actually camming the gas ... tube and bipod forward and backward.
So, in the downward position we have now broken the barrel out of the gas tube and it's free to rotate.
With the barrel loose like that and rotated out of position, I can then just pull it straight out.
We have a set of interrupted lugs similar to what you find on a Bren gun,
or many other light machine guns with quick change barrels.
That then leaves us with the receiver assembly to disassemble, and there is only one pin
that we need to deal with for that, and that's located right here in front of the trigger.
Pull that pin out, like so, it is captive so it's going to stay right there.
Once that's out then we can tip the whole pistol grip assembly and butt-stock assembly off of the gun.
When you get to this step make sure the bolt is all the way forward,
because the recoil spring is in the butt-stock and you want it decompressed.
Make sure the charging handle is all the way forward as well,
and then with this pin all the way out the back half of the gun just lifts right off.
Now we can use the charging handle to pop the bolt and operating rod out the back of the gun, like so.
And there we are: field stripped.
Inside we have a bolt and operating rod that are actually pretty reminiscent of the Bren, the ZB of course, the Châtellerault.
Lot of light machine guns use this operating system. So what happens is we have
the back half of the bolt cut out, the firing pin is right there, it is spring loaded.
And this tower on the operating rod is what actually fires the gun. So when this is fully in battery,
here, then that tower hits that spring loaded firing pin and fires it, like so.
What's also going on here is this surface is acting on these two little raceways, or cams,
and pushing the back of the bolt up, when the bolt is fully in battery.
That pushes this surface up into the locking shoulder in the top of the receiver, and that's what actually locks the bolt in place.
So while it's travelling it's in this configuration, and then at some point the face of the bolt hits the back of the barrel,
and then the operating rod starts to move forward under it, lifts it up here into battery, and then fires it.
Looking at the bolt itself we have a couple of things going on, we have an extractor right here on the right,
we have a cutaway for the ejector blade here on the left. We have this interesting spring loaded tab up on the top,
this is actually for feeding. So remember this has a top mounted magazine,
so your cartridges are going to be positioned up here.
That tab lifts up to grab the back of the ... lowest cartridge in the magazine, pushes it forward,
and then, once it starts to go into battery, it gets compressed down out of the way, once it's no longer necessary for feeding.
The locking shoulder is located right here in the receiver, in fact that's it right there.
on the other side it's connected here, and it is removable. So if you have headspace problems with the gun,
later in its production life or when you are manufacturing them and you need to set the headspace,
you can just swap out locking shoulders until you get one that is the exact
proper dimension to go with whatever bolt and receiver you have.
The Vickers-Berthier magazine is a curved 30 round mag.
That curve is made necessary by the taper and the rim of the .303 cartridge.
It's reminiscent of the Bren gun mag, but definitely not the same.
The easiest visual way to distinguish it are these two ribs on the sides of the magazine.
And those are there because you actually have tabs connected to the follower
that run in those two channels, right there.
Those two tabs operate this piece, which is the bolt hold open,
So this is what locks the gun open when you empty a magazine. So that all you have to do
is put a new mag in, and you can immediately start firing without having to charge the bolt.
There is a, I suspect, perennial question of whether these magazines are interchangeable with the Bren,
and the answer is they are totally not. While they both use the same cartridge,
the Vickers-Berthier has its hold open tabs here in these ribs, where the Bren has its hold open tab at the very back.
So if I line these two magazines up at the tab on the front, and then we look at the back,
the Bren gun [magazine] is over a quarter inch longer ... and there's no way that these are going to be interchangeable.
One other interesting design quirk here is the muzzle brake on this Mark III Vickers-Berthier,
because it's a really interesting kind of an unusual design. What we have here are ports
that are directed pretty much forward into this plate, and I believe the idea is gas goes into that plate,
hits the plate and pushes the barrel forward to help counteract recoil.
I don't know how well that worked. I'll tell you what, it is certainly a very easy gun to shoot.
It's a very pleasant gun to shoot. But how much that has to do with that rather unorthodox muzzle brake, I don't know.
You also have a kind of interesting front sight here protected just by four posts instead of a complete shield.
There are a couple quick elements I want to touch on that really on this gun remind me of the French Châtellerault.
And the French did test this in advance of designing the Châtellerault,
and so it would make sense that some elements would make it into that gun.
The magazine release is very similar, especially this magazine release stowage system.
The Châtellerault is actually even a little bit better, because it's quicker to release
when you want to actually use the gun. So that's very similar.
The French took the idea of this top cover and this side cover
(right there), and combined them into one, which is kind of a more efficient way to do it.
And then the pistol grip also handles very much like a Châtellerault, ... the Châtellerault looks weird and goofy,
with this sort of very small, almost comically small, pistol grip on it.
This is similar, it's slightly larger. And the way this was described is actually being basically a revolver grip.
And that kind of makes sense if you think about it from a 1920s perspective, that really is what you have there.
One last little element is I noticed on this particular gun there is a little bit of a gap right here,
and also on this side of the gun. And it doesn't make sense to me that they would deliberately do that,
but at the same time the pin lines up, everything fits and this gun shoots quite nicely.
So, I know that there was a Mark III and also a Mark IIIb, I have not handled a IIIb,
but my understanding is it has only very minor changes to the design, and my suspicion,
which I have absolutely no data to prove, is that this is actually a Mark IIIb butt-stock assembly,
and it fits on a regular Mark III receiver, but leaves this very short gap.
So I suspect with the IIIb they probably extended these surfaces
to improve the assembly or disassembly or the retention of the butt-stock.
So the Vickers-Berthier would serve with some distinction in World War Two with the Indian Army.
They served in Italy, they served in North Africa, and they were pretty good guns, they were well liked.
They would go on to serve in the Indian Army until apparently the late 1970s in various reserve roles,
ultimately being replaced with more modern guns, of course.
The one other place that you will see this gun have an influence is with what was called the Vickers Gas Operated,
or the Vickers Type K, which was the adapted aircraft version of this same basic mechanism.
To be used in an aircraft it was outfitted with a drum magazine, a top mounted, Bren style
kind of pan drum, and it had a much higher rate of fire, something like 950 rounds per minute.
I believe actually they started out at 1,050 and then later were modified to drop the rate of fire down to 900.
But aircraft guns need, of course, higher rates of fire because they have fleeting opportunities to make hits.
More famous than any of the use of those guns in aircraft (because that sort of flexible
mounted machine gun in what was probably a biplane most of the time,
was pretty much obsolete by the beginning of World War Two),
where those are better known is for use with the Long Range Desert Group and the SAS in North Africa,
where those guys were quite happy to scavenge decommissioned Vickers K,
or Vickers Gas Operated guns from aircraft, mount them on Jeeps and Chevy trucks
and go gallivanting about the desert blowing up German and Italian airfields.
So that's the same basic mechanism as this gun, just set up for a different role.
The bolt and the op rod were lightened to give it that higher rate of fire. And at some point
we'll get our hands on one of those and we'll do a video on it as well. For the time being though
it was very cool to get to take a look at this Vickers-Berthier because they are quite rare guns to find these days.
A big thank you to Marstar for allowing me to check out this particular one.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video, make sure to stay tuned tomorrow because we'll be going out
to the range with this to do some shooting with it, and I'm sure you'll enjoy that as well.
Thanks for watching.