The Belgian Rattlesnake A .303 Lewis Gun at the Range
Hi, I'm Ian, thanks for tuning in to another episode of ForgottenWeapons.com.
We have today all the pieces of a Lewis light machine gun.
These were really one of the first successful
commonly used air-cooled light machine guns.
This particular one was built in 1914.
The gun was designed by an American,
Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis, who unsuccessfully
attempted to get the US military interested in it, and
when they really couldn't care less he took it over the Atlantic,
had some made in Belgium and sold them to the British,
who used this as a standard gun in World War One.
This was still in widespread use by World War Two,
the [Belgian] military used them as standard-issue light machine guns in the Second World War.
For the British they were more of a second line gun,
home defence and merchant marine units used them extensively.
So, it's an interesting gun, a concept that hasn't been widely recreated.
This is the barrel assembly,
and you can see there's a large aluminium finned shroud sticking out at both ends.
That's for cooling. The idea was you have this aluminium shroud to sink heat off the barrel.
And then airflow will run from the back, through this cover, out the front.
Every time you fire it, the exhaust gas going out the front creates a little bit of suction
and pulls air through the system.
So this worked relatively well, it was a successful gun. Obviously you can't
dump 1,000 rounds through it, but you can't do that with any light machine gun.
One of the consequences of having a radiator like this is that the Lewis did not have a quick-change barrel.
You had to keep it from overheating in the first place. Getting the gun disassembled as far as...
it's not impossible, but it's not a trivial task. It's not something you want to do while people are shooting at you.
So, let's go ahead and put this thing back together.
Assembly
We're going to start with the receiver assembly here. This also has the feed tray on top, rear sight,
and this threads into the barrel.
Like so, there's a latch there that will hold it in place.
Alright, so once the receiver and the barrel assembly are threaded back together,
there's a pin that goes in here that prevents them from backing out.
And then the next step is to put in the bolt and bolt carrier assembly.
I should take a moment here and mention that this is just a really disgusting gun to disassemble and reassemble.
If you notice that the parts on the table are shifting unexpectedly,
it's because we're cutting in and out to get this working right.
Also at this point I should mention that the bolt and bolt carrier assembly from the Lewis was in large part
copied for both the German FG42 paratroop rifle, and also the American M60 machine gun.
They of course left out this rack and pinion system, but the bolt and the bolt carrier
design is fairly closely copied by both guns. Anyway, we're going to take this, we're going to run it
into the gun, gas piston on the bottom below the barrel.
And then we have a cocking handle,
that goes in, that lets us slide the bolt forward.
Now you can see this top feed tray operates with the bolt handle.
This is actually one of the weaker points of the Lewis design. This is the whole recoil spring. It's a wound up clock spring.
And you can see the tooth, the gear in there,
which is gonna interact with the teeth on the bolt carrier here, the gas piston.
So when gas pressure pushes this piston back, it winds up this clock spring.
Then when you fire, it releases the pressure on the spring and pushes the gas piston forward.
With the bolt and bolt carrier in, the next step is the recoil spring assembly.
You can see the teeth here, and they engage into this exposed part of the gas piston.
So this hooks around this pin, that snaps down.
There we go, and then the pistol grip assembly
(press the trigger to get the mechanism out of the way),
pistol grip slides in and that holds the recoil spring in place.
So last step on the back end of the gun is put in the stock.
It rotates 45 degrees, and this little snap latch holds it in place.
Now, the front end of the gun
Let's start by threading in the gas plug.
So this lever holds the ... gas plug in place, prevents it from unthreading. Then we have a muzzle cap.
This is actually left hand threaded.
Screw that in, and we have a Lewis tool to tighten it.
Nice and snug.
And then on the end. We have a ... flash hider.
You can see right here there's a little square block inside the front ring.
That locks the ... flash hider and the rest of the shroud cover in place, locks them together.
And this is also the front sight.
Right, so we've got the flash protector on here with the ring, and there's a screw to tighten the ring down.
Alright, we screwed on the front sight band, have the flash suppressor on there.
Still a miserable gun to disassemble and reassemble,
I have a newfound respect for anyone who had to do this in real combat situations.
Magazine loading
So this is a 47 round pan magazine, and to put it on you index this notch
with the post here.
And then as the gun fires, this pan rotates and feeds ammunition.
There's a little catch on the inside, pull that in,
pull that in and lift the magazine off. In order to load one of these,
you have a handle tool like this. It has a little notch for indexing. That goes into the drum.
Take one round. We're going to line it up so the rim is in this notch,
and the point of the cartridge is right in here.
Rotate one point, put in the next round, rotate.
To the range!
Alright, so we have a silhouette set up downrange at about a hundred yards,
and I'm going to put a decent length of burst into it and see what kind of grouping we get.
Let's go take a look.
But first, an important public safety reminder...
So the Lewis is a little bit of an unusual gun to unload and make safe.
What we want to do first is pull off the drum.
Then you have to rack the handle twice.
There is a spot for a cartridge to be in the feedway here, not in the chamber, but not visible from the top.
I'm gonna rack it once,
pull the trigger to drop the hammer [so to speak], rack it a second time
and now I can see that everything is clear and safe.
Now we can go downrange.
So my windage was off a little bit. But the grouping,
other than these little guys at the bottom, this is not bad at all for full-auto at 100 yards.
I wouldn't want to have been either these guys, even though they snuck past that burst.
So it's actually a really nice gun to shoot.
It's miserable to disassemble, but it's very pleasant to shoot.
There is very little recoil, it just kind of bounces against your shoulder.
And while it may have had a lot of quirks and eccentricities for its day, the main competition to the Lewis
were guns like the Chauchat, the Hotchkiss, and the Maxim 08/15,
and compared to those guns, really very nice, good gun to shoot, reliable and accurate.
So the Lewis Gun wasn't a perfect light machine gun, really it leaves a lot of things to be desired,
doesn't have a changeable barrel, has kind of a funky loading system.
But during the First World War this was what was available, what was accessible,
and really it did a very good job for the British.
Compared to its competitors, the other guns that were out there and available,
this was an accurate and reliable portable gun.
They'd certainly make improvements on the concept in later years, but at the time
not a gun you would feel unarmed with.
I hope you enjoyed the show, hope you learned something.
Check back in later to ForgottenWeapons.com for more videos of interesting and unusual guns.
Thanks for watching.
Shall we take a closing look at the Lewis?
Thanks for watching.