WWI Lewis Guns in Tanks

[Mike]

The reason why I ask is that I've been looking at the sprues of an Emhar Mark IV "Male" tank, and the lewis guns, whilst really badly formed, are also rather short in the muzzle. Wikipedia has the length of the standard weapon as 1260mm, and from a side on pic, I reckon the barrel makes up about 660mm - that's the outer barrel... the inner was actually shorter, which I guess helped with the flash-hiding?

Anyway - the kit parts are very short. 7 or 8 REAL millimetres The front portion of the outer barrel (the stepped in, narrower part) is also barely 1mm long. So... the question is this. Were these a type of cut-down Lewis gun, or have the mould makers fluffed it?

I've built up 3 based on the standard measurements, using copper & aluminimum tubing, and some strips of Tamiya tape, and they look ok. Are they right though?

[blimp]

lewis ? i thought the early tanks had hochkiss mg's

[Mike]

lewis ? i thought the early tanks had hochkiss mg's

They were, from what I can tell. There are plenty of photos floating about showing the un-faired Hotchkiss barrel sticking out of the ball mount of a WWI tank. The majority that I can see have the Lewis gun though. Whether that took over later in the use of tanks during WWI, I don't know

[derek burton]

Have you had a look on the Landships web site there may be something on there.

Dek.

[Bill Ficner]

They were, from what I can tell. There are plenty of photos floating about showing the un-faired Hotchkiss barrel sticking out of the ball mount of a WWI tank. The majority that I can see have the Lewis gun though. Whether that took over later in the use of tanks during WWI, I don't know

I remember reading (somewhere) that the Lewis gun was used because, when the tank broke down, the gunners could dismount the guns, abandon the tank, and support the infantry attack as machine gunners.

I don't remember where I read it, but it made sense and it stuck with me.

[Bill Ficner]

The reason why I ask is that I've been looking at the sprues of an Emhar Mark IV "Male" tank, and the lewis guns, whilst really badly formed, are also rather short in the muzzle. Wikipedia has the length of the standard weapon as 1260mm, and from a side on pic, I reckon the barrel makes up about 660mm - that's the outer barrel... the inner was actually shorter, which I guess helped with the flash-hiding?

Anyway - the kit parts are very short. 7 or 8 REAL millimetres The front portion of the outer barrel (the stepped in, narrower part) is also barely 1mm long. So... the question is this. Were these a type of cut-down Lewis gun, or have the mould makers fluffed it?

I've built up 3 based on the standard measurements, using copper & aluminimum tubing, and some strips of Tamiya tape, and they look ok. Are they right though?

The Emhar Lewis guns are worthless.

Here's a link to a good drawing of the Lewis gun, including scale. It also shows how the cooling system was designed to function, by using muzzle blast from the shorter barrel to pull in cooler air through the jacket.

http://www.partsofsw.com/images/Lewis_100.jpg

Here's another link with a little more on the cooling jacket:

http://www.westernfrontassociation.com/gre...-story-gun.html