Rubbing handguard?

[Robert303]

No 38 Peter stop making us jealous! What's even worse is that you did not even have to pay for the ammo! As a matter of interest does anyone know if Wolf ammunition is imported into the U.K.?

[Brian Dick]

Well earned in the service of the Queen eh Peter? My money's on the Vickers Guns!

[CINDERS]

No.38 and by jingies being paid to loose off those rounds, imagine Peter ahhh! hang on a sec it may need another tweak get me another 250 round belt please or another 5 mags should do it nicely good for you anyway Peter we are not jealous really???????

Has to be some pot of gold at the end of the rainbow as I could imagine your road to the top of the pinnacle would not have been all beer and skittles I doff my hat to you.

[Peter Laidler]

They were only used to firing 3 to 5 or even 8 round bursts and didn't seem to understand the meaning of firing looooooooong bursts. So I had to ask my son Robert, then aged about 12 or13 to show them what a loooooooong burst was. 250 rounds is a long burst. He got a round of applause for his efforts.

Off the subject a bit, but going back to the video of the Vickers firing single shots a week or so ago. No water cooling seems to have been apparent and the biggest killer of barrels is heat (biggest killer or machine guns per se is vibration by the way.....) and rapid single shot fire through what is really a thin walled tube, no greater than an SMLE barrel with absolutely no chance of any cooling whatsoever because it is contained within an stifled enclosed casing was sacriledge to me. What a dopey way to knacker a barrel for want of a few pints of water............ Just my view of course!

[flying pig]

Like running an engine with no coolant or oil.

[Peter Laidler]

Yep....., that's as good an analagy as it gets Flyer.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

As Peter so rightly points out LOOOOOOOOOOONG "bursts" are murder on barrels, even ones in a water bath like a Vickers.

Besides which, if the idea is to "neutralize" a piece of real estate (and potential "occupants" thereof), constant hosing is not very productive, except in the movies, where they only fire blanks..........and even blanks are Hell on the guns because of heat build-up from propellant combustion alone.

The standard drill is to fire a burst and observe the result, adjust if required, repeat until "problem" goes away. Wild "swinging" of the gun in "spray and pray" mode is just not on.

Those stories from the first "Great Unpleasantness" of the prodigious performance of Vickers guns probably don't mention that they would have been firing, observing and adjusting as part of the drill. Fire, observe, adjust; ad nauseum or whatever.

If, as is the practice, you have multiple guns, they fire short bursts in turn. Each gun is aimed to produce a "beaten zone" that slightly overlaps that of the previous gun.

The guns don't have to be close to the "pointy end", just sited so that the bullets land on the target, which may be well over 1000 yds away. Distance is GOOD!, As soon as a machine gun is identified as firing in a "pattern", or just plain identified, it becomes a priority target for "counter-fire", sometimes from opposing MGs, but usually from mortars, which, of course, easily out-range (2 - 8Km), something like a Vickers (1 - 3 Km). Of course, popping mortar rounds into the sky will be noticed by the "locating battery" with their nifty "field radars" and "counter-counter_fire" will ensue..........

Turning on a "battlefield" radar, in turn, attracts the notice of the Electronic Warfare spooks who will accurately locate it in minutes and arrange for "attitude adjustment by HE"... And so on.........

Whilst modern "locating" radar can also circumvent much of the above and can accurately locate a machine gun firing regular bursts from a fixed location, the really cool one is modern "accoustic" sensors, which, unlike radar, are passive and have a minuscule electronic signature. However, if the battlefield is NOISY, ( a LOT of lead in the air constantly, who'da thought it?), the accoustic systems struggle a bit.

[CINDERS]

Try this on utube on the Model E-4 M-60 firing eight and a half belts with a single pull of the trigger 1 min 45 seconds they say the new composite metal barrels are good for 15,000 rounds would love one like that on my 303's bit boring to watch but the end of the belt you get a good look of relief from the firer now it had finished and boy that really is a loooooooooooooooooooong burst........M60 Machine Gun shooting 850 Rounds in ... - YouTube