World War II Database

Country of Origin	United Kingdom
Type	Machine Gun
Caliber	7.700 mm
Capacity	250 rounds
Length	1.100 m
Barrel Length	720.000 mm
Weight	13.000 kg
Rate of Fire	450 rounds/min
Range	740.000 m

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseThe Vickers medium machine guns, sometimes Vickers guns for short, were designed from the Maxim machine guns of the late 1800s by the weapons firm Vickers, which were adopted by the British Army as the standard machine guns on 26 Nov 1912, although the Maxim machine guns remained in use through WW1. In 1916, both British and French air forces were using the Vickers medium machine guns as their standard aircraft weapons. Although the design were decades old by the WW2-era, these weapons were considered highly reliable, and significant numbers remained in use with British and Common Wealth forces.

The Vickers medium machine guns weighed 11-kg to 13-kg, but the overall weight often increased to over 20-kg after the addition of tripods. A typical Vickers medium machine gun crew consisted of six to eight men, a somewhat large number necessitated by the heavy weight of the guns, tripods, and ammunition. In addition to being used by the infantry, some British tanks, particularly early WW2 models, mounted them as secondary weapons. Some of these weapons were also used as anti-aircraft machine guns.

Most users of the Vickers medium machine guns retired them from active use by 1968, though some countries chose to keep them in active reserve currently, such as the forces of India, Pakistan, and Nepal.

Source: Wikipedia. ww2dbase

Last Major Revision: Oct 2008

Vickers Gun Machine Gun Interactive Map

Photographs

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