Why did the Vickers K Machine gun used in armored cars & other vehicles use a gas plug to reduce rate of fire?
November 12th, 2009 | by admin |Was it so the gun wouldn’t wear out or over heat as quickly? Cheers John.
The Vickers K guns used by the army were all ex-RAF and had very high rates of fire for anti-aircraft use. Their primary employment (due to the small numbers available) was with special forces – famously the SAS and LRDG in the North Africa campaign. The rate of fire was only dropped by about 100 rpm from 1,050 down to 950 so it wasn’t a huge change. I can think of lots of good reasons to drop it, none to keep it where it was. I know you have a fascination with particularly fast-firing machine guns but in the real world they just aren’t that practical. Even the German’s who started this nonsense dropped the ROF on their post-ar machine guns dramatically compared to wartime practice.
One Response to “Why did the Vickers K Machine gun used in armored cars & other vehicles use a gas plug to reduce rate of fire?”
By Mark F on Nov 12, 2009 | Reply
The Vickers K guns used by the army were all ex-RAF and had very high rates of fire for anti-aircraft use. Their primary employment (due to the small numbers available) was with special forces – famously the SAS and LRDG in the North Africa campaign. The rate of fire was only dropped by about 100 rpm from 1,050 down to 950 so it wasn’t a huge change. I can think of lots of good reasons to drop it, none to keep it where it was. I know you have a fascination with particularly fast-firing machine guns but in the real world they just aren’t that practical. Even the German’s who started this nonsense dropped the ROF on their post-ar machine guns dramatically compared to wartime practice.
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