Vickers & Maxim Heavy Machine Guns

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sharpie443

New member
I haven't gotten to fire one of these yet but one of the groups on the firing line at the southern Ohio machine gun shoot had a few ww1 machine guns. The only NFA guns I've ever been interested in personally owning are a Lewis gun or a Maxim. So I get a bit excited when i see them at the shoots. If the shoot had not gotten rained out i would have seen if i could get them to let me shoot one of them. They have a slow rate of fire compared to the other guns there and produce a lot of steam and smoke but they put on a good show. I've love shooting the RPD, Ak-74 and the m-16's that we brought but i would have traded my turn on the line with one of those to shoot a maxim. Hope you like the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZrxqSGMSGA
 
Now we're talking guns!

I looked at several of the videos of Russian Maxim guns being fired. Interesting. Some seemed to have a higher cyclic rate than others and some were leaking water badly, too. Also odd was what appeared to be the ejection of spent cartridges to the front. Some references state the shield on the little wheeled carriage was basically useless. And I wonder how long it took to get used to the charging handle (I guess it is) on the right flying back and forth.

Apparently, any army that ever used water cooled machine guns during WWII was still using them 20 years later, probably the very same guns. But for that matter, some WWII German armored vehicles were also still being used 20 years after the war, just not by the Germans.
 
I got to fire about 100 rounds out of a Vickers some years ago.

Oh My God was it fun!

Big plume of steam coming up from the condenser can, shells rattling about, it was fun!
 
In the A-Stan, in the back of a warehouse that was being cleaned out in order to arm the ANA, there was a machine gun, on the wheel carriage with the gun shield, and a thick barrel shroud. it looked like something out of Enemy at the Gates. Didn't get to insepct any closer than from across the room, but man that thing was cool.

Fun fact: My Grandpa slugged through the Solomons lugging either a water-cooled thirty or the tripod for it.
 
That was probably an SG-43, if I'm remembering correctly, which replaced the Maxim and which was in turn replaced by the PK/PKM, a sort of general purpose machine gun.
 
Wheeled carriage, armor shield, and thick shroud?

Sounds like a Russian/Soviet made Maxim.

After the Goryunov and other designs were adopted into Soviet service, Maxims were handed out like candy to satellite countries.
 
That might be the only thing I miss about being over there, was that for a gun guy, I got to see/shoot a bunch of cool stuff.

Egyptian marked Enfields, every AK variant ever, real life Dish-Kas, RPDs, PKMs, MG-3s, G-36s, SA-80s, HK 416s, all sorts of neat stuff.
 
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