Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I understand the concept of indirect fire ...I guess I'm just having a hard time imagining a landscape completely devoid of cover or defilade or something allowing a sniper with an extremely long range weapon to get shots.  Say by not being in one of those predetermined areas? It must have been hell on earth.

You've really got to visit those battlefields to see how totally aweful the terrain was. Even a bump in the ground just a few 10's of feet high was worth fighting over to gain an advantage in height....and the mud.








The Somme today...

Quoted: Well, part of my thinking was that then an "Over The Top" assault occured, mass firepower by the advancing troops firing FA would have caused disruption possibly allowing them to advance. Do NOT get me wrong, it still would have been bloody and horrific but I seriously doubt at the time very little shooting was done by advancing troops until they reached the trench of the enemy. I would seriously have to think that most soldiers did not stop and reload via strippers on the way while under murderous MG fire and working a Bolt while running is not the easiest thing in the world. Especially while slipping and sliding in mud. I can imagine it would have been somewhat effective IF artillery was dialed in correctly, at leat the first few times. After that I don't know. I have no doubt that losses would be high, and totally unacceptable in modern times, but back then, I can well imagine that they WOULD be acceptable.  There were very few light portable MGs back then one was able to lug at a fast pace as most were crew served [as today] and if one took out the ammo carrier you effectively limited the use of the gun. Don't get that confused with MGs tho, I'm talking about a weapon that was light enough to carry fast and shoot on the run, something that WW1 MGs were not all that good at. [No, the french POS was not reliable enought and changing mags was problematic enough standing still]

But what are the advancing trrops going to shoot at?

The 'enemy' were in their shell proof bunkers and keeping their heads down while their artillery and MG's were raining fire onto no mans land, literally millions of bullets and thousands of shrapnel shell an hour. They would wait until your artillery stopped as your troops got near their front line to come out and man the parapets and pick off any survivors.

It was not until the British Artillery mastered the art of the rolling barrage that attacks became less costly. By 1918, British Artillery could drop its shell line accurately 50yds in front of the advancing troops and keep it there all across no mans land. The trick was to reach their front line before they could man their defences when the barrage lifted, seconds counted and could often mean the diference between a success and a slaughter.

ANdy

The Germans used lots of machine guns in their trench lines.....



If you want to see WWI at it's worst do a Google Image search for 'Passchendaele'




That is regarded as the most aweful battlefield of WWI.


Men attacked through this, mud so thick and deep that it would swallow you up if you slipped. Both my Great Grandfather and Great Uncle died in the Hell that was Passchendaele.

ANdy

Quoted: M-4's................ especially with M203's could make a huge differecne. The US only had 1 individual weapon, that was portable, and capable of automatic fire, the BAR. I don't know that any of the other powers had automatic weapons, firing full power rifle rounds, that were capable of automatic fire. The British had the Lewis gun... US forces supposedly were trained to "Indian crawl", aka low crawl, whiel advancing under fire. It was the start of "I'm up, they see me, I'm down". It meant that advancing forces not only had to advance toward prepared defensive positions, with MG's,  and direct fire artillery weapons, but they often didn't have any effective covering fire. Imagine your M4 equipped company getting 100 yards from the enemy trenches, and 50 M4's opening up to supress the nearest enemy MG's, while the other 50 advance several yards, then they take over the suppresive fire, and the other 50 begin moving up.................... Much different than what 100 soldiers with M1903's would be able to do. Espcecially if some 40mm grenades are getting fired too. Once the trench is breached, instead of bayonet-bayonet CQB, the M4 equipped troops would be able overwhelm the enemy. They would have a rate of fire, "handiness", and time between reloads advantage that would be huge. The right tactics with M4 type weapons would go a long way................

Indirect machine gun fire and shrapnel shells would slaughter your attacks... an M4 does not make you immune to hundreds of thousands of bullets and pieces of shrapnel shredding every square yard of no mans land.

You cannot see the machine guns so you cannot shoot at them, they are sited in log and concrete gun pits behind the lines and firing over their own trenchlines in interlocking pre registered arcs.

Until tanks were perfected every infantry attack was the same old thing, tens of thousands of men on both sides being slaughtered in a matter hours to achieve zero result or in the case of a 'breakthough', maybe 50 yds of shell cratered mud.

ANdy

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: M-4's................ especially with M203's could make a huge differecne. The US only had 1 individual weapon, that was portable, and capable of automatic fire, the BAR. I don't know that any of the other powers had automatic weapons, firing full power rifle rounds, that were capable of automatic fire. The British had the Lewis gun... US forces supposedly were trained to "Indian crawl", aka low crawl, whiel advancing under fire. It was the start of "I'm up, they see me, I'm down". It meant that advancing forces not only had to advance toward prepared defensive positions, with MG's,  and direct fire artillery weapons, but they often didn't have any effective covering fire. Imagine your M4 equipped company getting 100 yards from the enemy trenches, and 50 M4's opening up to supress the nearest enemy MG's, while the other 50 advance several yards, then they take over the suppresive fire, and the other 50 begin moving up.................... Much different than what 100 soldiers with M1903's would be able to do. Espcecially if some 40mm grenades are getting fired too. Once the trench is breached, instead of bayonet-bayonet CQB, the M4 equipped troops would be able overwhelm the enemy. They would have a rate of fire, "handiness", and time between reloads advantage that would be huge. The right tactics with M4 type weapons would go a long way................ Indirect machine gun fire and shrapnel shells would slaughter your attacks... an M4 does not make you immune to hundreds of thousands of bullets and pieces of shrapnel shredding every square yard of no mans land. You cannot see the machine guns so you cannot shoot at them, they are sited in log and concrete gun pits behind the lines and firing over their own trenchlines in interlocking pre registered arcs. ANdy Again, there were many belt fed machine guns in WW-I. There were more than a few submachine guns. BUT NO WEAPON ASIDE FROM THE BAR FIRED FULL POWER ROUNDS WAS PORTABLE AND AN AUTOMATIC WEAPON The Lewis Gun, a light machine gun, was developed in the United States in 1911. At 12 kg it was far lighter than the Vickers Machine-Gun and in 1915 the British Army decided to purchase the gun for use on the Western Front. Another advantage of the Lewis is that six of these guns could be made in the time taken to produce one Vickers gun. Although too heavy for efficient portable use, it became the standard support weapon for the British infantry during the First World War. Fully automatic weapon, firing a full power round, and carried/operated by 1 man. Next, great, they did neat things with MG's. Apparently no trenches were ever breached.................... Oh wait trenches were breached. Often "trenches" were usually at least three independent trenches deep. Too "break out" all three had to be succesively defeated. Yet it happened time and time again. It took manpower, artillery, tanks, etc. etc. but it was "doable". An M4 in the hands of the advancing troops could help give them a higher rate of fire while moving, and once they were into the enemy trench.

Lewis Gun
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from Lewis gun)


The Lewis Gun was a pre-WWI era American design of machine gun most widely used by the British and Imperial armies that continued to see service all the way through to WWII. It is visually distinctive because of the wide tubular cooling shroud around the barrel, and the top mounted drum magazines.

History

The Lewis gun or Lewis Automatic Machine Rifle was invented by US Army Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis in 1911 but was not instantly adopted by the Americans. This may have been due to a clash of personalities with the American selection officer. It could fire 550 .303 rounds per minute. The gun weighed 12 kg (28 lb), only about half as much as a typical machine gun of the era such as the Vickers machine gun, and was primarily chosen because it could be carried and used by a single soldier. It was also relatively cheap at about one sixth the cost of a Vickers, and was issued in droves to soldiers on the Western Front. In total only 62 parts made up the gun. (Six Lewis guns could be produced in the same time as a Vickers gun.) The lightness of the Lewis gun made it popular as an aircraft mounted weapon especially since the cooling effect of the high speed air over the gun meant that the radiator and cooling fins could be removed, making the weapon even lighter.


The Lewis gun was gas operated. A portion of the expanding gases was tapped off from the barrel. This drove a piston to the rear against a spring.

It was designed with an aluminium barrel casing to use the muzzle blast to draw air into the gun and cool down the internal mechanism. There is some discussion over whether the cooling tube was effective or even necessary - in the Second World War many old aircraft guns which did not have the tubing were issued as anti-aircraft units for the Home Guard and UK airfields, and were found to perform just fine without the tube. Later, more aircraft guns were used on vehicle mounts in the heat of the Western Desert and again did not suffer without the tube. The Royal Navy, however - ever a bastion of tradition - insisted all their Lewis guns had to retain the tubing, even in the cold of the Arctic (!).

The drum magazines could hold 47 or 97 rounds (the picture below shows the 47 round version). The 97 round magazine was designed for aircraft use and was considered too heavy for infantry use. A few Lewis guns were issued for anti-aircraft use with the 97 round drums by the British Army in 1916, but the big drum did not stand up well to the arduous conditions of trench warfare and the 47 round was used thereafter. The aircraft types of magazine had to be carefully stored when used with ground mounts as the underside was open and exposed the ammunition to dust, dirt or spray, which was then carried into the gun mechanism. Strangely, the Lewis was considered very reliable despite this design fault, but then this may have been in comparison to other less reliable designs like the notorious Chauchat.
An interesting point of the design was that it did not use a traditional longitudinal coiled spring, but used a spiral spring much like a big clock spring, in a semi-circular housing just in front of the trigger. The bolt had a toothed underside which engaged with a cog which wound the spring. When the gun fired a round, the bolt recoiled and the cog was turned, tightening the spring until the resistance of the spring had reached the recoil force of the bolt, at which point as the gas pressure in the breach fell the spring unwound, turning the cog, which in turn wound the bolt back forward for the next round. As with a clock spring, the Lewis gun's recoil spring had an adjustment device to adjust the recoil resistance for variations in temperature and wear. Unusual as it seems, the design proved enduringly reliable.

Colonel Lewis became frustrated at trying to persuade the U.S. Army to adopt his design. He retired and headed for Belgium. The Belgians quickly adopted the design in 1913, firing the .303 British round. Not long after that the Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA) purchased a licence to make it. The Germans first encountered it in 1914 and nicknamed it "the Belgian Rattlesnake".


World War 1
The British quickly claimed it as their own, adopting it in late 1915. (Much like their invention of the Peabody-Martini-Henry rifle.) Each Lewis gun required a team of two gunners, one to fire and one to carry ammunition and reload, and the whole rifle squad was trained to fire it in case the gunners were incapacitated.
The early British Mark IV tanks used the Lewis gun. It was used on British aircraft either as an observers or gunners weapon or as an additional weapon to the Vickers machine gun.
In 1917, the U.S. Army adopted the Lewis Gun, firing the .30-06. But the design was quickly replaced by the famous Browning Automatic Rifle or B.A.R.
[edit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_gun

Browning Automatic Rifle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


The Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR, usually pronounced "bee ay are") is a family of automatic rifles (or machine rifles) and light machine guns used primarily by the United States and other countries during the 20th century. It was designed in 1917 by the weapons designer John Browning primarily as a replacement for, and improvement on, the French-made Chauchat and Hotchkiss M1909. It was originally intended as a light automatic rifle, but spent much of its career in various guises used as a light machine gun with a bipod. The first version was, and remains the lightest service machine gun to fire .30-06 Springfield, but its 20-round magazine tended to hamper its use as a light machine gun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browning_Automatic_Rifle

I don't see much in it. BAR slightly lighter but lacks sustained firepower due to 20 rind mag. Lewis a bit to heavy unless you were well built but had good firepower from it's 47 round drums.



And yes, 'breakthroughs' if you can call them that were made before the widespread use of the tank. You would have a big offensive along the front that might capture a mile if you were lucky of enemy trenches, and lose half a million casualties doing it. Then the other guy would go on the counter offensive and roll you back and he would lose half a million casualties doing it. And that was WWI in a nutshell……see-saw warfare that cost millions of lives for no tangible gain.

ANdy