News Update #48: Water You Looking At!

Stepping away from our recent trend of less common weapons in last update's reveal of the Lee Enfield No.1 SMLE we stay with the British Army and present the Vickers Machine Gun by the newest member of the team [TWDEV] Chillydog12345.

The Vickers Machine Gun is one of the most iconic machine guns of the 20th Century. Having served throughout World War One as one of the great contributors to the mass slaughter in the trenches, the Vickers continued its illustrious service with British and Commonwealth forces throughout the Second World War. Despite attempts to replace it with more modern and mobile air-cooled general purpose machine guns like the Besa, it's reliability and weight of fire continued to win out.

Capable of laying down 450 rounds per minute, the Vickers was not about to win any awards for rapid fire for a World War Two machine gun. It made up for this in weight of fire. As it was water cooled the Vickers required very few barrel changes, with fire being continuous until ammunition or water had been expended, whichever came first. Indeed, on the Somme in 1916, there is one account of the 100th Machine Gun Company having fired it's 10 Vickers Guns for over 12 hours without a single stoppage, a testament to the incredible reliability of the Vickers and water-cooled machine guns in general. It was also capable of indirect fire, using observers and specialist sights to place killing zones out to ranges of 4,500 meters, creating deadly zones for those who happened to stray into an observer's sight.

Despite the Vicker's weight and increased obsolescence in comparison to modern GPMGs, it would serve throughout the Korean War and was not replaced in the British army until 1968. The Vickers, like many other World War One weapons, continues to serve throughout conflicts in Africa and the Middle East amongst militias and national armies.

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