![]() Both Vickers and Spandau guns were descendents of Maxim's original design, all born in black powder days. "Although weather problems were real, many more jams reflected the inability of old gun designs to adapt to the newer smokeless powders. Simultaneous jamming of unrelated guns (e.g., SE5a) suggested lubrication failure owing to the extreme cold of high altitude or perhaps a literal freezing as cloud droplets turned to ice. Truely odd where those occasions when a paired Lewis and vickers machine gun would fail simultaneously, though independant in design, location and means of triggering. Approximatley once a month, in combat, one or both guns would refuse to fire, leaving the shooter defensless. Not surprisingly, after a stoppage or two most shooters prefered to do their own inspection. ![]() It was all upto the inspectors intuition and mood. There was no test for split cartridges, corroded brass, defective primers or undersized parts. However this test was to cartridge health as a military board examination was to soldiers health - Stong in an easily checked detail, weak in all that was passed over. The test was of some use, for those cartridges refusing to drop all the way home were oversized or bent. "Drop the cartrigdes down one by oneā¦if they go home they are satisfactory and can be loaded into the magazines" British Royal Navy Air Service (RNAS)squadrons maintained an official inspection jig constisting of a spare gun pointed straight down along with approved instructions. "The establishment did offer some support to worried shooters. The unexpected part was the realisation of how frequenlty even the best regulated guns refused to work, and of how little there was to be done about it at lubricant-freezing, oxygen poor altitudes." Every course of instruction offered some takedown and reassembly experiance, with the emphasis on stoppages and fast cures. "Shooters new their guns to be complex assemblies of tricky parts. In the spirit of all that is just and holy, lets take a look at what Leon Bennet has to say on the matter (Author of Gunning For the Red Baron.)
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