16 Vickers Machine Guns Live Firing | Bisley
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ค. 2022
- 8 minutes of live-firing Vickers Machine Guns. Careful of the audio level if you're wearing headphones!!
3 July 2022, 4pm, saw the Vickers Machine Gun Collection & Research Association commemorate the centenary of the disbandment of the Machine Gun Corps.
Descending on NRA Bisley, Surrey, were 16 guns, 16,000 rounds of ammunition and 54 trained personnel. 45 minutes later, 0 rounds left.
For more information on the Vickers Machine Gun, please visit:
www.vickersmg.org.uk/
For the camera nerds:
1x C70 with RF 24-105 f4
2x EOS Rs with EF 24-20 f2.8 and EF 24-105 f4
1x Insta360 One X2
Camera Operators:
Adam Blackmore-Heal
Alec Seaman
Editor:
Adam Blackmore-Heal - บันเทิง
Absolutely Bloomin incredible 👍🏻😁
My Grandfather was on vickers machine guns during the Great War, while serving with the Royal Marines, he was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal.
When the British Army finally moved moved away from .303 there was a pile of ammunition still in stock so one of the schools (forget which) decided to do a test. One of these guns, with a number of crews, and extra folks to shovel the empty cases away, managed to fire off something like 5 million rounds WITHOUT ANY STOPPAGES. This would have been some time in the mid 1960s
Me again... this seemingly took about a week!
Worth checking out the Vickers Machine Gun Collection and Research associations TH-cam channel, they cover this. Some fascinating information on the Vickers.
After 5 million rds, the bullets were rattling down the barrels. Bullets landed in any of several adjacent counties.
@@csjrogerson2377 In 1963 in Yorkshire, a class of British Army armorers put one Vickers gun through probably the most strenuous test ever given to an individual gun. The base had a stockpile of approximately 5 million rounds of Mk VII ammunition which was no longer approved for military use. They took a newly rebuilt Vickers gun, and proceeded to fire the entire stock of ammo through it over the course of seven days. They worked in pairs, switching off at 30 minute intervals, with a third man shoveling away spent brass. The gun was fired in 250-round solid bursts, and the worn out barrels were changed every hour and a half. At the end of the five million rounds, the gun was taken back into the shop for inspection. It was found to be within service spec in every dimension.
Great historical footage. The sound of mass fire is worth it's weight in gold. A resource that a filmmaker wanting to do a work about WW I should get.
Great to see the Slouch Hats thanks from Australia
That was phenomenonal Adam, amazing work.
Cheers Matt.
I think the girls team has the most fun!
Never seen anything like it, the noise must have been fantastic! It looked great when the guns started venting clouds of steam and water towards the end. I too wondered about the lack of condenser cans but it's already been explained in the comments. Well done to all involved 👏
P❤❤❤❤❤❤p❤
Only one with water cooling connected ?Dad was a Sgt with 6th battalion Cheshire Regiment in North Africa and Italy.He was my hero and would have loved seeing this.
Good show!!!!
I read an account of how the Vickers machine gun was used in New Guinea by the Australians against the Japanese. A number of these were sited in like the one above and fired down range to break up a banzai charge. The account added that all those Australians behind the guns could feel the 'pressure wave."
What the video doesn't portray is that very pressure you mention, just walking behind the guns you can feel it move through your whole body.
Can only imagine what it was like for those Australians.
@@merlinmediaproductions Is that because of the recoil device unique to the Vickers or simply due to that much 303 headed downrange?
You should read up on Kohima with the Royal Wast Kents, pissed off about this happing in the UK when Ukraine needs weapons and ammunition like this very badly, they would be great in any role, especially air defence.
The pioneers at work, great!
Wow, best 8 minutes I've had for a while...
Great camera work Adam, well done!
Thank you Mick.
Nice to see some "Bally colonials " there with their slouch hats.🇦🇺👍
Sorry to correct you, but with the modded 08/37 large pack and Kukhri I think they are re-enacting Chindits. But I’m sure a couple of the teams in WWI dress had the slightly greener shad SD Tunic the ANZACS wore…
Nice to see the gunners doing the "tap"
I was shooting clays nearby when this lot where firing. Sounded epic!
Hopefully you weren’t thrown off your game!
@@merlinmediaproductions I was trying to calculate how much money you guys had spent on Ammo,, I suspect it was a lot!
@@shootingwithmitch5921 I couldn’t say the total amount, but Rich in the main video I made for them (link below) says £5-£6 per second per gun 😅
th-cam.com/video/lARgVokqQ48/w-d-xo.html
Fantastic
The British Army once tested a Vickers machine gun by firing it non-stop for 24 hours !
In Kohima they fired for days on end and used their urine to cool the gun barrels, they stopped the Japenese there!
Wonderful.
Fantastic :)
Wow just stunning to see this and hear it. How loud was this in person?
Oh, very loud. Of course we all had hearing protection on, but you can feel the pressure change - it’s like standing next to a giant subwoofer, especially when they’re all going together.
I've already got tinnitus anyway, cool stuff dude! :]
Who needs hearing anyway?!
Long time since ive shot at bisley 😕.
English caliber 303
The Vickers and MG08 (Maxim)machine guns were stacking bodies during the Great War.
Rock N Roll !
I was told I couldn’t bring my Lee Enfield, so I brought my Vickers (joke) awesome camera work tho!
Omdurman 1898 (colourized)
Serious question as a former gpmg sf cmdr , did vickers not sandbag the tripod legs???
I don’t believe so. The tripods had spikes which were hammered into the ground for stability. Might be a question for the Vickers MG association about doctrine though.
Interesting gpmg had spade feet on tripod and without sandbags was a tad unstable
Some of these guns are firing very slowly - age catching up?
Just asked one of the firers from the day - the armoured didn’t have time to tweak all the fusee springs (as they had come in from all different collections). Hence different firing speeds.
Are these still in British inventory?
These particular Vickers were all from private collections
So how are these owned and used legally? Presumably owned by museums or collections with section 5 licences? If so I’m surprised to see so many!
Yes, all under section 5. If you head over to the Vickers Machine Gun Association TH-cam channel, Rich, the director, has an hour long Q&A video going into the details of what legal requirements they require for ownership and even to organise the shoot in the film. Worth a watch.
Guns seem to be wobbling about rather a lot, would they have used sandbags to stop that ?
This sceptered isle :)
Who owns these MGs? The IWM, or are they still Army property?
Looks like they were depicting every era of uniform under which the Vickers had served.
These 16 (and the few reserves they had to hand) came from a variety of privately owned collections. The VMGCRA just released the short documentary of the day I made for them, where Rich, the director explains in more detail about the whole event. Check it out at the following link…
th-cam.com/video/lARgVokqQ48/w-d-xo.html
@@merlinmediaproductions I thought privately owned automatic weapons were not allowed under current law?
@@MA-wq2ih a common myth. A Section 5 firearms license allows private ownership of automatic/semi-automatic firearms. It’s not easy at all to get, requiring a very specific reason and much scrutiny.
It's great to see the English out enjoying their God given rights...
The sound of ww1
imagine what it meant for a German infantryman to advance towards a line protected by these weapons ...
Yes, I think all events such as these should, and do, serve as a reminder to the terrible effects all weaponry had/has in war.
You bellend , the Vickers is a British built German maxim gun. Our lads had to walk towards them first , for years .
@@brokenteeth237 yes. Better say "what it meant for a man to advance towards this weapon"
@@brokenteeth237 Hiram maxim was American/ British, the gun was British first and he sold it to a lot of different countries, it was also widely copied. So at the outbreak of war both sides had these, more or less.
"Shoot anything that looks off, or German... or both."
The sound of the First World War...
Might need em again soon chaps
Average Bf1 conquest server.
THIS is what we need if there is ever a Zombie apocalypse!
Yeah I definitely would rather be behind them than in from of them lol
Mein gott! That’s so much .303
16,000 rounds fired in about 45 minutes.
@@merlinmediaproductions That’s incredible, I’m amazed how reliable most of that old ammo is. Surplus .303 has a dodgy reputation here in the States.
@@Poverty-Tier ah, no surplus used here. All new rounds. .303 Brit is still manufactured, this particular ammo was made by PPU (privi partizan), a Serbian company.
@@merlinmediaproductions PPU is great stuff in every caliber they make. I shudder to think how many quid 16,000 rounds cost.
@@Poverty-Tier Difficult to say - I wouldn't be surprised if it was around £10,000.
.303 fluctuates in price but 90 pence per round is a ball-park figure for factory ammo.
I expect, though, a lot were reloads which can be made cheaper and/or maybe a discount for quantity?
so why, no water cans?
I asked the Vickers MG association, and in a nutshell “they shouldn’t have needed them!” 🙃. Something about ‘corks’ not being removed.
I reckon some barrels were destroyed without the condensers.
Cooling was open cycle evaporatve cooling, ensuring that the barrel never got above 100°C. The barrel was quite happy at that temperature. The resulting steam was fed into the can where it condensed so not giving away your position or hide your view of the target. The can was not strictly necessary for the gun to operate. The important thing (with or without the can) was to ensure that the jacket did not boil dry.
Mow down them Huns!
So the rate of fire vareid gun to gun or was it ajustabel?
Those machine guns could surely stop thousands of charging russian orks.
Fantastic! Big PEW energy
Absolutely Bloomin incredible 👍🏻😁
My Grandfather was on vickers machine guns during the Great War, while serving with the Royal Marines, he was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal.
Tell me more about your Grandfather's service; was it early war in Antwerp, mid war with the Naval Division or aboard ship, or late war like the Ostend raid?