My 1918 US Colt/Australian/Turkish Vickers Mk.1 Medium Machine Gun

[MG34]

The only factory Colt Vickers to have an "A" prefix serial number are the balloon busters. The factory Colt 1914 Vickers ground guns never had an "A" prefix serial number. In the distant past, people were mating balloon buster right side plates to Colt Vickers ground gun parts and passing off the result as a factory original Colt 1914 Vickers ground gun. The value of an original Colt 1914 Vickers ground gun is twice that of a balloon buster side plate Vickers.

[samnev]

I am guessing that any aircraft guns had an A prefix. My info on A marked Lewis guns came from the Collector Grade book The Belgium Rattlesnake. Mine was converted back to a ground gun I supposed when the Vickers aircraft guns came into wide spread use. Mine is marked A 21X

[MG34]

I am guessing that any aircraft guns had an A prefix. My info on A marked Lewis guns came from the Collector Grade book The Belgium Rattlesnake. Mine was converted back to a ground gun I supposed when the Vickers aircraft guns came into wide spread use. Mine is marked A 21X

Nice Lewis! One of my shooting buddies has an original BSA Lewis ground gun.

Why the "A" prefix was specified/chosen is a mystery to me. But I do have another funky observation of the Vickers versus a Browning 1917A1. I have a conversion setup to shoot 8mm ammo in my '17A1 and it runs very well. But, I get a lot of stinky, sooty, blow-by in the '17A1 receiver box. It's a real pain in the a$$ to clean my '17A1 after a shoot if I fire 8mm. When I shoot the exact same 8mm ammo (Romanian surplus steel case) in my Vickers all is well. The Vickers receiver box is squeaky clean. I find this very interesting indeed. Some have told me that the Romanian steel cases are not sealing the combustion chamber adequately. Others have said the '17A1 is opening the breech a fraction of a second sooner than that of the Vickers and the steel case doesn't have time to form a good seal. I guess both explanations are viable, maybe, sort of. I have no clue.

[samnev]

Yes it was a great shooting Lewis. I just sold it and my Navy Lewis. I had both of them for 15 years and never so much as a hiccup. Getting to old to lug them around.

[MG34]

My Photobucket hosted pictures were blown away. Here they are again, but now hosted on Postimg:

Here is a picture of a 1918 Colt Aircraft Vickers Gun



Here is a picture of my re-re-born Vickers with Pat Tomlison, the gentleman who re-re-built my gun with parts from around the world.



More Vickers re-re-birth porn. Notice the "A" prefix serial number.





And finally here is a picture of her at one of our shoots back in 2005.