The Cavitation Effect – Vickers Heavy Machine Gun

It was a race against time, would the British reach the German lines before they could man their guns? The answer came quickly, the Germans got to their machine guns, opened fire, and all hell was let loose on the battlefield. Soon no man’s land was strewn with dead and wounded men. Many had advanced only a few yards, entire battalions were destroyed in just a few short minutes.

The weapons that devastated the British troops that morning included the machine gun. The German Maschinengewehr 08 could fire up to 400 rounds per minute from covered defensive positions. The MG08, like most machine guns of the time, was derived from the British-built Maxim gun of the 1880s, a fast recoil-operated machine gun. The fully automatic heavy machine gun allowed a single soldier to put down a murderous spread of fire.

But how powerful were these guns, and what were they like to fire? We travel to Bisley Shooting Ground to test the legendary Vickers machine gun and find out.

Watch the complete documentary here –    • Battle of the Somme | The Great War |...  

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