The "Retired" Weapon of World War Two — And Why The RAF Begged For It Back

The Lewis gun was officially retired from British infantry service in nineteen thirty-eight. Two years later, fifty-eight thousand nine hundred and eighty-three of them came out of storage. The British Army had left most of its automatic weapons on the beaches of Dunkirk and needed something, anything to defend the airfields, coastlines, and cities that the Luftwaffe was about to begin attacking. The Lewis was the something. The weapon officially replaced by the Bren was credited by the British with shooting down more low-flying enemy aircraft than any other anti-aircraft weapon in their inventory. A gun retired before the war began became one of the most effective weapons of the war it was supposed to sit out. This is the full story of the Lewis gun how a personal feud between Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis and General William Crozier condemned the finest light machine gun of its era to exile from the army that invented it, why Britain adopted it immediately when America refused it, how Albert Ball used one to destroy forty-four German aircraft from the upper wing of a Nieuport, what the Home Guard discovered about the iconic barrel cooling shroud that embarrassed everyone who had ever carried the full assembly across Flanders, and why the weapon officially withdrawn in nineteen thirty-eight was still being used on Universal Carriers in nineteen forty-five. If you care about the weapons that outlasted their own retirement, the inventors whose own armies betrayed them, and the engineering decisions that kept proving themselves right long after the paperwork said otherwise — this is the channel for you. Subscribe to The Small Arms File for weekly deep dives into the weapons that shaped British and Commonwealth military history. TOPICS COVERED Who Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis was — the political feud with General William Crozier that ended his career and sent his invention to Europe Why the United States Army rejected the Lewis gun and what that rejection cost them when they arrived in France in nineteen seventeen How the Birmingham Small Arms Company produced the Lewis under license and what the British Army immediately understood about it Why the Lewis gun transformed infantry tactics on the Western Front — one automatic weapon per section, portable, operated by a single soldier The aircraft Lewis — ninety-seven round magazine, shroud removed, overwing mounting to fire above the propeller arc without synchronization Albert Ball, Victoria Cross, forty-four kills, the Nieuport overwing Lewis, and the cord-pull reloading technique Why Germany called it the Belgian Rattlesnake Dunkirk — fifty-eight thousand nine hundred and eighty-three Lewis guns recalled from storage and issued in the weeks after the evacuation Why the Lewis was credited with shooting down more low-flying enemy aircraft than any other anti-aircraft weapon in the British inventory What the Home Guard discovered when they stripped the barrel cooling shroud — and why First World War veterans were furious The Pacific campaign — British, Australian, Dutch, and New Zealand forces using Lewis guns into nineteen forty-five MAJOR RESEARCH SOURCES Wikipedia, Lewis gun, for production figures, Dunkirk recall numbers, and anti-aircraft credit documentation MilitaryHistoryNow.com, The Lewis Gun: Seven Fascinating Facts, for Lewis-Crozier feud detail FirstWorldWar.com encyclopedia entry for Western Front deployment and aircraft use FURTHER READING Ian Hogg and John Weeks, Military Small Arms of the Twentieth Century Peter Liddle, The Airman's War 1914-18 Note: This is a history channel. We do not provide instruction on the use, modification, or acquisition of weapons. Where the historical record is incomplete or disputed, we say so clearly in the script. #LewisGun #WW2History #ForgottenWeapons #MilitaryHistory #BritishMilitary #WW2Documentary #BritishFirearms #TheSmallArmsFile