Captured Lewis Guns

[Black]

Hello Forum,

I was doing some reading today about the battle of Lagnicourt (15 April 1917) and there was reference to an Australian battalion capturing a heap of prisoners outside Noreuil along with their rifles, two machine guns and "two Lewis guns (modified)".

Can anyone tell me how and what these modifications were?

I did a bit of a search around the net and saw all the fulsome praise about Monsieur Lewis' wonderful gun, finding lots of good background information. There were a couple of vague references to the Germans being extremely jealous about the other side having them and "acquiring" them wherever possible, but nothing specific about any mods. Did it have anything to do with changes to suit Mauser ammunition?

Did I mention the U-Tube video of an American family firing a Lewis gun in their back yard??? Yup, the whole family lined up for a shot... as you do!

Oh, and how could I forget to mention I did a little search on the GWF site and spent half an hour drooling over a few previous photos of Lewis guns in people's windows and lounge rooms. Consumed with jealousy!

Any info on possible German mods as per above reference greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Black

[centurion]

Yes they modified them (as they did the Vickers and the Russian Maxim). Factory made replacement parts were produced as well as a field kit. The Lewis required much less modification than the Vickers. I've posted on this subject before so a search should bring it up.

BTW the Lewis was designated as standard armament for the big R planes.

[Black]

centurion,

I found that thread (don't know why it did not come up in my original search before I posted...) but a great read.

Many thanks,

Black

[bob lembke]

Black;

Not having a satisfactory light machine gun of their own, the Germans formed about three battalions of I think three companies each armed with the Danish Madsen, some of which they captured from the Russian cavalry, and also some in some sort of covert operation where they diverted an Allied shipment into German hands. From memory, these were called something like Musquitier Bataillone.

As these guns were lost / wore out they were replaced with captured Lewis guns. I don't know if they increased the number of these battalions. I have also seen pictures of what supposedly were storm troops carrying Lewis guns. I think individual soldiers might be paid a bonus for bringing one of these back, or a sum was paid into his company's welfare fund.

My father's flame-thrower company, wanting about four times as many light machine guns as the Army was willing to give them, adopted the French Chauchat, as they were facing the French. Aside from availability, these guns, when a position was taken, would have French ammunition available to them in the position, and possibly Chauchat magazines and even spare guns. The Chauchat, modified for the US ammunition, was absolutely horrible; but with the original French ammunition, and kept clean, it would generally work, although its manufacture and workmanship was awful.

The German MG 08/15 weighed something like 50 lbs or so, much less than the 140 lbs of the MG 08, so it was a lot heavier than the captured allied guns. Of course it was belt-fed, and water-cooled, so it could put out a lot of fire, but it was nice to have a more mobile alternative.

Bob Lembke

[Robert Dunlop]

Musquitier Bataillone = Musketierbataillon(e = plural)

Robert

[centurion]

Black;

Not having a satisfactory light machine gun of their own, the Germans formed about three battalions of I think three companies each armed with the Danish Madsen, some of which they captured from the Russian cavalry, and also some in some sort of covert operation where they diverted an Allied shipment into German hands. From memory, these were called something like Musquitier Bataillone.

As these guns were lost / wore out they were replaced with captured Lewis guns. I don't know if they increased the number of these battalions. I have also seen pictures of what supposedly were storm troops carrying Lewis guns. I think individual soldiers might be paid a bonus for bringing one of these back, or a sum was paid into his company's welfare fund.

The guns didn't wear out - it seems that the weight  of fire was too light for the break through stopper role and they were transferred to Alpine troops who were looking for an ultra light air cooled gun.

[Robert Dunlop]

Jack Sheldon has just reminded me that the formation(s) in WW1 was:

Musketen Bataillon (e: plural)

Thanks Jack

Robert

[Black]

Thank you all for those responses.

I don't suppose anyone has a photograph of one of these German/Lewis "conversion kits" among all their paraphernalia??

Black

[Capt_Starlight]

The German MG 08/15 weighed something like 50 lbs or so, much less than the 140 lbs of the MG 08, so it was a lot heavier than the captured allied guns.

MG08/15 was 18kg or 39.6lb. The MG08/15 on Schlitten was 62kg or 136lb.

[Mark Finneran]

Of course not all lewis were modified, there are numerous images of Imperial troops carrying and using lewis with plentiful supplies of inherited .303.

I will find some images of the S placed upon captured British guns by the Germans after modification.

Mark

[michaeldr]

Of course not all lewis were modified, there are numerous images of Imperial troops carrying and using lewis with plentiful supplies of inherited .303.

Would this also have been the case with their allies, e.g. the Turks shown here on the Palestine front? Or is there evidence of the Germans exporting the conversion kits referred to earlier?

[from the LoC (USA)]

[centurion]

Of course not all lewis were modified, there are numerous images of Imperial troops carrying and using lewis with plentiful supplies of inherited .303.

Would this also have been the case with their allies, e.g. the Turks shown here on the Palestine front? Or is there evidence of the Germans exporting the conversion kits referred to earlier?

Of course we don't actually know if those Lewises were used in Turkish service or are just captured guns displayed for propaganda purposes.

[michaeldr]

They don't seem to be dumped, but rather appear to be displayed together with their four-man teams

Do you have any info re the export to their allies, by the Germans, of their conversion kits?

[robert_sfl]

Not having a satisfactory light machine gun of their own, the Germans formed about three battalions of I think three companies each armed with the Danish Madsen

Do you know which units the Musketeers where formed from? On this picture, the helmet covers show the regimental numbers 80 and R10x. On the original photograph it also looks like the cover of the group leader shows the number 56 faintly (as a negative imprint, like the impression of removed stitched numbering). All I found is that they were assigned to IR 117 after they were established.

[Robert Dunlop]

There was a discussion about this photo, with Jack Sheldon's comment here.

Robert

[robert_sfl]

There was a discussion about this photo, with Jack Sheldon's comment here.

Yes sorry, I had marked this as an open question and thought I would pop it up in this context. But as I see now most contributors of the thread were in the earlier discussion as well.

It seems that the Madsen would not have fit the purpose of the musketeers as well as the Lewis gun anyway. Being a purely defensive unit, they would have relied on heavy sustained fire. I always wondered why they did not receive normal 08/15 leaving the Madsen to offensive units that required extra mobility.

[bob lembke]

They don't seem to be dumped, but rather appear to be displayed together with their four-man teams

Do you have any info re the export to their allies, by the Germans, of their conversion kits?

The photo caption says that they were captured guns, but of course captured Lewis guns taken into the Turkish service still would imply "captured guns", not crew-served guns in Turkish service, to me.

I know a good bit about the aid provided to the Turks during the war, which was considerable, and about the extensive aid provided by the Germans to the armaments industry; in fact the Germans, under naval Captain Pieper (that story, and Pieper's story, is quite interesting), basically took over the Turkish armaments industry in 1915, and worked miracles. I saw a figure, from an authorative source, that in all the Germans and Austrians supplied, in total, 100,000 or 150,000 rail carloads of materiel during the war.

But I doubt that that aid would have included conversion kits to convert captured Lewis guns, if any, from British to German ammunition. At the start of Gallipoli the Turkish infantry had 16 models of rifles (source: Pomiankowski, I think), and the Turks must have captured many Brit rifles at Gallipoli, and surely adopted them into their units. So they simply had to make a 17th type of rifle ammo. So they had lots of domestically produced Lee-Enfield ammo anyway. They had a lot of 8 mm Mausers but it hardly was their only rifle or ammunition.

I know of an example of how, in heavy fighting, a German naval MG unit lost all or nearly all of their Maxims, and then the Turks attacked the Brits and presented the German sailors with 13 captured Vickers, and they were back in action! The source did not mention it, but they must have been using captured ammo as well.

Bob Lembke

[paulowen]

Not sure if I've mis-remembered this but I think that "The World at War" (an episode that deals with the last-ditch defence of Berlin) shows a march of elderly Volksstrum members carrying a random assortment of weapons. One of them has a Lewis gun over his shoulder.

It seems likely that this is a 'convert' but it's also surprising that this would have survived whatever disarmament process took place after Versailles.

Maybe the carrier had had experience of the Lewis in the first lot. I hope he didn't have to use it the second time around!

[4thGordons]

SNIP

the Turks must have captured many Brit rifles at Gallipoli, and surely adopted them into their units. So they simply had to make a 17th type of rifle ammo. So they had lots of domestically produced Lee-Enfield ammo anyway. They had a lot of 8 mm Mausers but it hardly was their only rifle or ammunition.

Bob Lembke

TonyE would be the man to say whether the Turks produced .303...I don't know. I am uncertain how early it started but certainly "Turked" Pattern 1907 bayonets can be found relatively easily - the blade was shortened and the crosspiece and muzzle ring replaced so the bayonet would fit the Mauser. In the 20s/30s the Turks also produced a Enfield/Mauser hybrid rechambered fo the 7.92m round. A couple of dozen of these showed up in the US a decade or so ago and they appear with some regularity on the surplus market - although I have never tracked one down I can afford. I have seen several that have unit markings on them which appear to indicate capture at Galipolli.

There is a picture HERE (I am not endorsing this site or the comments - jsut found the pic via google) There is another picture HERE and some nice pictures HERE

[michaeldr]

Apropos captured equipment; there's a lovely little story (I think it's in 'The Honourable Artillery Company 1914-1919') about an incident in the Jordan valley, when the Turks shelled the allies using a gun they had taken earlier, and this so enraged the CO that he especially ordered up a captured Turkish gun for his reply in kind.

[michaeldr]

The photo caption says that they were captured guns, but of course captured Lewis guns taken into the Turkish service still would imply "captured guns", not crew-served guns in Turkish service, to me. ... ... ...

I know of an example of how, in heavy fighting, a German naval MG unit lost all or nearly all of their Maxims, and then the Turks attacked the Brits and presented the German sailors with 13 captured Vickers, and they were back in action! The source did not mention it, but they must have been using captured ammo as well.

Bob,

Thanks for your thoughts on conversion kits v captured ammo

regards

Michael

[TonyE]

.....But I doubt that that aid would have included conversion kits to convert captured Lewis guns, if any, from British to German ammunition. At the start of Gallipoli the Turkish infantry had 16 models of rifles (source: Pomiankowski, I think), and the Turks must have captured many Brit rifles at Gallipoli, and surely adopted them into their units. So they simply had to make a 17th type of rifle ammo. So they had lots of domestically produced Lee-Enfield ammo anyway. They had a lot of 8 mm Mausers but it hardly was their only rifle or ammunition......

Bob Lembke

They may well have had 16 models of rifle in service, but they would only have been of three calibres, one of which was already obsolete by then.

The Turks had started with the Model 1887 Mauser (basically a German M71/84) in 9.5 x 60mm, but in 1890 had switched to the more modern 7.65 x 53mm calibre, the same as the Belgians. This remained their "official" calibre until after WWI, but of course they would have also had German 7.92 x 57mm weapons during the war.

With regard to the .303 weapons that were captured, AFAIK there was enough captured ammunition to go with them and the Turks never manufactured .303 inch ammunition domestically. Later I believe some of the Lee Enfields were converted to 7.92mm.

Regards

TonyE

[bob lembke]

They may well have had 16 models of rifle in service, but they would only have been of three calibres, one of which was already obsolete by then.

Regards

TonyE

Of course. I must have mis-laid my thinking cap. 16 models of rifles clearly would not translate to 16 different cartridges, although it boiling down to only three was indeed fortunate. The accounts that I have read (e.g., Kannengeister) report that at least the Turks had sufficient and workable small arms ammunition. I know a lot more about the problems they had with the production of artillery ammunition, and there I do know that the Turks had to manufacture about 16 different calibers of artillery ammunition (Klaus Wolf, Gallipoli 1915 ), even though they were entirely unable to produce shells for their larger fortress guns. One of their problems was that they were unable to produce, at least for certain calibers, steel shell casings, and therefore even if a shell did explode at the other end, quite uncertain and even unlikely due to the problems trying to produce workable fuzes (Liman von Sanders estimated that only 5% of shelkl fired exploded, possibly a bit over-pessamistic - there even were some attempts to fly in small quantities of reliable German fuzes, despite the fact that the Turks/Germans had so few aircraft in theatre), the iron shell body only produced sand-like iron fragments, much less dangerous than razor-sharp steel splinters.

Bob

[michaeldr]

The Turks had started with the Model 1887 Mauser (basically a German M71/84) in 9.5 x 60mm, but in 1890 had switched to the more modern 7.65 x 53mm calibre, the same as the Belgians. This remained their "official" calibre until after WWI, but of course they would have also had German 7.92 x 57mm weapons during the war.

With regard to the .303 weapons that were captured, AFAIK there was enough captured ammunition to go with them and the Turks never manufactured .303 inch ammunition domestically. Later I believe some of the Lee Enfields were converted to 7.92mm.

Tony,

There is coverage of the Ottoman infantry weapons in the 'Handbook of the Turkish Army 1916' (originally the 8th ed. Published in Cairo, February 1916) the IWM's version of the reprint is ISBN: 1-870423-6-6

Believed in autumn of 1914 to have 500,000 7.65 Mauser rifles and perhaps 200,000 9.5 Mausers. After the autumn of 1914 the supply of the 7.65 rifles became more difficult although there was a purchase of captured rifles from Bulgaria. It was thought at the time that new consignments were keeping pace with losses. Large supplies of Mauser rifles + ammunition were getting through from Germany when direct links became available in late 1915

They also had 500,000 Martini-Henry, Martini-Peabody, but about 370,000 of these were very old (1877-78) and ammunition for them not believed to be considerable. Also to hand were considerable numbers of Remingtons & Winchester repeating rifles, but with little ammunition available for these. In contrast, there has never been a problem with the supply of 7.65mm. The evidence suggests that the forces in the outlying areas of the Ottoman empire (the borders of Irak (sic), Russia and Persia) had to make do with older weapons;

e.g. only the 3rd regiment of the 45th Division at Ctesiphon had Mausers, the other two regiments having Martini-Mausers. Efforts were also underway to convert the two types of Martini to 7.65, but it does not sound large scale at 150 per day.

SAA imports were supplemented by local production at various factories, including Zeitun Burnu, on the sea of Marmora near Istanbul, which it was thought managed 30,000 rounds per day.

Finally, there is a foot note in the Turkish 'Ordre de Bataille' which mentions 12 new Infantry Regiments, to which the Sultan presented colours on 26th December 1915, being said to be armed with captured Russian rifles supplied by Germany

regards

Michael

[TonyE]

Thanks for that, a lot of interesting information on the numbers.

Of course, as the report says, all those weapons were obsolete and the Turks were not making ammunition for them.

The Winchesters were Model 1866s in .44 Rimfire, and the Martinis and Remingtons were originally in 11mm Peabody -Martini calibre. It is interesting that they were re-barreling their old Martinis to 7.65mm, as the Turks are notorious for converting and changing all sorts of weapons, as exemplified by the "Mauser-Enfields" they made up post WWI.

The captured Russian rifles supplied by Germany, presumably 7.62mm Mosin-Nagants, would have had ammunition either captured with the rifles or perhaps made by Germany.

Regards

TonyE