Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors The Lewis Gun

The Lewis Gun is steeped in Savage history.
Developed by Isaac Newton Lewis. Isaac Newton Lewis
Manufactured by Savage Arms circa WWI.
Some notable Savage Arms employees of the time had hands on as well.
1) William Henry Tue. Enoch Tue's nephew who worked at Savage as well. William Tue was a checker and believed to be an engraver AND he was a quality inspector for the Lewis gun during war time.
2) William Francis Cobb. Cobb was a machinist who worked for Savage Arms at the time of WWI. In addition to machining his role was that he was a "representative of Savage Arms for the Lewis Gun." He traveled to both the U.K. and France in 1918 and sold guns to both. Interestingly the U.S. did not purchase at the time. Cobb went on to found W.F.C.Co. where he contracted with Savage to manufacture the #150 and #175 sights.

There was one of those around Janesville Wi a few years back,when I saw it it was new or like new in a crate.I dont know what ever happened to it

That cut away video is pretty neat, very well done. Makes understanding the weapon easy.

I fired a Lewis Gun, long ago in a galaxy far away. The Vickers Gun impressed me more. Fun times.

What were the pro's and cons of each?

Do tell....

I remember liking the Vickers gun best because of its smoother "hosing" of bullets. Purely a function of recoil-absorbing weight. (Our "trigger time" was based entirely on how much was contributed to the ammo fund. Being a poor college kid you can imagine why my "expertise" is based on a couple hundred shots fired- even back when milsurp ball ammo routinely sold for $5/100. Still and all, it was expensive to take part in the monthly full-auto sessions when $10 would have filled my MG's gas tank twice, or bought two cases of beer-- priorities, man, priorities!!)

Apples v. oranges anyway- the Vickers was a static gun and the Lewis was a mobile gun. If I were a Tommy at Ypres, 1917, I would have much preferred to nest in a trench with a Vickers than stumble around in No Man's Land with a Lewis gun.

I told this story before, but it was all about a local wealthy (and very old) Class III collector who would bring specimens out to the local gun club for "plinking sessions". If Old Man Poe were alive today he would be around 130+ years old- he started collecting that stuff before there were rules against it. Heady stuff for a kid (and the adults) to be treated to using Vickers, Maxims, Brownings, Thompsons, Schmeisers, Lewis guns, etc. My God, the piles of empty brass generated and the worn out barrels tossed in the garbage....

Actually, my all time favorite was the M2 Carbine. Light, high rate of fire, very controllable.

The Lewis was 28 pounds. But it was mobile. It took two soldiers to manage one. But it was mobile.

Actually Tommies hated getting saddled with the Lewis gun. The gunner was expected to lug it (and his assistant all the spare drums), as well as the absurd amount of superfluous crap regulations demanded be carried on their persons. Example: along with rations for three days and a complete spare uniform (minus tunic), blanket roll, mess kit, full canteen, bayonet, etc. etc. etc., attacking British soldiers on the First of the Somme Offensive July 1, 1916, were also required to carry along their heavy wool great coats (overcoats). The average load carried was around 60-70 pounds- into a maelstrom of artillery and Maxim guns. A Lewis gun just added to the misery. A lot of those poor guys got mowed down on the parapet of their own trenches while struggling to get themselves and their buddies up on their feet under all that weight. There were instances of enlisted guys being court martialed for ditching their loads halfway across No Man's Land so they could try to dash into arm's length of the Germans with just a rifle and bayonet.

Hence my preferring to hang back with my Vickers gun.

The Lewis was a PITA for sure lugging around esp under fire, but it was a neat fire system, would love the opportunity to fire one. Neat and interesting video. Compared to todays fire systems, its pretty out of date, but for the time, it tossed lead downrange. Bet the Civil War Armies would have loved it. Thanks for posting Southern WI Savage.

Bob, who sponsors the Bob & Rocco shows in WI, is probably the owner of the Lewis you saw, he still has it and had it at the Franklin WI show, registered & legal to transfer, $24,000.00 for anyone who really, really 'needs' one. His is in .303 British. I think it may have been refinished, the stamping is light and the screaming Indian logo is really light.

I've seen pictures of two men with one straddled over a mules back. I would like to see what would have happened when they touch that thing off.

I remember my great uncle Elmer who was a WW 1 veteran telling us that the first time a gun cracked all the mules scattered like roaches when the lights come on.

He had a mule. He had a name (swear word for sure) for him that I can't recall but I remember he hated the M'fer.

He said that when he put his left foot in the stirrup the mule would just turn circles on him and wouldn't let him swing his right leg up to mount him.

He told me once they wanted him to shoot at the men on the other side but he would have felt a lot better about shooting all the US mules. He said "I hated them more"

Anyway, got off course there for a minute, just a little window into what it was really like....

There was a couple of good movies / plays I always liked " The Monoclad Mutineer " and " The Great Gatsby " regarding WW I

The Lewis gun was always well displayed in the armouries of Western Canada .It kind of looks like clock work , don't you think?

The Lewis guns were not always mobile, there were a couple aircraft versions, some fixed forward facing and others on turret mounts in a rear cockpit, the biplanes that took down King Kong in the original movie had Lewis machine guns in the rear turrets. The aircraft versions did not use the large cooling shroud on the barrel. In the movie 'Passage to Marseille' staring Humphrey Bogart the ship is armed with Lewis machine guns mounted on pedestals. BSA also made Lewis guns during WWI.







I noticed a couple thing I missed before, it's amazing how Fay Wray manages to spin 180° in Kong's hand when he picks her up. It also would scare me to be in the back seat of a plane and had to point out to the pilot where the Empire State Building with a really big monkey on top was at, I wouldn't fly with a pilot with that poor of eyesight.

I also watched the first video again, they had a cartridge go off out of battery, if you look at about the 7:50 mark you can see when he releases the trigger that time a cartridge drops down from the magazine and is laying at a downward angle in front of the bolt, that might be the problem.

Some interesting tidbits contained within this article...






"The Belgian Rattlesnake"

Neat.

"The workmen consider the war to be a boon"- I bet the millions who suffered in those muddy bloody trenches would've debated that....

That comment about a bayonet lug is interesting. If the gunner was big enough he could get some serious momentum going with a 26 1/2 pound rifle. The M16 with a bayonet was fairly useless in Viet Nam because it was too light to provide enough momentum to be effective for stabbing the enemy. But 26 1/2 lbs of momentum, oh boy! The term overkill comes to mind.

They put bayonet lugs on everything. The stodgy brass hats insisted on fighting the last war, were stuck in the mindset of 19th century warfare even though it was evident from Day 1 in 1914 that things were going to damned different. The biggest killer on the Western Front wasn't artillery, machine guns, or poison gas. It was total ineptitude and stupidity on the part of the Powers That Be.