Lewis Gun

The Lewis gun is an air-cooled, drum-fed light machine gun designed by American Army colonel Isaac Newton Lewis, based on earlier work by Samuel McClean, and though rejected for adoption by the United States Army before the First World War, it was manufactured under license and adopted in large numbers by Britain and other Allied nations, becoming one of the most widely used light machine guns of the war. Its distinctive rotating pan magazine mounted on top of the receiver and its air-cooling system, using a finned barrel jacket and a muzzle-booster-driven airflow rather than the water jacket of heavier machine guns like the Vickers, made it considerably lighter and more portable, allowing infantry squads and aircraft observers alike to carry genuine automatic firepower rather than relying solely on crew-served heavy guns fixed in position. The Lewis gun was widely mounted on early military aircraft as an observer's or pilot's weapon during the First World War, and it remained in reserve and secondary service with various forces into the early years of the Second World War.