Australian Army Museum of Western Australia > Records

World War 2, Western Australia, Fortress Fremantle. Swanbourne Battery, Lewis gun pit

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c. 1943

Subcollections

Fortress Fremantle and the Defence of Western Australia

Overview

This photograph is taken at Swanbourne Battery and shows a typical gun pit with the three soldiers operaing the Lewis Gun.

Historical information

The Lewis was a World War One–era light machine gun. Designed in the United States, the design was finalised and mass-produced in the United Kingdom by BSA . The weapon was widely used by troops of the British Empire during the war. It had a distinctive barrel cooling shroud (containing a finned, aluminium breech-to-muzzle heat sink to cool the gun barrel) and top-mounted pan magazine.,
The gun's cyclic rate of fire was about 500–600 rounds per minute. As the War progressed the addtion of Lewis guns iallowed the size of infantry sections to be reduced without any loss of firepower. The Lewis gun used a pan magazine holding 47 or 97 rounds. Pan magazines hold the ammunition nose-inwards toward the center, in a radial fan. Unlike the more common drum magazines, which hold the rounds parallel to the axis and are fed by spring tension, pan magazines are mechanically indexed.

Details

Registration number

cwa-org-32-AMWA65117

Item type

Photographs

Themes

War and Conflict

Contextual Information

P2020.99.36
MIL1989.065

Year

c. 1943

Australian Army Museum of Western Australia