Dr. Jerry Sanson
Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum
November 2025
The Lewis machine gun is often identified with the British Army which used it in large numbers during World War I. It was, however, developed by an American who offered it first to the United States Armed Forces whose leadership turned down the offer because they distrusted reliability of the new weapon.
The history of the weapon starts with Iowa doctor Samuel McClean who set out to create a portable air-cooled machine gun during the early twentieth century when most machine guns were heavy and water-cooled. Investors in McClean’s company brought in U.S. Army Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis in 1910 after two company bankruptcies, and he refined McClean’s initial designs before offering the resulting weapon to the U. S, Military in 1911, but its leaders rejected it as too radical with unproven reliability. Rumors circulated at the time that a rivalry between Lewis and General William Crozier, chief of the Ordinance Department, also affected the military’s decision.
Lewis believed that adoption of his new weapon was stopped by “ignorant hacks,” as he called his critics, so he resigned from the Army in 1913 and moved to Europe in hopes of finding a market for his gun. British military leaders quickly saw the advantages that Lewis’s gun offered, so he established an armory in Belgium and made arrangements with the Birmingham Small Arms Company to manufacture the weapon in England.
The Lewis Machine Gun made the task of providing support fire when and where troops needed it easier and quicker than water-cooled guns allowed. The Vickers. a heavy machine gun used by the British, was reliable and accurate, but it weighed about 90 pounds plus the weight of the tripod that supported it, the weight of water needed to cool it, and the weight of ammunition for it made the task of shifting it to a new position arduous. Vickers guns required a crew of six to eight soldiers to move each of them. A Lewis gun weighed about one third the weight of a Vickers and could be operated by one soldier. British armed forces during World War I, therefore, developed the practice of using the Vickers in relatively stationary positions such as trenches and used the Lewis for mobile operations.
The Lewis did not give up effective firepower for weight reduction and portability. It fired 500-600 rounds of .303 bullets per minute. A drum-shaped housing encased the rounds and was mounted on top of the gun. This design allowed quick changing of cartridge cases. The appearance of the flat cartridge case on top of the gun made for a distinctive low profile, but the design for the cooling system made it a formidable weapon. Lewis designed a metal shroud for the barrel that used the motion created by a fired round to draw in fresh air for cooling. This system allowed the gun to fire for a sustained period of time and also allowed it to continue firing in situations where water-cooled guns were rendered useless because water to refill a cooling tank was not available.
The British and French found the Lewis gun useful for infantry, but they also used it in aircraft. The cartridge case was enlarged so pilots would not have to change them as often while flying the plane, but the gun proved to be as capable in the air as on the ground, perhaps even more so because the lower temperatures at high altitude made the gun’s cooling action even more effective..
British and Allied troops appreciated the capabilities of the Lewis gun, but perhaps its greatest compliment during World War I came from the opposing side. The German military evidently captured about 10,000 Lewis guns during World War I and used a factory in occupied Belgium to modify them to fire Mauser rifle rounds. The “Belgian Rattlesnake” as they called the Lewis because of the distinctive sound it made when firing, fought on the German side as well as for the Allies.
The Lewis Machine Gun on display at the Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum is a reminder of this pioneering weapon that was considered a radical advance in weaponry when it was new.