Development
The Vickers K was a development of the Vickers-Berthier (VB) light machine gun, adopted in 1932 by the Indian Army. The VB, like the Bren gun, used a tilting locking breechblock. However, unlike the Bren, the VB locked its breech only at the last moment of forward travel and this fact enabled the development of the Vickers K or Vickers Gas Operated (VGO). With lighter moving parts and the VB locking design, the Vickers K had an adjustable rate of fire between 950 and 1,200 rounds per minute; faster than the German MG34. The weapon was adopted for British service as the VGO. It was test-flown with a large 300-round drum, and beat the .303 Browning in reliability. However, the wide drum would have caused problems to accommodate, since it would have interfered with wing structures. When the Browning Model 1919 machine gun was selected as the standard machine-gun armament for RAF aircraft, the VGO became redundant for the RAF. It continued to be used by the Fleet Air Arm until 1945.
Read more about this topic: Vickers K Machine Gun
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“They [women] can use their abilities to support each other, even as they develop more effective and appropriate ways of dealing with power.... Women do not need to diminish other women ... [they] need the power to advance their own development, but they do not “need” the power to limit the development of others.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“The young women, what can they not learn, what can they not achieve, with Columbia University annex thrown open to them? In this great outlook for women’s broader intellectual development I see the great sunburst of the future.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“Dissonance between family and school, therefore, is not only inevitable in a changing society; it also helps to make children more malleable and responsive to a changing world. By the same token, one could say that absolute homogeneity between family and school would reflect a static, authoritarian society and discourage creative, adaptive development in children.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)