[No US 90mm AA/AT guns?]

On 17/04/2016 at 6:46 AM, JonS said:

Damn. I thought there was something in Pemberton's "Development of artillery tactics and equipment", but now I can't find it, sorry. As I recall it was post COMPASS and pre- first battle of Alamein, so we're talking about a fairly narrow time period of from ~March 41 through to June 42. And I'm also fairly sure it was in the Tobruk area (i.e., within 50-100 miles of the port). I'm reasonably sure it was in the first half of 1942. Anyway, They found about what you'd expect; ballisticly (ballistically? ballisticaly?) it worked very well (which is not surprising for a large calibre gun, firing with a really high MV, against early-war lightly-armoured Pz.IIs and IVs), but tactically it had an extremely high silhouette, no protection for the crew, and took ages to emplace/displace. And - as you noted - when they were busy tagging panzers they weren't protecting Alexandria.

IIRC, they also had to make some modifications to the mount, and supply different sights, before they could even depress the barrels low enough. Later in the war, from about mid-1943 when the Luftwaffe had become irrelevant, they started using them for indirect artillery fire, and found that prolonged firing ruined the mounts because the firing stresses were ~horizontal rather than ~vertical, and the mounts weren't designed for that.

There is some mention of 3.7 inch *howitzers* used in Crete in The Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–1945, 2nd New Zealand Divisional Artillery, Chapter: An Odd Assortment of Guns (pp 110-112). Here: http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz//tm/scholarly/tei-WH2Arti-c4-2.html.

Weren't they WW1 era?

[Lewis Gun]

14 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

I think you mean Vickers K. Yes, those were standard equipment paired on SAS jeeps for the shotgun rider and I think the LRDG soon followed suit. However, I could almost swear that earlier on in the war both outfits were home to the occasional Lewis gun. The books I had which would have addressed the question are gone now, so I am having to rely on a not-100%-reliable memory. So take it for what you will.

Michael

You are right, of course, the Vickers K, stupid me.... I will go back to my sources because ISTR the same thing - I think they pintle mounted the Lewis on the rear.

[Lewis Gun]

9 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

ISTR that the LRDG and maybe the SAS on occasion used them too. In the early days of the desert war they were using whatever they could scrounge.

Michael

They originally scrounged air cooled Lewis K's from downed Allied aircraft. It turned out to be a winner when mounted on jeeps and in this role was used right up until the end of the war in Europe.

The Lewis started off in WW1 as an LMG that required a team of 4-5 personnel - a gunner, loader and ammo bearers. It was not designed to be fired from the hip and forget about from the shoulder. It was essentially a weapon that needed to be mounted or fired prone and required a larger crew (than the Bren) to operate it - for what benefit? More weight and 17 more rounds of ammo than a Bren? The ammo pan was a b1tch to carry compared to Bren magazines too.

My guess is that it simply was superceded by the Bren gun which was lighter, more accurate, more mobile, could be fired from the hip or shoulder, easier to train on, and only required a two-person crew. Variants of the Bren were being used actively right up until the 1990s and it can still be found in some armouries around the world.