…... the bullets would then clear the blade.
In addition to the above difficulties, conditions in the field were so various, types of machines were being changed and guns, gear and ammunition were being continually modified and altered. Consequently no set rule could be laid down for an Armament Officer to follow. The job was a new one, and I really think that every one of them more or less made his own.
The fact that the guns were bound to jamb from time to time was no excuse. There was a good and sufficient reason for every failure, waiting to be discovered and put right. The Vickers light machine gun, which we used, is a marvellous and delicate piece of mechanism, and before setting out to cure its failures when hurriedly adapted to aerial work, it would have been an excellent thing to have had six months’ training in the factory. As it was, we had a few weeks’ training down at Eastchurch, which embraced many other things besides machine guns, and included the conduct of funeral firing parties. Even those jambed on more than a few occasions.
It is easy now to imagine what a tremendous problem this question of armament supervision must have been to H.Q. Not only had suitable men to be found, but there was only time to give them the shortest of trainings. It was not even possible to buy any technical books on the subject of machine guns-they had all been bought up. I remember during my training at Eastchurch feeling more and more ignorant as the time drew nearer for leaving.
Coming up to London one day I met a soldier in the train who appeared to have handled machine guns. I flooded him with questions, but as we had no parts with which to demonstrate, I could not get much out of him. I did, however, extract one or two useful bits of information. His final advice to me was, “You press the trigger, and if it works - it works." “And if it doesn’t?” “Well, if it doesn’t, it don’t - and if you try to go too far with it, it’ll bite yer.” And if you handle a Vickers lock on a dark night with cold hands, it very often does bite, more efficiently than a bull dog.
But I do not wish to reflect on the training at Eastchurch; it was excellent. Anyone with a mechanical mind and a keenness for the subject could learn as much as an average brain could absorb in the few weeks available. And for one thing I will give them full marks. They did expect us to go into the air and use the guns there. It is, I suppose, possible to learn everything necessary on the ground, though I doubt it. But it is exceedingly difficult to get a pilot to take any advice
