Curse Peter Kempf. This little article on Belgium has turned into The Da Vinci Code, but without the vast remuneration.
Anyway, I need some help. There are references to Belgian troops using a Berthier machine-gun. I can't find any pics of it, just the fact that it "pre-dates WW1" and was invented by a General Adolphe Berthier. It was later developed into the Vickers-Berthier of WW2.
He seems to be a completely different Berthier from the one responsible for the Berthier rifle, who was an engineer with the Algerian railway.
Can anyone help?
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"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.
According to Ian Hoggs Encyclopedia of Firearms they are the same Berthier namely General A.V.P.M.Berthier (I bet he didn't like having to fill in forms) an army officer who developed both the Berthier Rifle and the Vickers Berthier machine gun - no mention of Algerian railways. His original machine gun of 1908 was manufactured by Pieper of Liege. It was gas operated and box fed and, unusualy for light machine guns, water cooled with water being pumped back and forth by the 2nd man of the gun crew. The loading and firing mechanism was identical to that of the later BAR which was also originally developed near Liege and there has been speculation that Browning pinched the design. Several thousand were orderd by the US in 1917 but whilst Berthier's US manufacturer was sorting out some financial issues the factory was requisitioned by a subsiduary of Brownings and none of Berthier's guns were made - the factory ending up making BARs. Berthier sold the patent to Vickers after the war. Unfortunately I can find no pictures of the 1908 weapon. The Vickers Berthier was manufactured for the Indian Army who used it in WW2. The 1928 model was put up in competition with the Bren but lost.
That's inconvenient. According to what I've found, a Monsieur Berthier of Algiers, an amateur enthusiast, ironed out the snags of the Lebel rifle and got his design accepted in 1892. A few sites say that, but that could just be copying.
A German reference says that the 1908 Berthier MG may have been produced only in prototype, but Hogg's info makes that sound unlikely. I can't even find out much about Adolphe of that ilk; the only General Berthier who crops up is of Napoleonic vintage.
That only leaves Burlington Berthier. Of Beau.
-- Edited by James H at 08:04, 2007-03-11
-- Edited by James H at 08:05, 2007-03-11
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"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.
Hogg definitely states that it was the same General Berthier who sorted out the Lebel rifle's problems. I have seen somewhere that he was a descendant of the Napoleonic General Berthier. The first weapon produced with the Berthier system was the Cavalry Carbine M1890 two years before your Algerian gentleman is supposed to have had his design accepted!
Is it possible that the Madsen in your Belgian photo is in fact a Berthier. The two weapons had a very similar layout including the forward sloping magasine and a bipod at the muzzle. The wter casing on the barrel was apparently very thin and narow.The man with the 'fishing tackle' could then the the no 2 in the squad carrying the bellows for pumping the water round the barrel and spare ammo clips. It was often standard practice in light mg crews to have a third man as a spare (to take over in case a crew member was hit) armed with a rifle. Your three Belgians would then be a light mg crew.
Almost but not quite - thats a later design than the 1908 model and this one certainly only got as far as a prototype. If, as I understand it, the 1908 model looked like the 1925 Vickers Berthier Mk 1 it had a wooden stock
Yeah, I realised after I posted that you the 1908 was the model you were after, not the 1917 version which is presumably somewhat different. I have a picture of the 1928 version of the Vickers-Berthier which does have a squarish buttstock with pistol grip and a larger front grip, but the general outline is fairly similar. The front bipod is attached to the gas tube (I'm guessing that's what it is) instead of the barrel, and the butt is actually elevated by a monopod!
Wouldn't the 1917 be closer to the 1908 than the 1920s models? Maybe not for the stock, but for the rest?
Where's the photo of the Belgians using Madsens (which might be Berthiers)? I'd like to have a look at that, too.
ETA: Ok, I found the Madsen thread, and the photo where they're laying on the ground doesn't seem to show a gas cylinder, just the barrel by itself. However in the one where they're standing backs to the camera, it looks like gun of the second guy from the right has a second tube on it...unless that's something else which is slung across his back that just happens to be parallel to the barrel (like the bipod after it's folded up, maybe?).
Reading a bit more, the 1908 would have looked quite a bit different from the 1917 in that it was water cooled. Could the water jacket have enclosed the gas cylinder and been as narrow as the Belgian guns in the other thread?
Oh, and the first name for General A.V.P.M. Berthier that I found was 'Andre'.
The Vickers Berthier Mk I was also water cooled - it was the Mk II that was air cooled so one suspects that the Vickers Berthier was a developement of the 1908 model. It seems that the water cooling jacket was very narrow indeed and water was constantly circulated round it and back out to the gunners assistant who pumped it via bellows - a form of forced cooling quite unlike the system on a heavy Maxim. The Berthier system would need to use a narrow jacket so that the water circulated round the barrel and out again fairly rapidly. Now if only there was a photo.
Sorry, but I'm sure the 2 Belgian photos are the same four men. On the man firing the gun in Pic 1 a jerkin or tabard can be made out, as in Pic 2. The double-barreled effect is the bipod, as shown in this pic of a Madsen captured in 1916. Also the sleeve on the barrel has those distinctive oval holes in it, for which I'm sure there is a more technical term. It must be a Madsen. What the thing on the other bloke's back is, I don't know. Snooker cue?
The pic of the M1917 has a bit of a resemblance to the Puteaux, don't you think?
"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.
Centurion, The narrow water jacket on the VB mark I sounds fascinating...do you have a picture of it? I have a picture that's labeled a 1928 mark I, but I figure it's aircooled since the barrel has fins. Perhaps it's mislabeled or the nomenclature on VBs is very muddled. Is there any reason to think that the 1908 Berthier's water jacket was similar to that of the later VB mark I, rather than a conventional design for the era? A full sized water jacket makes the term "light" machine gun a bit of a cruel joke to me (I wouldn't want to lug a Maxim 08/15 through the trenches, either).
James, I don't really see the resemblance between the Berthier 1917 and the Puteaux (or is that a St Etienne?). The receiver isn't nearly so tall (presumably all the rack and pinion guts in the Puteaux take up some space), and they'd look even more different with their respective magazine and strip feed loaded.
Also, Ian Hogg seems to have been confused about General Berthier's first name, too. One of his references has Andre, the other has Adolphe.
As I said I can find no photos only text description. The very narrow bellows pumped water cooling system was invented for the 1908 gun. The 1928 VB is the MK 2 when Vickers decided to ditch the water cooling system and converted to a finned air cooled system. One thought occurs - was the 1917 model air cooled or could that 'spring' that goes round the barrel actually be the water cooling system? There would be no need for a spring as the Berthier system was gas operated and I can't see how it would work as a recoil dampner. Perhaps its very thin pipe through which water is forced?
oh, I knew the 1908 model was still a mystery, but I thought you may have had a photo of the 1925 (?) Vickers-Berthier mark I.
Here's the 1928 one I was talking about, which is possibly mislabeled as a mark I: The fins don't look quite as close together as on the 1917 model, but if I understood your post, what I interpreted as fins might actually be a coiled hose for water cooling? Interesting. I found another picture of a 1920s model (before Vickers bought the rights, I gather) which is similar to the 1917, though the barrel is smooth. It has the same type of metal skeleton stock (is that the right term?) rather than wooden one.
Gas powered MGs do have springs, they're just attached to the gas piston in the lower tube rather than going inside the receiver itself. Not to dampen the recoil, but to return the piston back to it's start position on a return stroke, if I understand it. That's what the spring in the disassembled picture shows, I think, not the fins on the barrel.
The only reference to the cooling system on any of these that I've found was to the water cooled 1908, but there were no details. I have to wonder just how narrow "narrow" really means. It's odd to not be able to tell at a glance if it's air or water cooled!
1925 Vickers aquire the Berthier design and make pre production trial gun (s)? This (these) are water cooled No photos that I know of
1928 Main production of the air cooled VB Mk 1 starts and numbers sold. Manufacture is licensed in India for Indian Army (where it is produced until after end of WW2 and is prefered by some to the later Bren) various photos available
C1930 VB Mk 2 is produced, basically same as Mk 1 but no fins on barrel. Competes for contract with the Bren - looses. Some experimentally mounted on early carriers - so some photos may be found.
I don't think on looking further, those can be air cooling fins on the 1917 Berthier barrel - they are too close to each other to allow air to circulate around them to take off the heat
Yes my mistake some gas powered mgs do have springs
Centurion wrote: 1925 Vickers aquire the Berthier design and make pre production trial gun (s)? This (these) are water cooled No photos that I know of
This might be the water cooled 1925 new prototype, possibly: If so, it might give us a rough idea of the appearance of the original narrow water jacket. There are no fins on the barrel of this one, so it's not obviously air-cooled, at least. When was the method of just switching a hot barrel with a spare (cool) one devised, I wonder?
ETA: Comparing the 1928 with the slightly earlier one, I see the front handgrip has been moved back from below the gas cylinder to below the receiver. The place that it would later reside has something projecting downward in the (possibly) water cooled version. Could this be a tap or coupling to which a hose for pumping water about could be attached?
The wooden grip halfway down this gun would suggest that it was intended that it could be fired from the hip whilst advancing as per the Cauchat and the BAR. Indeed given that the VB itself was about half the weight of a BAR and lighter than a Bren and assuming that this gun was the same this would be quite practical) This would make Berthier's water cooling system impossible (unless the no 2 of the gun crew was prepared to run alongside pumping furiously) so this model was presumably intended to be air cooled. Used in this mode, like the BAR (whose mechanism it shared) only short bursts would be fired so heating would be less of a problem anyway. I think that the VB models were intended for more sustained fire from positions or vehicles so cooling would be a bigger issue.
I think I've seen somewhere that the VB Mk III (built only at Ishapoor for the Indian army) had a swappable barrel
I found another source that states that the 1908 model already had interchangeable barrels! It states that production in Belgiam was very limited. However there seems to be contradictory info floating around as this one states that it was a Lt Andre Berthier who designed the weapon, if so he must have been promoted to General awfully fast! It also states that Berthier made the conversion to air cooled whilst Hogg says it was Vickers. There was a photo of the Mk III and this has the wooden grip restored. Unfortunately this was all in a rather expensive book in my local book shop and the rest of the book was not particularly interesting so I don't have any hard copy to scan!
) so this model was presumably intended to be air cooled. Used in this mode, like the BAR (whose mechanism it shared) only short bursts would be fired so heating would be less of a problem anyway. I think that the VB models were intended for more sustained fire from positions or vehicles so cooling would be a bigger issue.
