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DateProcessResult
March 22, 2009WikiProject A-class reviewNot approved

Adopted/perfected. Edit October 9, 2016.

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"Following precise wording of source unnecessary - original word in this context more relevant."

I don't understand the objection to the word that precisely describes what happened, which is that the gun was perfected in Britain. Wikipedia's remit is to accurately reflect what reliable sources say. "Adopted", with no further qualification, is not more relevant, since it implies that the gun was accepted without modification. It wasn't. It was perfected and then mass produced.

"It is thus a recorded fact that the Lewis gun was perfected in Europe, not the United States." The Belgian Rattlesnake; The Lewis Automatic Machine Gun, William M. Easterly, Collector Grade Publications, 1998, p71.

It may be relevant to say "adopted", but why is it "more relevant"? To include this word at the expense of "perfected" is a distortion of the historical facts. I can't detect any obviously partisan reason for this unwarranted insistence. What is, then, the reason for it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.81.156.181 (talk) 23:23, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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The Lewis and the Belgian Army

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"In some circumstances it can be safely assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence of it could be discovered by qualified investigators. In such circumstances it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its non-occurrence." — Copi, Introduction to Logic (1953), p. 95. There is no mention of the Lewis in the Handbook of the Belgian Army, nor in the WWI Sourcebook, nor in any of the books that Pierre Lierneux has published or edited, nor in the Militaria series of magazines published by Histoire & Collections. There is evidence of the pre-1918 Belgian Army using or trialling the Maxim 1910, tne Madsen, the Hotchkiss M1909, the Berliet, the Colt, and even the Schwarzlose, but no Lewis. Since the subject is small enough to allow in-depth scrutiny, one can reasonably expect that the Lewis would have shown up at some point, but it hasn't. It's worth pointing out the minor paradox that the country in which the Lewis was created did not issue it to its own army. If you can demonstrate otherwise, I'll be happy to amend the article. Hengistmate (talk) 12:37, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Hengistmate:
Grant, Neil (2014). The Lewis Gun. Oxford (UK): Osprey. ISBN 978-1782007913. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Page 11 : "Five of the original prototypes (chambered for the 7.65×53mm Belgian cartridge) were supplied to the Belgian government the day after war broke out, followed by another 15 prototype guns in .303 British, and by 15 August they were being used by the Belgian forces defending Namur."--Le Petit Chat (talk) 16:46, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"Die Klapperschlange"

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I deleted the sentence which claims that the Germans in WW1 used to call the Lewis gun "rattlesnake".

I am German and I have never read any German WW1-reports where this gun is called "Klapperschlange", the translation of rattlesnake, although I have read many reports where the Lewis gun was mentioned. Ernst Jünger mentions the Lewis gun many times in his war diaries, but never as anything else but "Lewis gun".

It is also logical that they didn't call this gun Klapperschlange, because in 1914 the average German didn't even know what a rattlesnake was.

There are no rattlesnakes in Germany.

Maybe someone read about rattlesnakes in some book, yet he most likely never saw a rattlesnake in motion or heard it rattle. This is so obviously one of the many just-so stories of WW1.

That is what the source says. Loafiewa (talk) 19:33, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Loafiewa: The source is some American who wrote an article for "Guns Magazine". This is not really high standard historical research.

I gave two reasons why this is nothing but an american just-so story: 1) There is no German source for this 2) there is no reason why any German soldier would have called it "belgische Klapperschlange"

I call on you to delete it, UNLESS anybody finds a German source for it. You know: a German source for what Germans allegedly said, not some american gun nut-magazine writer. Or someone can at least explain why Germans in 1914-1918 should have called it "Klapperschlange" when nobody of them could have known what a "Klapperschlange" was. 2003:D1:B70A:EC01:38AF:E766:3ADB:5D80 (talk) 20:27, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've put a second source in there, so it's not just a "gun nut-magazine" that's making the claim. I don't speak German, so I wouldn't be able to find any German sources for it, but there's nothing that says if a piece of information is about a specific country, you're only allowed to source it to works from that country. Loafiewa (talk) 20:52, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Loafiewa:

Ok, you made the decision to keep something in the article which is a ludicrous and totally unfounded claim, even though I gave you good reasons why it shouldn't be included. The problem is that it is very difficult to proof that something "isn't". Where can I get a source for the non-existence of something?

If German soldiers would have called it "rattlesnake"; it would be in memoirs like "Storms Of Steel" by Ernst Jünger, novelizations like "All Quiet On The Western Front", German WW1-movies like "Die Somme" from 1930 or "Stoßtrupp 1917" from 1934, tactical treatises like "Infantry Attacks" by Erwin Rommel, reports, or German books about military history. But it's not there.

And "Not there" is not a source. Yet, Wikipedia should be critical about the informations provided in their articles.

So I can only appeal to your judgement.

1) The author of this book does make the claim that Germans called it "Belgian Rattlesnake", but does not provide any source for it.

2) The Author also states:

During the war, around 145,000 Lewis guns were produced, compared with just under 74,000 Vickers guns, making it by far the most numerous machine gun in British service

...When the Wikipedia-article has an entirely different number for the Lewis Gun-production: 50,000. So who makes the decision which numbers to take? Apparently you can't take everything in that book at face value.

Last point: 3) Here is another quote from Neil Grant: Third, and perhaps most importantly, it was the only Allied machine gun to have registered sufficiently with the German soldiers for them to give it a nickname, the ‘Belgian Rattlesnake’, which does imply that they saw it as a more significant threat than other weapons they faced.

As a German in 2021 I can assure you: "Belgische Klapperschlange" does not sound threatening. It sounds odd. We only know "rattlesnakes" from Western movies made long after WW1 was over and "threat" is not associated with it.

It is simply a ludicrous claim.

The most likely version is that the americans called it "rattlesnake". Then it got retold several times, until it became the current version. But I am at the end now. I can't proof that nobody ever said something. 2003:D1:B70A:EC01:38AF:E766:3ADB:5D80 (talk) 22:14, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is a nickname, an unofficial name that not everyone will use. Correspondingly, in A Rumor of War, the author refers to the M60 several times, but never calls it 'The Pig', and in A Moment of War, they refer to a Maxim gun, which they never call The Devil's Paintbrush, whereas I found in With the Old Breed they said both Thompson and Tommy Gun. As for the production disparity, that appears to be an example of WP:SYNTH, The World's Greatest Machine Guns does mention that Lewis guns were produced in a 3:1 ratio compared to the Vickers, but does not say they made 50,000 of them, no specific WW1 production figure is given. Loafiewa (talk) 12:02, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You will find that this point was made in 2013. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lewis_gun#First_Use_and_%22Belgian_Rattlesnake%22 The idea is ludicrous but verifiable, as with many things in Wikipedia. See George S. Patton and the Battle of Cambrai. Hengistmate (talk) 12:35, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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