To fifty guy. The question of artillery is ambiguous in ww1, at first it was the maxim and rifle that were the big killers, but as the war progressed and the sides started to make more and more Artillery pieces, then at least during the Verdun bloodbath, it was the French who recognized that it was becomming an artillery mans war, and forbade more costly attaks, where the germans poured indirect fire from their howizers, thus making it a double risk, bullets and circa 100mm arty!
Read trhe book called: The myth of the great war, by- Mosier, and you will get a good idea of how the artillery developed into a big killer, and took its place as the number one, so that in ww2, about 70% of casualties were artillery caused and 30% from firearms, ofcourse this depended, in Staligrad, the big killer was the smg, and in the Tali-Ihantala defencive battle of 44, where the Finns finally managed to stop the Russian great attack, the artillery was credited to have been the crucial element in the defencive victory... In Normandy, the Canadian army surmised that three in four casualties were from mortars or Artillery...
Anyway, if you have fired a ww1-ww2 Vickers maxim ( maxim copies as the Vickers maxim, if you mean you fired that gun, then you can say you have fired a maxim, actually Hiram Maxim was living in Britain during ww1, and was in a business collaburation with Vickers at the time, so the Vickers maxim is certainly as Maxim as a Maxim can be)!
Otherwize, I appologize for understanding your writing somewhat wrong, we seem to have the same knowledge.
And, I would love to have a 'go' on a Bofors! Is it the classic 40mm??? Does it work?? Anyway, something truely fancy to have, a true military history gem!
Got any pictures???
As, usual, I'll try to get the people here to share pic's of their fav guns (seems like i'm the only one, well, I hope some of you will put pics, even if you dont own the gun, think about us poor EU people, who have sometimes no chanche of owning a handgun 'like in the UK'!!!
).
MR POUNDR.
P.S.
The last pic, I have listed as being an 'AR-15 and a FN-fal, but the latter looks like somekind of H & K assault semi auto rifle, with supressor. Sorry about that!
