When I first assembled the Angriff! section of the site, I could not find any information on the standard BESA machine gun found on Second World War British tanks, especially their caliber. The only hint I had were that early British infantry tanks were often armed with Lend-Lease or Cash-Carry Browning .30-caliber machine guns, so I assumed the BESA was of a similar caliber. In so doing, I misidentified the BESA as a .303 or a .30 machine gun. Thanks to the dedication of one visitor of this site, Sam W. Sim, I fixed this error and created this page in tribute.
What follows is the text Mr. Sim sent me about the BESA, which is interesting stuff for people who like guns. I have edited it only slightly, to correct capitalization more than anything else.
Enjoy,
Tim Cooper
Supreme Emperor of the Weirdo Zone
The BESA machinegun was not .303, but rather fired the same 7.92 mm round as German rifles and light machineguns. Adapting a Vickers MG to a tank had proved a near impossibility. The old water cooled Vickers had an action that was too long for convenience inside a tank, and the water filled jacket that was too vulnerable to damage to maintain cooling. In the case of the Vickers Gas Operated Machinegun, it wasn't reliable enough at that time to be used for a sustained fire role that coaxial use in a tanks demands. Instead the Royal Armoured Corp decided to go with the Czech ZB 56 rifle caliber heavy machinegun. The ZB 56 could not be converted successfully to fire the rimmed .303 cartridge, and so to get the weapon into service quickly it was manufactured in it's original 7.92 mm cartridge... which left the RAC with the fun of firing the same rounds as the fellows they were shooting at.
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Sam W. Sim
Thanks to Sam W. Sim for making the Weirdo Zone Infonet Database that much better and greater! May angels and archangels forever sing praises to his name (bringing the list up to two... Daniel Cummerow for allowing me to use his fractal math music in the beginning stages of my site, and now Sim for his help).