The Vickers Balloon Buster,Beginning in the American Civil War armies began using lighter than air b

The Vickers Balloon Buster,Beginning in the American Civil War armies began using lighter than air balloons to observe enemy movements, direct artillery fire, and even deliver messages from besieged cities.  In the Franco Prussian war (1870) armies began to develop guns to shoot them down.  At the beginning of World War I the British developed the Vickers “Balloon Buster” to bring down German observation balloons.  The Vickers machine gun was an improved version of the Maxim machine gun created after Vickers purchased the Maxim company in 1896.  The Vickers Balloon Buster was a version of the regular machine gun chambered in a large 11mm cartridge.  The new powerful cartridge gave the balloon buster enough range to shoot balloons out of the sky.  Typically, phosphorous tracers rounds were used to ignite the high combustible hydrogen gas which provided the balloon’s lift.  Later in the war the Vickers Balloon Buster was phased out for longer ranged and more powerful flak cannons.  However, the gun was excellent for dogfighting, and was often mounted on fighter planes.  On the ground machine gunners found that it was also brutally effective as a heavy machine gun against infantry formations.  It would serve as inspiration for other heavy machine gun designs, such as the Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun. -- source link

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