Pennsylvania Entrepreneur Closes The Realism Gap
by Aero-News Senior Correspondent Kevin R.C. "Hognose"
O'Brien
You see a lot of
strange things at your larger-than-average fly-ins, but a guy
walking along with a Spandau 08/15 machine gun slung over his
shoulder was an eye-opener. Such a gun is an ideal accessory for
anybody restoring a World War I German fighter, or building a
replica of one.
This wiry fellow, I thought, must have been strong as a gorilla,
as the gun wasn't making him lean over like you'd expect -- an
original Spandau weighs just about 30 pounds, and he had it hanging
from a skinny leather strap.
Turns out that it wasn't that the guy, Landis Whitsel, was
superman, but that the gun was a ringer -- a near perfect replica
of the German gun, but weighing only about five pounds (production
ones will be a bit heavier, about six pounds; the tradeoff is for
greater durability).
How perfect a replica? Well, it has all the parts that the
original had, externally, just made of lighter-weight,
flight-friendly materials. It can't load or fire ammunition, and
it's perfectly legal under Federal firearms laws (although it is
best to check state and local laws, or your national laws if you
live outside the USA, before ordering). To put it another way, I
suppose you could say I'm a former machine-gun professional -- I
was once a Special Forces Light Weapons Sergeant -- and I didn't
realize the gun was a replica till I saw, from the way Whitsel
handled it, how light it was. It probably would have fooled Oswald
Boelcke, Werner Voss or Manfred von Richthofen, too.
The original MG 08/15, was called the "Spandau" by the Allies
from the name of the Berlin arsenal which manufactured, and marked
its name, on them. It was a lightened version of the Maxim gun,
invented, ironically enough, by expatriate American Sir Hiram
Maxim. Each Spandau on a German WWI fighter had 550 rounds of
7.92mm ammunition in a cloth belt, and fired at a rate of about 500
rounds a minute. Normally, machine gunners and pilots fired
these weapons in short bursts.
The right side of the replica has the Klingstrom mechanism that
let the Imperial German Air Service pilot charge the weapon while
flying the plane with his other hand. All you Red Baron wannabees
out there will be disappointed to find that you can't actually
charge the weapon with live ammunition and blow Snoopy's flying
doghouse to splinters with it, but you might be pleased to know
that it's so realistic, it looks like you ought to be able to.
The realism continues into the little details. The bottom has
the interrupter gear. Don't actually connect this to the
interrupter mechanism on your Fokker DVII or Albatros Scout,
though; these gears are strictly decorative, as they're made of
plastic.
The maker of this remarkable artifact -- the guy walking around
Sun-n-Fun with a machine gun on his shoulder -- is Landis Whitsel
of Repligun Vintage Machine Gun Replicas in Waynesboro,
Pennsylvania. After trying to get a replica Lewis gun for his
Graham Lee Nieuport --his third homebuilt -- Whitsel bought a
business that made replica Lewis guns. But the approximate nature
of these weapons offended his sense of authenticity, and he threw
out the whole design and started afresh.
The gun is made from a variety of materials, mostly aluminium
and aluminum-magnesium alloys, but with some plastic castings; then
it's painted and weathered. It's available in versions for
radial-engined and inline-engined airplanes (they differed in the
arrangement of the interrupter gear).
This photo shows one of the Spandau's raw Al-Mg alloy castings,
for the trunnion block at the front of the receiver, compared with
its appearance in the finished "weapon". The part is welded to the
6061-T6 sheet aluminum air-cooling jacket.
This much quality doesn't come cheap. One of Repliguns's
museum-quality Spandaus will set you back a cool $2,500, although
there's a $500 discount if you buy a pair, which is, after all, how
they were usually mounted. Still, try finding a pair of originals
at that price -- not to mention dealing with gun regulations, which
ban even deactivated machine guns in some places, and getting your
plane to lift 60 or so pounds of decorative deadweight.
What if you're not a RedBaron wannabee, but are building a
Graham Lee or Bob Baslee Nieuport, or other Allied machine? Steve
Culp opted for a real Vickers gun for his enhanced (360 HP!)
replica Sopwith Pup, but then Culp is somewhat exceptional, and his
machine can shrug off the extra thirty or forty pounds. For the
rest of you, Whitsel promises a replica Vickers in the future; and
he has a Lewis gun available now, with the same painstaking
attention to detail as the Spandau featured here, for $2,000. There
are many more photos of both guns on the Repligun website.
So, now you can fix that funny looking bare place on your Fokker
Triplane or DVII. Or you can hang the gun over the mantel and make
up your own war story.