Tyranny of Steel

While Berengar had begun his campaign in the Iberian Peninsula, rule over the Kingdom of Austria, and the efforts to oversee its industrialization were taken over by his father-in-law Chancellor Otto von Graz. At the moment, the man was sitting at his study within his chateau inside the upper-class district of Kufstein. He was staring at a series of weapons blueprints that would be vital to Berengar ’s future conflict with the church.

These blueprints were designed to operate alongside the previous weapons he had already begun testing for use in his special forces. The first design was a water-cooled machine gun chambered in 7.92x57mm LP, Berengar ’s version of the 7.92x57mm Mauser cartridge.

Unlike the Germans of his previous life, Berengar did not have to worry about the patents of the Vickers Machine Gun. Thus he decided to use such a magnificent weapon as his primary heavy machine gun for the time being.

The Vickers Machine gun was, in all honesty, just an improved Maxim Machine Gun with its action flipped upside down; this allowed it to save substantial size and weight. The Germans were unable to outfit themselves with this improved version of their machine gun due to business disputes, such as patent infringement.

A Water-cooled machine gun was exactly what it sounded like; it was essentially a heavy belt-fed machine gun that had a barrel shroud that contained water. As the barrel heated up, the water would cool it down; while this made for virtually unlimited volumes of fire, it also made the gun exceptionally heavy to the point where it would need to be used as a static weapon.

In fact, during Berengar ’s previous life, when the British Army retired this weapon from service, a crew of armorers tested a single Vickers Gun to its limits by firing roughly five million rounds of ammunition over seven days without stopping the gun. By the time they were finished, they had taken the gun apart and gauged its pieces, only to find that the weapon was still within functioning parameters.

Because Berengar currently lacked the technology to mechanize his forces, static defensive tactics would inevitably play a large part in waging war against his enemies. Thus there was no weapon suited to the task better than the Vickers Machine Gun.