TACTICAL SECTION DRILL 'A' MGC [Main Title]

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  • Title: TACTICAL SECTION DRILL 'A' MGC [Main Title]
  • Film Number: IWM 471
  • Other titles:
  • Summary: British Machine Gun Corps training film on the tactical use of the Vickers machine gun in open country, 1918-1922.
  • Description: The film uses a mixture of line drawings, animation, and actuality material. The exercise is for a Vickers machine gun section of gunner, loader, and two carriers, under the instruction of a lieutenant, with a sergeant watching the whole exercise in order to criticise the actions of each man in the debriefing. All are members of the Machine Gun Corps. The setting is an area of rolling countryside with enclosed fields, a few houses, but no trenches, strongpoints, or Artillery support on either side. The officer takes the section number 1 (the gunner) forward with him by walk and crawl to reconnoitre the intended position, and there gives him his sector and the range and nature of his target - a gate in a hedge just beyond a red-roofed house 1000 yards distant. The number 1 returns to his section and briefs its members. At the officer's signal the section moves up to its position under cover of a hedge. The number 1 reconnoitres the sector and personally selects the site for his machine gun, which is then set up. Each section member in turn then checks the view along the gun's sights to the target. Finally, in the debriefing, the sergeant checks the line of the gun to the target, the manner in which the gun has been set up, the range on the sight, and the actions of each section member. The machine gun does not actually open fire.
  • Access Conditions: IWM Attribution: © IWM
  • Featured Period: 1914-1918
  • Production Date: 1920
  • Production Country: GB
  • Production Details: War Office, General Staff (Production sponsor)
  • Personalities, Units and Organisations: British Army, Machine Gun Corps (regiment/service)
  • Keywords: training, British military - combat: machine gun & [+] (object name) weapons, British - smallarm: Vickers machine gun (object name) GB, England (geography)
  • Physical Characteristics: Colour format: B&W Sound format: Silent Soundtrack language: None Title language: English Subtitle language: English
  • Technical Details: Format: 35mm Number of items/reels/tapes: 1 Footage: 1011 ft; Running time: 18 mins
  • HD Media:Yes
  • Notes: Date: the Machine Gun Corps was created in 1916 and disbanded in 1922. This film was obviously made for training in open warfare, and therefore probably after 1918 Remarks: although extremely interesting, in that it envisages open warfare so soon after the end of the First World War, this has a number of defects as a training film. It is hard to know exactly whom it is meant to instruct, the rank and file of the MGC or their instructors. It covers the duties of neither adequately Series continuity: there is no film held as IWM 472
  • Link to IWM Collections page:

    IWM 471

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