This is the limited-quantity Exclusive Edition, which features an upgraded red casing with gold stamp design and beautiful red and gold end papers. The Vickers Machine Gun: Pride of the Emma Gees is an updated and expanded edition of a previous work by author Dolf L. Goldsmith called The Grand Old Lady of No Man's Land: The Vickers Machinegun, published in 1994. Dolf and several other subject expert collaborators, including Dan Shea, Robert G. Segel and Richard Fisher, have collectively added over 300 pages of new content and photos! This hardcover book, printed in the U.S.A., is an invaluable reference for Vickers machine gun enthusiasts.

Vickers-Maxim Machine Guns Enthusiasts' Manual is the first in a new range of Haynes ‘crew-served’ heavy weapons manuals. The Vickers is one of the best-known British heavy machine guns. The Maxim gun was the first fully automated machine gun to be introduced into military service at the end of the 19th century. Gradually refined to become the Vickers 0.303in medium machine-gun, it was used widely by British and Commonwealth forces in both world wars. Operated by a three-man crew, it was popularly known as ‘the Vickers’. Firearms expert and acclaimed author Martin Pegler, a former Senior Curator of Firearms at the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds, describes the concept of an automated machine-gun and its potential use for land forces; its genesis, design, development and early trials; and the introduction by the UK military of the Vickers machine gun and its adoption for infantry, aircraft and armoured vehicles in the world wars of the 20th century.

The world's first self-powered machine gun, the Maxim gun became a potent symbol of Victorian colonialism in the closing years of the 19th century. It was the brainchild of Sir Hiram Maxim, the American-born firearms inventor who founded the company bearing his name with financing from Albert Vickers, who became the company's chairman; Maxim's company was absorbed by Vickers, Sons and Company in 1897. Subsequent variants in British, German and Russian service – the .303in Vickers (1912), 7.92mm MG 08 (1908) and 7.62mm PM M1910, respectively – dominated both the Eastern and Western Fronts during World War I and soldiered on into World War II, while the Vickers remained in front-line British service essentially unchanged until 1968. Featuring specially commissioned full-colour artwork and written by a noted authority, this is the engaging story of the Maxim and its descendants, the innovative rapid-fire weapons that saw combat with British, German, Russian and other forces in the late Victorian era and throughout the world wars.

Created by a long-forgotten Austrian nobleman, Adolf Odkolek von Augezd, the air-cooled Hotchkiss machine gun was the first to function effectively by tapping propellant gas from the bore as the gun fired. Although the Hotchkiss would be overshadowed by the water-cooled Maxim and Vickers Guns, it proved its effectiveness during the Russo-Japanese War. The gun, quirky though it was, was successful enough to persuade Laurence Benét and Henri Mercié to develop the Modèle Portative: a man-portable version which, it was hoped, could move with infantrymen as they advanced. Later mounted on tanks and aircraft, it became the first automatic weapon to obtain a 'kill' in aerial combat. Though it served the French and US armies during World War I (and also the British in areas where French and British units fought alongside each other), the Odkolek-Hotchkiss system was to have its longest-term effect in Japan. Here, a succession of derivatives found favour in theatres of operations in which water-cooling could be more of a liability than an asset. When US forces landed on Saipan, Guam and Iwo Jima, battling their way from island to island across the Pacific, it was the 'Woodpecker' – the Type 92 Hotchkiss, with its characteristically slow rate of fire – which cut swathes through their ranks. Supported by contemporary photographs and full-colour illustrations, this title explores the exciting and eventful history of the first successful gas-operated machine gun.

All the guns examined in this new paperback edition of Machine Guns of World War 1 belong to the class known as "automatic" and seven classic World War 1 weapons are illustrated in some 250 color photographs. Detailed sequences shows them in close-up: during step-by-step field stripping, and during handling, loading and live firing trials with ball ammunition, by gunners wearing period uniforms to put these historic guns in their visual context. These fascinating photographs are accompanied by concise, illustrated accounts of each weapon's historical and technical background. The reader will learn exactly what it looked like, sounded like and felt like to crew the German, British and French machine guns which dominated the battlefields of the Western Front in 1914-18, and which changed infantry tactics forever.

During World War I, the British adopted the US-designed Lewis gun as an infantry weapon, realizing that its light weight and the fact that it could be fired both prone and on the move made it ideal for supporting advances and defending captured trenches. Later adopted by an array of countries from the Netherlands to Japan, the Lewis successfully served as the primary or secondary armament in armoured fighting vehicles and in both ground-based anti-aircraft and aircraft-mounted roles. Although it was superseded by the Bren in British service in 1937, the outbreak of World War II meant that thousands returned to active service, and it played a key role as far afield as Libya, with the Long-Range Desert Group, and the Philippines, with the US Marine Corps. Written by an authority on this iconic light machine gun, this is the fascinating story of the innovative and influential Lewis gun, from the trenches of World War I to the Libyan desert and Pacific islands of World War II and beyond.

World War I's defining weapon for many, Germany's MG 08 machine gun won a formidable reputation on battlefields from Tannenberg to the Somme. Although it was a lethally effective weapon when used from static positions, the MG 08 was far too heavy to perform a mobile role on the battlefield. As the British and French began to deploy lighter machine guns alongside their heavier weapons, the Germans fielded the Danish Madsen and British Lewis as stopgaps, but chose to adapt the MG 08 into a compromise weapon – the MG 08/15 – which would play a central role in the revolutionary developments in infantry tactics that characterized the last months of the conflict. In the 1940s, the two weapons were still in service with German forces fighting in a new world war. Drawing upon eyewitness battlefield reports, this absorbing study assesses the technical performance and combat record of these redoubtable and influential German machine guns, and their strengths and limitations in a variety of battlefield roles.