Forgotten Weapons channel posted a video on Youtube about the 11mm Vickers balloon buster machine gun a week ago. I though the people here might find this interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIsdE-2g2jM

I haven't actually found a video that would go into this much detail even on the regular 7.7mm aircraft version of the Vickers. I imagine lot of the changes detailed here (that are not specifically there to make the weapon function with the 11mm Gras cartridge) are shared by the 7.7mm aircraft Vickers as well.

The video also claims that Eddie Rickenbacker had one regular and one 11mm Vickers on his aircraft at some point. Does anyone know if this is actually true and how it worked in practice as mixing the two sounds pretty impractical. Regular Vickers would apparently have a muzzle velocity almost twice as high as the 11mm Grau which seems like it could be an issue even at typical dogfight ranges.