How many rounds did the D.H.2's drum hold?

Short answer

Ninety-seven, in the gun's aeronautical use: the aircraft-mounted Lewis employed self-contained 97-round drums. The Lewis's pan magazine could hold either 47 or 97 rounds. The D.H.2 carried a single .303 in (7.7 mm) Lewis gun.

Published: November 1, 2026 · Updated: November 1, 2026 · Edited by Above Ten Thousand · Editorial policy

How many rounds did the D.H.2's drum hold?

Machine gun, light (AM 775524-2)Armes Automatique Lewis; Birmingham Small Arms Company Ltd (CC BY), vía commons

A Lewis with a 47- or 97-round pan

The D.H.2's armament consisted of a single .303 in (7.7 mm) Lewis machine gun. The Lewis was fed from a pan magazine holding 47 or 97 rounds. In its aeronautical use the gun employed self-contained 97-round drums, and its popularity as an aircraft machine gun was due in part to that, to its light weight and to its being air-cooled.

Why the gun sat in the nose

The British did not yet have any means of firing forward through the propeller of a tractor aircraft. At the start of the war only the unusual French SPAD S.A, the so-called "pulpit aircraft," and the British pusher fighters Vickers F.B.5, Airco D.H.2, Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2 and F.E.8 could readily use the Lewis as fixed, forward-firing armament.

A nickname and a predecessor

The D.H.1, an earlier design from the same company, shared the pusher configuration and housed the pilot and observer in two open tandem cockpits in the nose, with the observer's cockpit stepped down below the pilot's and fitted with a machine gun. That model saw operational service only in the Middle East theatre, where six Beardmore-engined D.H.1As arrived in July 1916.