When the fighting ceased the Colt Co. had delivered 12,000 heavy Vickers guns and nearly 1,000 of the aircraft type. As was mentioned before, a considerable quantity of Vickers ground guns had been subsequently converted to aircraft use. The production of ground-type Vickers ceased on September 12, 1918, by which date the manufacture of Browning guns had developed sufficiently to meet all of our future needs. Thereafter the Colt plant produced the aircraft types of Vickers guns only. We shipped 6,309 Vickers ground guns overseas before the armistice was signed, besides equipping six France-bound divisions of troops with these weapons in this country, making a total of 7,653 American-built Vickers in the hands of the American Expeditionary Forces. Later, we planned to replace these weapons with Brownings, turning over the Vickers guns to the Air Service. But America's greatest feat in machine-gun production was the development of the Browning weapons. These guns, as has been noted, were of three types: the heavy Browning water-cooled gun, weighing 37 pounds, for the use of our troops in the field; the light Browning automatic rifle, weighing 15.5 pounds, and in appearance similar to the ordinary service rifle, also for the use of our soldiers fighting on the ground; and, finally, the Browning synchronized aircraft gun of the rigid type, which was the Browning heavy machine gun made lighter by the elimination of its water-jacket, speeded up to double the rate of fire, and provided with the additional attachment of the synchronized firing mechanism. Let us take up separately the expansion of the facilities for manufacturing these types. In the first place, the Colt Co., which owned the Browning rights, in September, 1917, turned over to the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. the task of developing the drawings and gauges for the manufacture of Browning automatic rifles on a large scale. The latter concern did a splendid job in this work. Early in March, 1918, the Winchester Co. had tooled up its plant and turned out the first Browning rifles. These were shipped to Washington and demonstrated in the hands of gunners before a distinguished audience of officers and other Government officials, and their great success assured the country that America had an automatic rifle worthy of her inventive and manufacturing prestige. By the first of May the Winchester Co. had turned out 1,200 Browning rifles.