ZB-26
Posted on 12/28/2020 10:04:53 AM PST by Onthebrink
A strange fact: The Browning Automatic Rifle was loved by American GIs and criminals alike.
Origins
As the M1918 number designation indicates, the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) was issued to American soldiers during the end of the First World War. The select-fire weapon was capable of both semi- and fully-automatic firing and was intended to be used while on the move crossing no man’s land.
By firing from the hip, individual BAR operators could bring a high rate of firepower to bear on the enemy while crossing, as most machine guns at the time were much too heavy and unwieldy to be carried by a single soldier.
Though the BAR did put quite a bit of automatic firepower into the hands of the individual soldier and had significant weight advantages over crew-served machine guns, it was by no means light-weight. The original M1918 BAR weighed nearly 16 pounds, with subsequent variants tipping the scales at nearly 20 pounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at 19fortyfive.com ...
My Dad was an electrician on the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga. When the war ended with Japan, his ship was steaming for the Japanese Islands and they were going to turn Naval personnel into infantry for the invasion of the islands. Because he was a big stout guy, he was told he would be carrying a BAR. Most likely, I made it into the world because they dropped the bomb.
Steve McQueen used one in The Sand Pebbles.
“...Heavy, no interchangeable barrel, limited magazine capacity....”
And wicked accurate.
I’ve fired them. They’re awesome. Yes, what you said is correct... but they served the purpose they were built for, and they did it well.
Browning was the genius of his day.
—but the Bren was better—
All true but our enemies had nothing like it and from what I’ve read, the troops loved it.
Countless Americans and japanese alive today because of the bomb.
Clyde Barrow approved.
Clyde Barrow’s favorite weapon......................
RE McQueen:
Everything he touched, he made instantly “Cool”.
Somewhere there are Brownings in a two-hand hold
Cocked and locked, one up the spout
There’s nothing for it but to sit and wait
For the hard men to get me out
/caught in the crossfire
Used to p.ay cs counterstrike. had the browning in the game, best gun in the game in my opinion. A little hard to control ,but not real bad. Was super fun to use
If you are going to use .30-06 ammo in a fully automatic weapon it damn well better be fairly heavy. I had brief use of an M-14 on full auto and the damn thing was impossible to handle on rock-and-roll. Way way too light for that .308 NATO cartridge, which only gives up a couple of hundred FPS to the -06.
ZB-26
Comparing American to German squad level weapons in WWII, the Garand was much superior to the Mauser as an infantryman’s weapon.
The MG34 and later MG42 were much, much superior to the BAR as a squad level automatic weapon.
Unfortunately, overall the superior belt fed made the German squad more effective.
So, who knows how you make it controllable?
When the BAR was introduced during WWI they wouldn’t deploy it because they didn’t want it copied.
By WWII it was really obsolete, we just used it anyway.
‘Steve McQueen used one in The Sand Pebbles.’
so did Kirby.
22 lbs.
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