Posted on 12/28/2020 10:04:53 AM PST by Onthebrink
Later versions were automatic-only. My FiL carried one in Korea. Apparently the fumes from the flamethrower he was initially issued in AIT made him nauseous. So he got the BAR instead. Yeah, I don’t think I’d want a bomb literally strapped to my back, either.
“The MG34 and later MG42 were much, much superior to the BAR as a squad level automatic weapon.”
Different era’s and different tactics. The MG34 was a general purpose belt-fed machine gun designed before WW2. The BAR was a designed to solve a specific firepower problem in the trench fighting of WW1. Amazing it lasted as long as it did.
Actually, it was Bonnie who loved it, Clyde modified one for her. He cut off a few inches of barrel and butt stock so she could use it.
Point man used the to great effect in Korea. Didn’t the FBI use one to chop up Bonnie and Clyde?
The BAR was still the squad-level automatic weapon into WWII.
The German evolved the firepower at the squad level for WWII, the US did not. The M1919 MG was not a squad level weapon in WWII, we stuck with the BAR.
“..My father lugged a BAR through four campaigns in the Pacific. In November 1944, he used his BAR to take out a couple of Japanese machine gun nests that were holding up his squad on a recon mission on Leyte. He earned a Bronze Star that day and a promotion, which meant he didn’t have to carry the BAR on Okinawa because then he was toting a Garand....”
Cool...seriously, that’s something to be proud of..for sure.
Mine was a PFC, 1st Marine Div., G27. He did manage to pick up a couple of purple hearts on Okinawa. Back then, IF you could still walk and shoot, you stayed in the fight. He was wounded twice. Both times it was non-life threatening although he did walk with a slight limp during cold weather until the day he passed.
He didn’t talk about the war a whole bunch, but the few times he did, he swore by that BAR. I do believe he’d have brought it home with him if they’d had let him have it. If he said it once, he said it a thousand times: “It was a real love/hate thing. I hated carrying it, but I loved the way it shot.” Or something like that.
Belgians created a version with those features the FND.
Not arguing that point. You are exactly correct. The BAR was pressed into a role that it hadn’t been designed for. That was my point.
The BAR was outstanding when first developed in WW1 but without improvements was by WW2 inferior to other LMGs.
agreed, but i was under the impression the article was about when it was brought into service, not a future war where it long in the tooth for the job it was pressed into
To me, the article covered the full history of BAR usage from WW1 to Vietnam without ever mentioning the lack of significant technological upgrades.
that’s prolly cause you read the whole article... 8^)
proudly posting wiout reading the whole article since 2004
i still think comparing it to future weapons is apples and oranges and like any technology compared to future tech will almost always come up short, specially when a mature weapon is pressed into service against new and superior designs
that to me is a failure of procurement rather than the weapon itself
it’s still a legend
freegards
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