2nd Lt. Val Browning in France with an early prototype version. It's nice to have your Dad looking out for you.
Posted on 11/14/2015 10:50:19 AM PST by rktman
The Browning Automatic Rifle, officially designated the M1918, was a sweet light machine gun designed by no less a firearms genius than John Moses Browning in the tail end of World War I. Capable of spitting out .30-06 rounds at 500-600 rounds per minute, the BAR could empty a 20-round detachable box magazine in just two seconds when wide open.
(Excerpt) Read more at guns.com ...
[Kirby on “Combat.â€]
I’m watching Combat reruns now. Best show ever. They really lucked out with cast and location. MGM set for the French village. A park behind Beverely hills for outdoors. So much hardware, tanks, halftracks, German vehicles. Couldn’t be done now.
Yep, the weight of the ammo added up fast, had bandoleer belts that held 20 round mags.
When created, the M1918 BAR was a very good weapon but by WWII, it was obsolete but the US army kept using it in quantity on into the Korean War.
Me likey.
from Unintended Consequences
https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Uploads/129/Media/Unintended_Consequences.pdf
“Many of you may assume that this weapon is of necessity much more cumbersome to handle than the Krag or Springfield, and that as a machine rifle, is of little use firing single shots. That is not true, as you
will now see.”
As the Winchester rep said the words, John Browning watched a slender man of about fortyfive with a mustache step up to the firing line. Strong gusts of wind were blowing in from offshore, and the man removed his hat and laid it on the table, weighting down the brim with two loaded magazines.
“This is Ad Topperwein, who works for us. He’s going to give a little demonstration of just how manageable this rifle is on single fire. I’ll let him tell you what he’s going to do.” The factory rep stepped aside and took a seat. Topperwein held up some steel discs for the audience to see, and then addressed the crowd.
“It’s very windy today, and we need a target that won’t blow around so much. The fellows in the machine shop had some inch-and-a-half steel rod, and I asked them to chuck it up in the lathe and cut off some quarter-inch thick sections.” He held one of the steel discs edgewise for the audience to view. “They shouldn’t move around too much in the wind,” he explained.
“What’s this fellow think he’s going to do with them?” John Browning whispered to his brother. “Shoot them out of the air with a seventeen-pound machine rifle that fires from an open bolt?”
It soon became apparent that that was exactly what Ad Topperwein intended to do. The audience watched with rapt attention as an assistant took a stack of the heavy steel discs and stepped seven or eight paces away from Topperwein towards the ocean. Topp picked up one of the BARs that had just been used in the endurance demonstration, pulled back the bolt, and inserted a loaded twenty-round magazine. He held the weapon at waist level.
“All twenty face-on. Throw the next one as soon as you hear the shot,” Topperwein instructed his thrower.
The man nodded and tossed the first disc twenty feet into the air, spinning it like a phonograph record so that it did not tumble. Topp threw the BAR to his shoulder and the gun fired as the disc neared the apex of its ascent. Immediately the thrower sent another disc aloft.
In less than thirty seconds Topp had fired twenty shots. The audience had strained to watch the discs move or to hear the impact of the bullets on them. It appeared that some of them had wobbled, but the muzzle blast of the weapon drowned out any noise of bullet impacting steel.
“I think he hit a couple of them,” Browning said to his brother with genuine admiration in his voice. At sixty-two, John Browning averaged over ninety-five percent at trap, and he could not imagine hitting a single one of the steel discs using a machine rifle firing from an open bolt.
The audience watched the thrower walk around and pick up the twenty steel discs that lay on the ground.
When he brought them over to the group for their inspection, John Browning drew his breath in abruptly.
All twenty discs had 3/8” holes in them, very near the center in each case. The metal had flowed back in a lip around the circumference of each hole, as is typical when a high velocity bullet meets mild steel, and each hole was washed with silvery metal from the cupro-nickel jacket of the .30 caliber bullet.
“The current issue round is a 172-grain bullet, but I’m shooting up some old stock with the 150-grain slug.
What the soldiers are getting now is much better at long range, but the 150 is faster up close, and it’s a lot
faster than the old Krag load,” Topp explained. “It goes through quarter-inch mild steel without giving much notice.” He removed the empty magazine from the gun and replaced it with a full one. “Put ‘em all up again, same way, only edgewise this time,” he instructed his thrower. “Stand a couple steps closer— this gets a little harder.”
The man scaled the first disc upwards with its edge to Topperwein and the crowd, and Topp threw the BAR to his shoulder. This time when the gun fired, the blast was followed by a howling noise as the disc was driven spinning far out over the ocean. The thrower immediately scaled the next one into the air with identical results. In a short time, eighteen of the steel discs had been sent screaming out over the water, hit on the edge by a one-third ounce bullet traveling at over twice the speed of sound. Topp had missed two of the targets. He put the BAR back on the table and went to pick up the two discs he had missed. Ad Topperwein examined them, then turned to the awestruck crowd.
“I don’t have much experience with machine guns,” he allowed, “but the BAR is one of the smoothestoperating
rifles I’ve ever fired. I think all of us should thank Mr. Browning here, not only for this superb rifle, but for all of the fine weapons he’s put in the hands of our servicemen.”
John Browning said nothing. He was still thinking about what he had just witnessed. John Browning was also part of the gun culture.
And that would be about it.
The FBI used one to do a number on a car full of park rangers thinking they were Bonnie and Clyde.
2nd Lt. Val Browning in France with an early prototype version. It's nice to have your Dad looking out for you.
I have a friend that was usually “on point” in Korea. He loved the BAR.
In whose opinion. My dad was D-Day plus 3 and was there for the duration. Started out as a squad leader and by far the most sought out weapon was the BAR. What surprised him was the guys that always wanted to carry the BAR were the smallest squad member or replacement. Guess it was the “little guy” complex but they carried the heaviest gun and ammo in the squad with honor and pride.
He had several replacements because the BAR drew fire like crap draws flies.
Soldiers killed and wounded because the barrel of the M1919A2 couldn't be changed in battle as was possible with the British BREN, the Japanese Type 96, The German MG-26, Italian Breda and the Russian DP-27/28.
When it comes to weapons in battle I will believe my father who was in two wars. He never, ever said anything of what you claim. In his opinion it was the hardest hitting, longest range and most dependable squad weapon of the wars.
What are the advantages of an M1918A2 over a BREN?
Since you are the expert, you tell me.
I will just ask, did you ever have to fight in many, many firefights with any of these weapons? Those firefights being strung out over years and on different continents under differing weather conditions? Did your life ever depend of one of those weapons firing dependably and with accuracy? And more importantly, did your fellow mates lives depend on those weapons?
I'm not doubting your father's experiences and opinion of the M1918A2 but he had no real choice in the matter.
Fair enough. By the way, he rated the Garand right up there(maybe higher) with the BAR, the Thompson as a quaint little thing(no good over 25 yds. and hard to keep on target) and the carbine virtually useless(but he said maybe it would work in the jungles). He revered his Colt 45 for up close and personal when he got a field commission.
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