Bren or BAR.

Awh, I gotta stick with the BAR. All the way!

 

BREN

 

Browning, only because I used it in action and it worked !

Friday 13th. April 1945
Moved over Santerno. Some M.G. nuisance and one H.E. about twenty yards away. Bags of prisoners, Kiss from Signora. "Liberatoris !". Chasing after tedeschis with 30 browning blazing!

The Browning machine gun referred to was rarely fired in anger, the exception being on this one occasion when I nearly killed Hewie our Stuart Tank driver.
We had been on the move all day and the Germans were surrendering left, right and centre. To our left, about two hundred yards away, German infantry were climbing out of slit trenches with their hands high and we were gesturing to them to get behind us and to make their way to the rear.
Suddenly someone to our right opened light rifle fire at us and Busty (SSM ‘Busty’ Thomas) lost patience and yelled at me "Let the bastards have it!" Hewie swung the tank to the right so we could face the new threat and I started firing non-stop, without giving Hewie a chance to drop his adjustable seat down below the level of fire belching from the Browning. A horrified Busty yelled: "Get down you stupid bastard!" and to my immediate relief Hewie disappeared from view before I could hit him.
Within seconds the rifle fire was replaced by more hand-raising, and we were able to proceed without further incident.


Ron

 

There you go, Ron, you just had to crop up with your real life experience and blow the wind out of the sails of all the armchair generals (myself included)

 

I LOVE THE .50 cal!!

 

Adam
Was that actually a BAR Ron? Or a Browning .30 or .50, as mounted on your Stuart?


That was the .30 Browning and we had a .50 Browning mounted aft that was supposed to be reserved for anti-aircraft fire.
The snap I've attached is the nearest I've ever seen to our actual tank

Za
There you go, Ron, you just had to crop up with your real life experience and blow the wind out of the sails of all the armchair generals (myself included) :biggrin:


Sorry mate...... I couldn't resist it

Cheers !

Ron

 

I've never seen a BAR but am biased towards the Bren

I was trained on the .303 version Bren as an Army Cadet in the early 80's and on the 7.62mm LMG version when I joined the Regular Army in '83 including Anti Aircraft training on a louch pole

I personally never had a problem with it, even carrying it around on exercise wasn't too bad because weight wasn't a great deal more than the SLR when compared to the GPMG

I was told though, as has been mentioned a few pages ago, that the beaten zone of the Bren was too small and the GPMG was superior in this area. But, not having been infantry it didn't make much difference to us in the Engineer role

 

If a BAR was good enough for Steve McQueen then that will do me!

 

Not very scientific but fun to watch.

...............and R. Lee Ermey is always entertaining.


YouTube - English BREN gun Vs american B.A.R


Hot damn, it has a surprise ending too!

 

Blimey! A Septic praising the Bren over the BAR?
But seems to support most I have read about it.

Mike

 

I voted for the Bren, though i have never fired either. My choice is based on what my father said about the Bren which he used at times during the Korean war.

 

Bren gun hands down. it is still being used today. My dad landed at Juno with the Regina Rifles and carried the Bren for two years and loved it.

 

And one thing to remember, the Bren has a bigger clip than the BAR, so less changing and more shooting at the target.
But then I would not argue, having a gun is better than not

regards

Robert

 

Although it is said to be "too accurate" for suppressing covering fire compared to other LMG's it would hit what it was aimed at. My dad used it up until Tobruk.

We didn't find out until he was buried in 1982, from blokes from his company that attended the funeral, that they survived because its accuracy allowed dad to kill the crew of an Italian machine gun nest who had them caught in the open.

 

There were no left handed BREN gunners
When you put it to your left shoulder, you can't see the sights.

 

Turn the gun upside down, you crybaby!

 

Gimme a Bren any day.Having read war comics as a kid whereI became familiar with the name"Bren" and joining the Irish Reserve Defence Forces at age 15,eh I mean 17 y'know,I loved using the Bren.What's more,we knew the British Army were still using it as well re-bored to 7.62 so it must've been good.It's advantage against the G.P.MG. that I used later in the Irish Army,was it's weight.It's downside was it was magazine fed as opposed to the "MAG" as we called the G.P.M.G which was belt fed.For me it was a classic piece of kit,like the Lee Enfield .303,which also only went out of service in the Irish Reserves,in the 80's.

 

My father was in the American Army and was in Germany when Germany surrendered. He told me when I was a boy that he had a 'Czechoslovakian BAR' on its bipod outside his tent when they got the news that Germany had surrendered. He said someone in his platoon picked it up and fired the whole clip in the air in celebration. The Capt then came over and told him to throw it in a swamp. I'm now fairly sure that his souvenir was probably a ZB-26, the weapon that the BREN was based on.

 

Not much on computers myself, but if you go to utube and type in kiwitedferny you will find an evaluation on a lot of firearms. Ted pits the Bar against the bren (He owns both).
A very fair evaluation I think.
Cheers