Browning Automatic Rifle M1918(BAR)

Discussion in 'Weapons, Technology & Equipment' started by Coke, Jul 15, 2009.

  1. Coke

    Coke Junior Member

    I have heard the BAR was issued with a drum magazine for a short period of time, is it true? I would be greatful if any one could provide any sources about it. Thank you very much.
     
  2. brndirt1

    brndirt1 Senior Member

    I have heard the BAR was issued with a drum magazine for a short period of time, is it true? I would be greatful if any one could provide any sources about it. Thank you very much.

    No, I'm sorry. The BAR was designed for and with a box magazine, it never had a drum issued. I fail to see how one could be attached with any grace since it had a recession into which the box was placed.

    Not saying it was "impossible" to have done so, but the drums used in other weapons were eventually phased out of service since they were hard to load, heavy, and cumbersome. Even the PPsH's drum was falling out of favor with the men who carried it, they would load up one drum, and discard it when it emptied out, and replace it with the stick magazines which could be carried in little pouches attached to your "kit". That way a guy ended up with more rounds in quicker to exchange sticks, they also didn't rattle and jam like the drum had a tendency to do. Can you imagine how heavy a BAR would be with a drum mag? Jeeze, it was a load with a 20 round box.

    Here is a link to a great site covering the BAR in depth.

    Modern Firearms - Browning BAR M1918 Machinegun

    Some nice "cutaway" pics as well.
     
  3. Coke

    Coke Junior Member

    No, I'm sorry. The BAR was designed for and with a box magazine, it never had a drum issued. I fail to see how one could be attached with any grace since it had a recession into which the box was placed.

    Not saying it was "impossible" to have done so, but the drums used in other weapons were eventually phased out of service since they were hard to load, heavy, and cumbersome. Even the PPsH's drum was falling out of favor with the men who carried it, they would load up one drum, and discard it when it emptied out, and replace it with the stick magazines which could be carried in little pouches attached to your "kit". That way a guy ended up with more rounds in quicker to exchange sticks, they also didn't rattle and jam like the drum had a tendency to do. Can you imagine how heavy a BAR would be with a drum mag? Jeeze, it was a load with a 20 round box.

    Here is a link to a great site covering the BAR in depth.

    Modern Firearms - Browning BAR M1918 Machinegun

    Some nice "cutaway" pics as well.

    Cheers. Thanks for your information.
     
  4. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Guy Hudson and CL1 like this.
  5. ceolredmonger

    ceolredmonger Member

  6. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Nice.
    I'd found a few for the WW2F BAR thread, but that manual's great.
     
  7. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    I just have to jump in and say that the BAR is one of my favorites and has been ever since I saw Kirby in the "Combat!" TV show as a kid. Much maligned by experts though it is today, it was a mainstay for decades and a highly popular weapon.
     
  8. Drusus Nero

    Drusus Nero Banned

    Highly popular weapon?

    Read this then.....

    "The Raiders on Edson's Ridge could rapidly replace warped machine-gun barrels in the dark because they had done it a thousand times blindfolded. Not only blindfolded, but also working against the clock; between battles we fieldstripped and reassembled rifles, carbines, heavy and light machine guns, BARs, and 60-millimetre and 81-millimetre mortars, the artillery of the infantry.
    The BAR was a bitch. There were bolts and firing pins, extractors and receiver groups, a sliding leg assembly, a flash hider, a bipod bearing, and a recoil spring and guide. I lack small muscle skills, and I have a mechanichal IQ of about 32, but I became adroit with all infantry arms. I had no choice. It was that or my ass. The tricky part of the BAR, I remember, was putting your index finger on the chequered surface of the recoil spring guide, turning and pressing until the ends of the guide were clear of the retaining shoulders, and then carefully removing the spring and guide. You never hurried that part. If you let that spring get away from you, the guide would rip right through your throat...'..................William Manchester

    I would suggest that the Allies suffered from a lack of a support weapon family that was interchangeable like the German MG-42, which could triple as an LMG (with bi-pod attachment), and fixed weapon with a tripod, or with telescopic sites and a large supply of ammunition belts, could become 'heavy' support or even a light AA weapon. I would humbly suggest also that the BAR soldiered on having nothing to replace it in it's role as a section LMG.
    The Allies noticed particularly at Dieppe exactly what concentrated light-machine gun fire could really achieve when well sited and with plenty of rounds. The chief drawback of the MG-42 was it's hungry comsumption of rounds. I'm also told you could not fire the weapon from anything but a prone position, or with someone pushing into your back to counteract recoil, or perched with your back against a rock or wall. But these were minor faults compared to the BAR.

    I always find it amazing that a country like the United States could produce infantry weapons of such high quality, like the Garand, or the M-1 Carbine, or the .50 caliber machine gun, but failed to produce something multi role and interchangable, like the MG-42. Ahead of it's time, the U.S. Army's highly efficient GPMG -60 was patterned on it.

    Anyhow, thats my take on the BAR. Used because of the lack of anything else to fill the vital role of section LMG.
     
  9. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    Overall--yes.

    The advanatges of a GPMG are apparent to everyone, certainly to me and everyone else on this forum. You apparently misunderstood me. I did not say that the BAR was perfect, or superior to other guns in its class. As far as the question of popularity goes, many factors entire into that. Troops are often idiosyncratic in their judgments. The Lee-Enfield was very well liked in British service, though it was clearly inferior in performance to a semiautomatc like the US Garand or the German Gew 43.

    The weapon's technical flaws were well known. It was indeed difficult to strip and re-assemble. The bipod was heavy and clumsy and was often left off. The slow rate of auto fire on WWII models was largely useless and seldom employed. The gas system required close attention and frequent cleaning (as did that of the Bren). Yet the BAR was accurate, reasonably reliable, and far from a bad weapon. Nor does it seem to have been unpopular with its users, either. I've read a number of WWII memoirs, and I've never read an entirely negative comment about it. In Infantry Weapons, John Weeks notes the loyalty many ex-GIs still felt towards the BAR. Despite its flaws the weapon was very important in squad tactics, and remained so even in Korea. I have a report on infantry weapons from that conflict by S.L.A. Marshall, who reports that the BAR was one of the US rifle company's best regarded and most important weapons.

    The BAR was never intended to compete with a belt-fed gun in the first place. It suffered from the limitations of the WWI 'walking fire' concept it was designed to fulfill. It was a unique weapon, truly an 'automatic rifle,' rather than an LMG. With its fixed barrel and limited magazine capacity it was in some ways closer to a modern assault rifle than it was to a Bren, let alone an MG 34 or 42.

    Of course the Allied armies 'should' have had a multi-role gun, but you forget how extremely new this concept was at the time. In 1939, the advantages of such a system were not entirely self-evident.The Germans were able to do it because they had scrapped their WWI guns (or most of them). This was not the case with the British and US armies, who both had large stocks of older and more orthodox MMGs and box-fed squad guns. Finances played a part in the decision to keep them, but the Vickers, Browning, and BAR were all well proven and successful. The Bren was new in British service, and to get rid of it in place of something newer still was not to be looked for.

    Of course the advantages of the German system were apparent before the war was very old. So far from ignoring the problem, the Allies did their best to answer in kind. The British investigated a belt-fed Bren, we tried unsuccessfully to copy the MG 42, and we did get the M1919A6 (a belt fed LMG, flawed though it was) into service in 1943. Except for the last these projects did not bear fruit during the war, but the troops in the field added more Brens and BARs to the section/squad and sometimes supplemented their firepower in other ways as well. Norman Windrow writes somewhere that wars are not decided by the relatively small differences between infantry weapons and the Allied infantry managed to beat the German even without a GPMG. Of course, the US infantry would have liked to have a .30 GPMG and needed one but it does not follow from that that the BAR was an entirely bad or useless weapon, still less an unpopular one. It was liked well enough, even with its limitations. The Bren had many of the same flaws vis-a-vis a GMPG as the BAR, but I have never heard anyone call the Bren a bad gun.
     
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