Once troops identified a sniper’s position, a rifleman with a BAR could pepper the “hide” with automatic fire more precisely than machine guns or submachine guns. In the Pacific, the BAR was a staple weapon of Marines who used it in jungle warfare and during “island hopping” campaigns. In both theaters, one of the BAR’s more interesting uses was as an anti-sniper weapon. Doctrine soon went out the window in many cases when G.I.s begged, borrowed, or stole additional BARs to lay down suppression fire in the face of Germans who carried many more portable machine guns. In Europe during World War II, the tactical doctrine was to use one BAR in the form of the updated M1918A2 per squad. True, the rifle has its weaknesses, including a tendency to overheat if shot too rapidly (the BAR has a fixed rather than a removable barrel) and difficulty to fire from the shoulder. But it became a de facto squad automatic weapon because there was really nothing better and its reliability was legendary. “The BAR gave the infantry squad an automatic weapon that could be taken anywhere a man could carry it.”Īfter World War I, the U.S. Nystrom, former Indiana State Police trooper and firearms trainer who advised Iraqi and Afghan police. “The two things that stand out about the BAR are it represented a huge advance in infantry squad weapons when it first appeared in 1918, and its reliability – it worked when it was needed,” said John C. Soon, the French army began swapping its Chauchats with BARs. Although these guns received hard usage, being on the front for days at a time in the rain and when the gunners had little opportunity to clean them, they invariably functioned well.” “Light” didn’t mean lightweight - the weapon with a loaded 20-round box magazine weighed more than 20 pounds - but compared to the Chauchat it was a godsend.Ī War Department official commenting on the BAR’s use said, “The rifles were highly praised by our officers and men who had to use them. soldiers in their M1903 Springfield bolt-action rifles. 30-06 caliber round, the same ammunition used by U.S. John Browning designed a light machine gun that fired the formidable. Browning and the men under his command advanced on German positions, firing the M1918 with devastating effect and complete reliability. Val Browning, son of the new rifle’s designer. 30, Automatic, Browning, M1918,” one of the men who received the weapon was 2nd Lt. In July 1918, a new weapon arrived in France and was quickly placed in the hands of the U.S. Hodges, Jr., noting the BAR saw action from the waning days of World War I through Vietnam and beyond. infantry units as a light squad automatic ‘base of fire’ weapon, providing quick bursts of concentrated fire,” wrote weapons historian Robert R. “For nearly fifty years the hard-hitting, mobile Browning Automatic Rifle, or BAR, served in U.S. The result was the Browning Automatic Rifle, one of the most influential and frequently-used machine guns ever designed. That not only meant the influx of American manpower but also the nation’s industrial might and ingenuity - including the formidable abilities of John Moses Browning, the Thomas Edison of weapons design. But by then, the United States had entered the Great War.
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