The Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR)

Candidate for the worlds first Assault rifle 

 

John Moses Browning was a genius — which is kinda like saying water is wet or snow is cold. It’s so blindingly self-evident, it really doesn’t need to be said. The operating mechanisms of his designs were revolutionary in their time, and continue to be used in modern firearm design today. Some of his masterworks continue unchanged (like the 1911 handgun), and others live on in the derivative designs of others. The Browning Automatic Rifle is one of those quintessential Browning designs that not only proved to be indispensable to soldiers in its day, but whose operating components would go on to form the basis for the main battle rifles still in use by some European countries in the 21st century.

With World War I in full swing, the need for a lightweight, man-portable machine gun was becoming more and more critical. 

Machine guns were considered to be in the same category as a mortar crew or artillery battery, namely a fixed asset that was placed on the battlefield and then never moved. But when one attack after another broke through the enemy lines and then failed to hold the ground, they gained due to a lack of firepower, the generals decided that they needed a machine gun that could move with the troops as they advanced.

The Maxim gun weighed close to 60 pounds without ammo and water. It wasn’t going anywhere anytime fast, and generals needed something better.  To that end, John Browning came up with   the 16-pound Browning Automatic Rifle, a select fire rifle capable of being carried by a single soldier and deployed at a moment’s notice. It was the first firearm to fit the traditional definition of an “assault rifle.”

The Browning Automatic Rifle (officially designated the “Rifle, Caliber .30, Automatic, Browning, M1918″) soon found its way into the American trenches and was credited as being a pivotal piece of equipment in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive of late September 1918 which led to the Armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month    (  remembrance day in the Commonwealth  ).  One of the rifles was issued to John Browning’s son Val who was serving in the American infantry in France and demonstrated its abilities in action. The rifle impressed the troops and officers on the ground as much – if not more than – the politicians and the BAR was here to stay.

While the BAR wasn’t in service long enough to make a significant dent in the Great War, it was downright pervasive in the big one. The Browning Automatic Rifle was issued as a squad level machine gun, meaning that small units now had the ability to form an effective base of fire while maneuvering and attacking the enemy. It gave the soldiers of WWII an advantage that they desperately needed in the previous war, and proved to be an extremely effective firearm. The BAR was so effective that it was still in active use when the Vietnam war heated up.

The eventual downfall of the BAR was its weight and cartridge choice. JMB chose the .30-06 Springfield cartridge for his gun because that was the primary caliber of choice for the U.S. soldiers in their M1903 Springfield rifles. Ammunition compatibility between the squad level guns meant that soldiers in the field could share ammo between each other when supplies started running low.
But while the .30-06 cartridge is a great round for killing enemy soldiers, it’s an extremely heavy and bulky cartridge. The largest magazine issued to the BAR crews was a 30-round magazine, and then only in anti-aircraft functions. Twenty-round magazines the size of waffles were the standard load , and the small capacity magazine combined with the heavy ammunition was just too much to carry. In addition, in order to fire that heavy and powerful ammunition, the gun needed to be over-engineered to take the strain of full-auto .30-06. That over-engineering led to a rifle that’s extremely overweight by today’s standards.

Sometime during the Vietnam War, the BAR was quietly replaced by the M60 machine gun. For nearly 50 years, the BAR reigned supreme on the battlefield.

Edited with permission from Nick Leghorn Thetruthaboutguns.com  October 9, 2013