The Browning Automatic Rifle (Weapon, 15)

Browning's Automatic Rifle (BAR) has achieved mythical status. Robert R. Hodges gives a good summary of the BAR's history. The slim volume has a lot of illustrations and tables, an index, table of contents, and on page 44 there is a list of squad automatic weapons.There are a few missing bits of information, but I'm not griping--there's only so much information that can be crammed in eighty pages. For example, I went to the Browning Arms Museum in Ogden, Utah and spoke with the staff about the BAR's development. At the time the US Army rifle companies were basically armed with bayonet and rifle with a few pistols along for the ride. Machine guns were treated like field artillery--they were slightly more mobile, had a fraction of the range, were less destructive compared to field guns, but the machine gun could deliver continuous fire instead of 12 to 18 rounds per minute. The squad in American infantry existed as an administrative unit and the smallest tactical element was the company. France developed the squad containing a light machine gun team and a shock element (rifle, bayonet and grenades). John M. Browning had been working on the BAR since around 1908 and had a successful commercial semiautomatic sporting rifle, the Remington Model 8 (and the FN equivalent) but there was no market for his full power "machine rifle." Browning developed it to replace some of the M1903rifles to give the rifle companies mobile firepower, and the BAR was originally supposed to be fired semiautomatically most of the time, with full-auto fire reserved for "emergencies." Besides, there were some Model of 1909 Benet-Mercie light machine guns assigned at company level--the "daylight machine guns" that were a factor in Pancho Villa being repelled during his raid on Columbus, New Mexico early in the morning of 9 March 1916. Why get another gun when the US Army already had a new machine gun? The US Army didn't need the guns they had, so why buy a new gun? One of my reference sources gives the 1909 price of the M1903 Springfield bolt action service rifle as $20.85 each and Hodges listed the average 1918 price ranging between $112.00 to $123.20. Worse from the foot soldier's viewpoint was weight--a BAR weighs as much as two Springfield rifles. Then them bean countin' bureaucrats have to really ruin things by demanding that automatic riflemen carry at least twice the ammunition of a rifleman...I liked how the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) platoon organization was described. The French had a simpler platoon organization in World War One and made an automatic rifle organic to the rifle squad, but Britian and America had four diverse elements that were mixed and matched at the last minute--a machine gun squad, a rifle grenadier squad, a hand bomber (hand grenade) squad and a bayonet squad (riflemen). This AEF organization wasn't adopted Army-wide, just for the Western Front; it was great for the peacetime garrison administrative mindset but failed in combat because there was no unit integrity at the squad level. As for the BAR, it wasn't a rifle (even though John M. Browning designed it to be an individual weapon) and it wasn't a machine gun. When the AEF returned from Europe, the pre-war organization left no place for the 100,000-plus BARs on hand.Meanwhile, the rest of the world, especially those armies that experienced modern combat, sought two weapons for their rifle squad--a semiautomatic rifle and a crew-served squad automatic weapon (the light machine gun). There had been enough experience--bad experience--that when military budgets would fund ONLY a semiautomatic service rifle OR a light machine gun, the LMG was funded because it did most of the squad's killing. Everybody except for the United States and Germany developed competent light machine guns--Germany developed a "universal" or General Purpose Machine Gun that could be used as an aircraft gun, a tank gun, a heavy machine gun, an anti-aircraft machine gun and a squad-level light machine gun. America had the BAR, and so America pretended that the BAR was a light machine gun and used it that way. The 1938 reforms led to placing a pair of BARs in a BAR squad and equipping the rest of the platoon with M1 Rifles--and until enough M1 Rifles were available, one BAR per rifle squad was incorporated to give the rifle squad armed with the M1903 adequate firepower. Until about 1941 the US Army was going to replace the BAR (and the tommy gun) with the M1 Garand Rifle--but they got a reality check reading reports from Europe. The Marines made good use of the BAR (and the tommy gun) between the two wars and codified what they had learned in their 1940 Small Wars Manual--interestingly, the Marines opined that two Garands per squad could replace the heavier and more expensive BAR and tommy gun in the rifle squad (for fighting in close terrain, the Marines task-organized their squad as two elements for more rapid reaction). The BAR squad was a stop-gap measure until enough Browning M1919A4 company-level "light" machine guns had been produced. Both the Army and Marines entered World War Two with the doctrine that the BAR was a crew-served weapon and ended the war using the BAR as an individual weapon.I liked the details of criminal and police use of the BAR during the Roaring Twenties and Depression Era. Only 15,000 Model 1921 Thompson Submachine Guns were made by Colt for Auto Ordnance compared to 102,000 World War One BARs plus 5000 commercial BARs. It took until 1940 to sell off all of those tommy guns. Basically, there were more than seven BARs in America for every Thompson Submachine Gun. How many old Lewis guns were used by criminals? There are many pistols and semiautomatic sporting rifles currently on display in the FBI museum and other police museums that were converted to machine guns during the period between the two wars when the criminals couldn't get their hands on individual automatic weapons--such as the BAR. The BAR was a handful for the armed criminal and the law enforcement officer both, leading to the development of the Colt Monitor--an unsuccessful attempt to combine rifle power with automatic fire. Note how few belt-fed water-cooled machine guns were used by American gangsters. BARs were frequently looted from National Guard armories and from police stations. Due to the larger number of BARs and better performance on automobiles, and due in no small part to being able to requisition surplus BARs from military stores, the BAR was more popular with state troopers than the tommy gun.During World War Two the United States had the BAR for squad level firepower and the M1919A4 (and M1919A6) for company-level firepower. Depending upon the squad type, a rifle squad might have the M1919A4 or the BAR as its base of fire weapon. Marine Raiders and the First Special Service Force dabbled around with the Johnson Light Machine Gun but that weapon proved inferior to the BAR. During World War Two experimental select-fire Garand rifles such as the T20 were tested as BAR replacements, and there was a reverse-engineered MG-42 that failed. The main reason for failure was that World War Two production of the BAR added 188,000 more to the original 102,000 World War One BARs (and those were modified to bring them up to M1918A2 standards--if they survived to be modified). That is less than the 351,000 M1919A4 machine guns produced during World War Two from 1942 to 1945. At least the BAR passed military acceptance trials, unlike the M1921 Thompson Submachine Gun!Hodges didn't mention that late war M1 Rifles rolled off production lines at a cost of less than $24 each to Uncle Sam in 1944. Comparing the cost of the BAR to the other weapons puts in perspective two logistics problems that the BAR brought to the battlefield--a BAR cost more than the standard service rifle, and the BAR used different feed system (clips, magazine loaders, and box magazines) and required different training programs. No wonder the M14 Rifle was sold by the US Army to Congress as replacing the M1 Rifle, the M2 Carbine, the M3 Submachine Gun, and the BAR.SLA Marshall's study of weapons used in Korea was referenced but Marshall noted that the Garand and BAR were effective to 200 yards in ordinary hands and seldom effective past 400 yards, the more-numerous M1919A4 was credited with a 400-yard effective range in Marshall's disputed studies. Colonel John George in his "Shots Fired in Anger" recommended putting a telescopic sight on the BAR and using it for sniping--George related that five shots would be certain but one shot might miss or not hit hard enough.I liked reading the Popular Culture references but missed the "Combat" television series where the BAR was a major star. Between the BAR, Sergeant Saunder's tommy gun, and the rest of the squad's M1 Rifles, that 3 ID squad blew away their German opponents week after week.The BAR was far from perfect but I fault Army doctrine that tried to employ the BAR as a light machine gun for most BAR problems. Too big and heavy for bayonet fighting, based on older technology, more expensive (not just cost per BAR, but duplication of training and supply lines to keep the right parts in stock), the Army tried to quietly shed its BARs at least three times--the M1 Rifle, the wartime experiments with the T-20 and reverse-engineered MG-42, and finally the M14 rifle. I was assigned M60 machine guns for six years on active duty in the Army and used M60's for five years on an anti-terrorist security contract and then in the Army National Guard I was assigned an M249 for eight years and carried one on deployment to the Middle East on Operation Iraqi Freedom II--misusing these crew served weapons as individual weapons. It's difficult to explain the difference between crew-served and individual weapons--both M60 and M249 CAN be handled by an individual but are better served by a crew of two for maximum effectiveness. The M249 is being replaced partially in the US Marines by the M27, a true automatic rifle. In my opinion the M27 is the true BAR replacement even though the M855 cartridge has approximately half the muzzle energy of the old M2 Ball--the M27 is far more accurate under battlefield conditions due to closed bolt semiautomatic fire (and open-bolt automatic fire to limit cook-offs) and because of superior sight systems.A moment ago I mentioned that the world's armies had two things on their shopping lists--semiautomatic service rifles and light machine guns to arm their rifle squads. Most nations prioritized the light machine gun because it was the most effective squad weapon. The USA had the BAR and so the M1 Rifle was America's priority.The BAR was neither service rifle nor light machine gun, neither fish nor foul. The BAR was what America had when it went to war in 1941.

Highly informative.

This book explains the history of the Browning Automatic Rifle in a not overly detailed fashion, which is alright with me. I am not a huge fan of technical engineering details about small arms but am more interested in their history and use. I learned that the BAR was designed to be used by infantry for attacking emplaced machine gun positions, and that US soldiers used it to do just that in World Wars One and Two and Korea. Several versions of the BAR and the standard equipment on each version are listed, including the Colt Monitor, which is a weapon I had never heard of until reading this book. The Colt Monitor was one deadly looking weapon! The author states that the BAR was used in combat by US soldiers in World War I, which is contrary to information I have heard from other sources. The author documents that use, so I tend to think his version of the BAR story in World War I is correct. I enjoyed the book's rendition of the use of the BAR in World War II and Korea, especially the differences between the Marine Corps and Army methods. I was surprised to read that BARs were used by the Poles, British, and even the Germans in WW2.There were some very good photos in the book.I deducted one star because the section on the use of the BAR by Bonnie and Clyde took up more pages than the history of the BAR in the Korean War. At most, the fact that Bonnie and Clyde and the law officers who hunted them used BARs deserves two paragraphs. Frankly, I was disgusted by the color illustration of criminals murdering law officers, some of whom had BARs, with BARs.

This publication contains a mountain of history and photographs of the Browning Automatic Rifle and has value for that alone. It has a plus in that it discusses the accouterments used with the BAR in WWI which were very specific to each member of the BAR team. There are many pictures that I have not seen in publication before and I enjoyed that aspect of this book. There are many anecdotal stories of the BAR being used in combat. Some of these stories seem a little abbreviated and leave the reader with a sense of the whole story not being told.The reason that I didn't give this book five stars is that it has one great defect. The two places where the book attempts to explain the BAR's operation are in error in a major way. Despite having the official U.S. Army manuals in the bibliography, whoever wrote the descriptions on pages 20 and 56 apparently didn't read them. Both descriptions(in grey boxes making me wonder if someone other than the author wrote them) state that one pulls the operating handle to the rear, releasing it and "chamber the first round". As anyone who has fired a real BAR knows or studied the manuals, the BAR operates from the "open bolt" design. That is, one pulls the bolt to the rear which locks in the rear position. When the trigger is pulled the bolt releases, going forward to chamber and fire the round. If the bolt goes forward and chambers a live round, the weapon fires period. This is such a glaring basic technical error that it puts the validity of the rest of the content in the book in doubt. I want to believe that the author knows the proper operation of a BAR and something was changed from what he intended in the final editing and printing process. I hope that Osprey corrects this huge error in future printings.This book has value for the many photographs and hopefully correct history presented. However, I caution the reader against accepting the technical descriptions at face value. If you want to know about the operation of a BAR, get the actual military manuals.

My uncle loved it

Brought this book for my husband at Christmas he has really enjoyed reading this book.