BAR vs Garand

[The Basket]

Did the M-14 work well?
The BAR was available.
And available goes a long way.

However... The Bren was better than the BAR and the BAR should have been replaced.

 

[Shortround6]

The M-14 worked well as a semi-automatic rifle. It was as a full auto that it didn't work. It was too light and had more cooling problems than the BAR.
The BAR was replaced by the M-60. Magazine fed LMGs or squad automatics had gone out of fashion.
The M-60 was another can of worms.

 

[glennasher]

The BAR was popular all the way into Vietnam, I know a man who carried one from time to time, and the ARVNs used them, too. The BAR has a very distinctive sound when fired, it drew attention to itself fairly easily, which didn't endear it to the man carrying it, if he didn't need it really badly.
They were pretty reliable, but postwar tests claimed that other opposing arms were more reliable. That depends on what and who you read, like anything else.
I know that listening to one going boomboomboom is a very comforting thing.

 

[The Basket]

An issued military weapon gives the average soldier 2 choices.
A) Like it.
B) Lump it
So the BAR was what it was and it certainly was functional so it wasn't the worst. And the poor sod who carried at Iwo Jima or the Bulge wasn't given the option of a Type 96 Nambu.
A Garand with a 20 round magazine would have been lighter so it's certainly a trade off. And offered similar firepower.

 

[Shortround6]

An issued military weapon gives the average soldier 2 choices.
A) Like it.
B) Lump it
So the BAR was what it was and it certainly was functional so it wasn't the worst. And the poor sod who carried at Iwo Jima or the Bulge wasn't given the option of a Type 96 Nambu.
A Garand with a 20 round magazine would have been lighter so it's certainly a trade off. And offered similar firepower.

a Garand with a 20 round magazine has much less firepower than a BAR. It is much more prone to overheating and malfunctioning. It would have much more movement in automatic fire which means much more dispersion, Rounds going 20ft (or more) over the intended target/s don't have much effect.

see this site for a history of the 20 round full auto Garand. The Select-Fire M1 Garand Rifle

I would note that less than steller brains requesting this after the Japanese invasion was no more didn't seem to learn from experience as size/weight of the rifle was lowered to as much as 7.5lbs in some requests while keeping the same power cartridge.

 

[parsifal]

has anyone actually carried the BAR and fired it. I haven't, though I have fired the Bren. With such a limited magazine capacity its hard to imagine the BAR being an effective support gun. It was never designed for that purpose, but it finished up being press ganged into that role anyway.

Bit if the gun was light enough and reliable enough it could probably compensate for these inherent design shortcomings. it was designed to be carried forward with the infantry to give the Infantry some on the spot firepower in trench assaults, When designed, it had the benefit of at least what not to do after the disasters of the Chaucat..

interested to hear any first hand accounts?.

 

[parsifal]

If I had been given the garand as my personal sidearm, and no other choice, I think I would have surrendered

 

[Shortround6]

I am not sure where this anti-BAR stuff is coming from.
Granted it was nowhere near the gun the Bren was but then few WW II LMGs were.
The limits on firepower from the BAR had more to do with it's light barrel not being quick change than the magazine capacity.
French FM 24/29

25 round magazine, fixed barrel.
Czech ZB26-30

Used by a number of nations including Germany as a substitute standard weapon. 20 round magazine But you can change the Barrel.
The Breda M 30 used a 20 round magazine that needed big stripper clips to load.

even with quick change barrels most WW II LMGs were limited to around 120rpm for "sustained fire) which meant 2-3 minutes at that rate before changing the barrel.
Please note that many MGs in the 1950s and 60s got chrome lined barrels or even stellite liners/inserts which allowed them to fire many more rounds in a brief period of time without destroying the barrel. Comparing these guns to WW II guns doesn't help much.
The British, when they converted a number of Brens to 7.62 used a chrome lined barrel and dropped the use of a spare barrel. In part because the Brens were being issued to either second line troops or as secondary weapons to heavy weapons units ( artillery units) while the infantry carried MAGs.

Russian DP machine gun.

Yes you had a 47 round pan magazine but the barrel wasn't really changeable in combat and the mainspring was under the barrel and prolonged firing heated the main spring and caused it to fail leading to the DPM machine gun in 1943-44

With the mainspring moved to the rear of the receiver.

The Bren was one of the two best LMGs of WW II (and for a considerable number of years afterwards).
everybody elses LMGs were in a different catagory (or several categories)

 

[The Basket]

Has it been decided yet if the BAR is a rifle or machine gun?
I suppose it would be the Lewis in ww1 from the British rival point of view.

 

[tyrodtom]

My Dad was armed with the Bar for part of the time he was at Guadalcanal. Never heard him criticize it.
From his frame of reference, having been armed with a Springfield before, he thought it was pretty effective.
But he wasn't exposed to all the finest arms from around the world to compare it with. That was what he carried, and that was what he had to make do with.

It's like me, I was armed with the M-60 in Vietnam, never knew how sorry it was until 20-30 years later when tv shows and online forums trashed it pretty consistently .

 

[The Basket]

I am not familiar with the M60 so any insight you give would be appreciated.
The internet is a pernicious beast.

 

[tyrodtom]

By my own frame of reference at the time I saw no problems with it. I took care of it, it gave me no problems.If it did misfire it was usually a round out of position in the belt, usually from a defective link. So if I had time, I'd at least give my ammo a quick look before a mission. Others may had problems but may not have been as anal as I was with the maintenance of my M-60. But I had the luxury of being in the air, not on the ground.

I fired the MG-1 or 2 ( modern MG42) when I was in Germany in the early 70's. I thought at the time that that high rate of fire might have been nice to have earlier, but I also knew that high rate of fire would have run me out of ammo a few times too.

 

[The Basket]

Thanks for the info.
Thanks for your service.

 

[Shortround6]

Has it been decided yet if the BAR is a rifle or machine gun?
I suppose it would be the Lewis in ww1 from the British rival point of view.

Categories change over time and even terminology changes over time, often with words or parts of words left out. Let alone categories or terminology between countries.

The 1909 Benet-Mercie automatic machine rifle.

The manual goes into considerable detail not only about the "rifle" but about the machinegun company or troop. which included 16 mules and 25,800 rounds of ammo in feed strips. I would note that this was only a "rifle" in comparison to the pre-war tripod mounted machineguns which were being issued at a scale of 2-4 guns per battalion at the time and were about the ONLY support weapons of the infantry battalion. Once an army names something and starts printing manuals for it changing the name at a later date is seldom done.
The BAR was only considered for "general issue" when the US was caught in the grip of French tactical/military thinking at the end of WW I when the French were preaching that the way to break the trench stalemate was to issue each soldier an "automatic rifle" and have them advance across no-mans land shoulder to shoulder (or about 3 feet apart) standing erect at a walking pace with the automatic rifles held at the hip (with a sling) and firing a burst every time their left foot hit the ground. The storm of gun fire was supposed to keep the defenders heads below the top of the trench so the attackers could reach the trenches with fewer causalities of their own. It was called "walking fire".

Once this "concept" went away ( mercifully ) the BAR was a support weapon and not issued or intended as a one for one replacement for the bolt action rifle.
See the "Pederson device" for another way of implementing the "walking fire" concept.

the term "automatic machine rifle" was often shortened to machine rifle in order to avoid confusion with the terms full-automatic rifle and semi-automatic rifle as there had been several commercial hunting rifles before WW I that were semi-automatic. including one by John Browning.

which did see limited military use.

as did the rival Winchester.
Trying to fit WW I or WW II guns into post year 2000 nomenclature/catagories can be difficult.

 

[Shortround6]

By my own frame of reference at the time I saw no problems with it. I took care of it, it gave me no problems.If it did misfire it was usually a round out of position in the belt, usually from a defective link. So if I had time, I'd at least give my ammo a quick look before a mission. Others may had problems but may not have been as anal as I was with the maintenance of my M-60. But I had the luxury of being in the air, not on the ground.

I fired the MG-1 or 2 ( modern MG42) when I was in Germany in the early 70's. I thought at the time that that high rate of fire might have been nice to have earlier, but I also knew that high rate of fire would have run me out of ammo a few times too.

Thank you for your service.
From what I have read a lot of the criticism can be applied to a number of things about the design which don't actually matter that much to the men in field.

The main complaint against the men who designed it was that many of the perceived flaws had already been "solved" on other guns before the M-60 was built so their use on the M-60 is a more than a bit puzzling.
The M-60 had a few problems with the barrel change which meant an asbestos glove was part of the official kit for changing the barrel.
However the M-60 was one of those guns with a stellite liner or insert in the barrel which made it much more resistant to barrel erosion during prolonged firing so the barrel actually didn't have to be changed as often in combat.
Some complaints were somewhat minor, like the fact that the front sight on the barrel was fixed and the gunner was supposed to keep the sight setting for each barrel in a note book (or memory?) and adjust the rear sight to "zero" when the barrels were changed.
The Bren gun had front sight that was "adjustable" on the range and the gunner or assistant could swap these pre adjusted barrels in and out of the gun without taking the time to adjust the rear sight. Of course for Jungle distances or air to ground gunnery from helicopters the fact that barrel No 2 shot 6-8 in left of barrel No 1 at 100 yds wasn't particularity important. in the desert at 800yds?
another criticism was that the numbers/markings on the rear sight were small and hard to see in poor light. Of course for close range jungle shooting this didn't matter much either. But it goes back to the front sight and the "note book".
There were also a number of different models of the M-60 and some of these problems (like being able to put the gas piston in backwards during reassembly and turning the gun into a single shot weapon) were fixed in later models/production.

 

[parsifal]

So it is generally agreed that the BAR was inferior to the BREN, the MG 34 and the MG42. Some rather unproven claims are then made as to its comparability to MGs of other nations


Lets look at some of those other nations and for comparison I chose the French M-29


For the French Fusil-mitrailleur Modele 1924 M29, no one has stepped forward to claim that they have ever used it, so the comments being made, including mine are speculative at best, most likely heavily biased, and further likely to be plain wrong


The operational reports that I have seen suggest it to be measurably superior to the BAR. The FM 24/29 was the standard squad weapon of the French infantry and cavalry at the start of WWII. After the French surrender in World War II, the Germans captured large quantities of this weapon, which they used operationally until the end of the war. I have not found any significant reports from that quarter that the type suffered any significant problems.

'

The most significant appraisal of the type that I have been able to find is dated 1943. From 1943 on, as the French army was re-equipped and reorganized in North Africa with Allied support, the FM 24/29 was kept in service. The Free French forces which at certain points had used the BAR, submitted reports stating that overall the French weapon was considered measurably superior to the Browning Automatic Rifle and more reliable. It is significant that the French weapon had five more rounds capacity and the ability for aimed single shot fire, something the BAR apparently lacked. Barrel changing arrangements were considered superior in the French weapon


A measure of the overall success of the FM 24/29 was that it remained the workhorse in the Indochina war, and continued to serve as a front line weapon until the 1960's when it was replaced by the AA52. Nevertheless it was still in use with National Gendarmerie regional brigades until 2006.


Heavy duty versions of the MG were accepted in 1931, in which the barrel was strengthened to extend its life. The fortress version also included a rather unique barrel cooling system. I don't know too much information on the fortress version, but the French claimed it was capable of sustained fire for many hours. There is no way of verifying that really.


The BAR was not really capable of single shot sustained fire. It is debateable as to whether this was a disadvantage at all, but my personal opinion is that it was, not so much from a technical point of view but more a psychological one. Since WWI the US army has placed greater emphasis on firepower over aimed fire. In situations where th ere are no logistic constraints, this thirst for ammunition is probably not a significant issue, but in situations where the amount of ammunition is limited (which is often) it definitely is a problem. You have to make every shot count in those situations.


To be fair in 1931 (I think) a rate rducer began to be installed in which I have read it was possible to fire the weapon at two rofs.


The weapon had difficulty in penetrating the export market. As might be expected it was adopted in central and and sth america more or less without question. In Europe it was built under licence by the Belgians and used also by the Dutch, the Poles and the swedes. It was used second hand by the yugoslav partisans. It was foisted upon the free french, whio as indicated above disliked it. After Belgium was overrun, the factory fell into german hands. I cant find any evidence of the type being produced under German occupation, though im happy to listen if anyone has useful information on this.


The BAR was not without its critics even in US service. The US army recognised its principal limitation in the continuous fire configuration. This criticism is well documented in the US army historical records. In an attempt to overcome the BAR's limited continuous-fire capability, U.S. Army combat divisions increasingly began to specify two BAR fire teams per squad, following the practice of the U.S. Marine Corps. One team would typically provide covering fire until a magazine was empty, whereupon the second team would open fire, thus allowing the first team to reload. In the Pacific, the BAR was often employed at the point or tail of a patrol or infantry column, where its firepower could help break contact on a jungle trail in the event of ambush.


After combat experience showed the benefits of maximizing portable automatic firepower in squad-size formations, the U.S. Marine Corps began to increase the number of BARs in its combat divisions, from 513 per division in 1943 to 867 per division in 1945. A thirteen-man squad was developed, consisting of three four-man fire teams, with one BAR per fire team, or three BARs per squad. Instead of supporting the M1 riflemen in the attack, Marine tactical doctrine was focused around the BAR, with riflemen supporting and protecting the BAR gunner.


Despite the improvements in the M1918A2, the BAR there are many US army reports describing the type as a difficult weapon to master with its open bolt and strong recoil spring, requiring additional range practice and training to hit targets accurately without flinching. Again I sense the overweaning US view that accuracy was secondary. As a squad light machine gun, the BAR's effectiveness was mixed, since its thin, non-quick-change barrel and small magazine capacity, coupled with more difficult reload abilities, greatly limited its firepower comparison to genuine light machine guns such as the British Bren, or the M29. Most sources I have read suggest even the Japanese type 96 was superior in the support gun role.


The weapon's rate-reducer mechanism, introduced from 1931, was a delicately balanced spring-and-weight system described by one Ordnance sergeant as a "Rube Goldberg" device (a deliberately complex contraption in which a series of devices that perform simple tasks are linked together to produce a domino effect in which activating one device triggers the next device in the sequence). The rate reducer came in for a lot of criticism in the US army, and operationally it did cause a high rate of malfunctions when not regularly cleaned.


The bipod and buttstock rest (monopod), which contributed so much to the M1918A2's accuracy when firing prone on the rifle range, proved far less valuable under actual field combat conditions. The stock rest was dropped from production in 1942, while the M1918A2's bipod and flash hider were often discarded by individual soldiers and Marines to save weight and improve portability. With these modifications, the BAR effectively reverted to its original role as a portable, shoulder-fired automatic rifle.


Due to production demands, war priorities, subcontractor issues, and material shortages, demand for the M1918A2 frequently exceeded supply, and as late as 1945 some Army units were sent into combat still carrying older, unmodified M1918 weapons.


After a period of service, ordnance personnel frequently began to receive BARs with inoperable or malfunctioning recoil buffer mechanisms. This was eventually traced to the soldier's common practice of cleaning the BAR in a vertical position with the butt of the weapon on the ground, allowing cleaning fluid and burned powder to collect in the recoil buffer mechanism. Additionally, the BAR's gas cylinder was never changed to stainless steel. Consequently, the gas cylinder frequently rusted solid from the use of corrosive-primer. M2 service ammunition in a humid environment when not stripped and cleaned on a daily basis contributed to this problem. In summary the type suffered a thin-diameter, fixed barrel that quickly overheated, limited magazine capacity, complex field-strip/cleaning procedure, unreliable recoil buffer mechanism, a gas cylinder assembly made of corrosion-prone metals, and many small internal parts. Despite all this, it has to be said that the BAR proved rugged and reliable enough when regularly field-stripped and cleaned.

 

[Shortround6]

Oh boy........

Some of the capabilities of the FM 24/29 seem a bit exaggerated. Most sources say the barrel could only be changed in a shop/depot/arsenal. The way of fastening it to the receiver may very well have been better than the BAR but if it can't be changed during combat it doesn't make much difference to the troops.

We throw the term firepower around an awful lot without much for definitions or conditions. We know that cycle rate is NOT fire power, it is merely the rate at which the gun will fire with the trigger held back and as long as the ammo supply holds out (magazine or belt).

Sustained fire is one measure but most of these light machine guns were rarely used to fire 60-120 rounds per minute for 10-20 minutes at a time regardless of the number of magazines, barrels, and mounts/tripods available. German MG 34/MG 42 being about the only exception.
That leaves us with 'deliverable" firepower in a several minute firefight with a cooling off period before the next firefight. Both rather "squishy" are far as simulating or testing. In the case the 20 round magazines are a limiting factor.

Now back to "firepower". the limit on most of these guns was, as I have said before and nobody has contradicted me, is cooling the barrel/s. And by extension, the rest of the gun. Melvin Johnson once destroyed a BAR in a test in about 700 shots. Gun was fastened to a bench and magazines were changed as fast as possible with the trigger held back so all 20 rounds were fired in one burst. Barrel was glowing red, the fore end was in flames and the gun stopped firing when the mainspring lost tension and didn't return the bolt to the fully forward locked position. The Mainspring is under the barrel.
I read about a test of the French AAT M.52 with light barrel where they linked 500 rounds together and fired them in a continuous burst. Barrel was glowing red, starting to droop to the naked eye and when cool it was found to have no rifling for aprox one ft in front of the chamber. When in combat you may have to do what you have to do but you are balancing staying alive right now vs having a wrecked gun for the next fire fight. Training manuals will tend to favor going easy on the gun in order to preserve it.
The French FM 24/29 used a rate of fire of about 450-500rpm in order to keep the heat load down. The BAR (at least most of the ones used in WW II) had cycle rates of about 500-650rpm on high and 300-450 rpm on low (as per the manual). SO the BAR operator had his choice of slow cycle rate for less heat build up or higher cycle rate if things were desperate.
BOTH guns fired open bolt which makes singles shot fire accurate fire a bit problematic. The French gun used a separate trigger for single shots, the BAR depended on the slow cycle rate and a quick trigger release for single shots (not so good?) but with both guns the bolt was held to the rear and when the trigger was pressed the bolt moved forward, stripped a round from the magazine, chambered it and then fired. Given the time delay, weight of moving parts propelled by springs and bolt slamming shut and single shot fire accuracy is probably way less than the bolt action rifles (or M-1). It also depends on the bipods/ rear monopods and weight of the whole gun. A heavier gun would probably be steadier. In the case of the BAR and the FM 23/29 both guns are rather similar in weight.

Heavy barrels will absorb more heat than a light barrel, however after a certain point or temperature is reached they only have a slightly better rate of dispersing heat (they are fatter and have bit more surface area) designers have used finned or fluted barrels in order to help disperse the heat.
The big bugaboo was the heat and hot gases washing out the rifling. Guns that are smooth bores for several inches in front of the chamber have both lousy accuracy and low muzzle velocity.

To try and put things into perspective the Vickers water cooled gun was rated at 200rpm sustained fire "practically" forever. There were three limitations, 1, the obvious one, ammo. 200rpm for 60 minutes is 12,000 rounds. 2. water, At 200rpm the Vickers gun begain to boil the water in the jacket after 700 rounds (from memory, could be off) and lost 1 pint every 500 rounds after that. Without a condenser can the Vickers needs 30 gallons of water to fire that 12,000 rounds. 3. barrel/s even with the water cooling the procedure was to change the barrel every 10,000 rounds.

Few, if any, of the air cooled guns, (even Browning 1919s) had anywhere near 12,000 rounds of ammo available 99% of the time.
Few, even the German guns, had the number of spare barrels available to match the "sustained" rate of the Vickers (or other water cooled guns) and the combination of the two really affect "firepower" at the squad level. Unless you are about to be overrun by scores of bayonet wielding fanatics the LMGs firepower was limited by the barrel cooling rather than the magazine capacity. Bren was rated at 120rpm (4 magazines Per minute) for 2 1/2 minutes (10 magazines) before barrel change. Does anybody really think that 5 or six magazine changes are really going to slow the gun/s down that much? at 450rpm it takes 16 seconds of firing time to fire 120 rounds. leaving 44 seconds for magazine changes. Actually firing 3-4 round bursts with sight pauses would stretch the firing time to around 30 seconds leaving 5-6 second per magazine change.
If the Bren has no spare barrel what would the rate of fire be???
Yes If I was in combat I would prefer larger magazines "just in case" but size of the magazines had very little to do with the "practical" rate of fire.

BTW I would note that the Japanese type 96 machine gun which seems to find favor with some people had a few flaws. Like lousy primary extraction which meant a high rate of head case separations or extractors pulling through the rim leaving the case stuck in the chamber. The "solution" for this was, unlike the Breda 30 which squirted oil on the cartridge as it entered the chamber, to have a magazine loading machine which oiled the cartridges as they were inserted into the magazines so the gunner and his assistant/s could carry around magazines full of oily cartridges attracting dirt, sand, dust which also did wonders for the guns reliability. The type 99 not only used the 7.7mm cartridge, it finally got decent primary extraction and could do away with the oiled cartridges.

I would also note that just about every combatant in WW II used corrosive primed ammunition. Not only used it but it was by far the most common type of ammo. It was by no means isolated to the US 30-06 M2 load.

 

[Shortround6]

I would also note that the FM 24/29 used a rate reducer to get that 450-500rpm cycle rate. It may have been a much simpler and better one than the one used in the BAR, I don't know but it was extra parts and extra complication.
Cycle rate is dependent on several things. The most important being the weight of the bolt/breech block. After that comes spring tension and buffer. But you can only play games so far. a light spring allows the bolt to move sooner and quicker even if it returns the bolt slower. and you need a certain amount of spring pressure to move the bolt forward, strip the round from the magazine and chamber it. Especially if the gun is dirty. Too strong a spring delays opening, not a big deal, but returns the bolt at a higher speed and increases vibration and battering of the gun when the bolt hits home. Some guns did use adjustable spring tension but it may not give the desired rate of fire with acceptable functioning (too slow) or wear and tear on the gun.
Gas operated guns can used different amounts of gas to open the gun (not all, some were non-adjustable) but in general they used just enough gas to get the gun to operate reliably with the extra openings there to give more power to operate a dirty gun.
Bren had a 4 position gas port/regulator with the largest opening supposed to be reserved for AA work with a much increased rate of fire. But then AA engagements rarely lasted long. Even with a 100 round drum on top.

Some videos claim the Japanese machineguns do not need the oiled ammo. I don't know if modern recreational shooters ever let their guns/ammo get really dirty or if they are using modern ammo or surplus ammo from the 30s and 40s. Modern brass is a lot better than 1930/40 brass. Rifle cartridge cases go through several annealing processes during manufacture and even with a good alloy of brass they can be soft or brittle due to poor annealing. For the US there were 3 grades of 30-06 ammo during WW II. Grade 1 was for aircraft machine guns, grade 2 was for ground machine guns and grade 3 was for rifles. The grade was based on the suitability of the ammo for the intended gun/s and had nothing to do with accuracy or power. Best grade was the best grade of brass and uniformity to cause the least jams in aircraft where a jammed gun pretty much stayed jammed until the aircraft landed.
In any case NOBODY built a post WW II machine gun to use oiled/lubricated cartridges.

I have noted earlier that some guns got chrome plated bores. There are two reasons for making a chrome plated bore. 1 is that the chrome plate is much more resistant to the effects of the corrosive primers and needs much less cleaning. Russians chrome plated a lot of rifle and machinegun bores during WW II let alone after WWII. Simplifies training. 2nd reason is it makes the rifling last longer but this may require a thicker layer of chrome than for corrosion protection. It also requires better chrome plating techniques. Rifle barrels, while getting too hot to touch are still hundreds of degrees cooler than a machinegun barrel. If not done right the chrome plate can come loose in chunks. The chrome protects against the wash of hot gases rushing down the bore, the primary cause of barrel erosion. The hotter the barrel the softer it is and the more effect each blast of hot gasses (each shot) has. Please note this has to be done at the factory, chrome plating an existing barrel can make the bore smaller and get into real trouble. You generally need a layer of nickel to make the chrome stick to the steel. You also need to be able to get a uniform thickness of plating the length of the bore and not thick and thin spots over the 20-30 in length. A few guns got chrome chambers and plain bores because it was easier to do and chambers are harder to clean than the bore. A pull through or cleaning rod and patch that does a good job on the bore barely touches the chamber. Being able to take the barrel off makes things a lot easier.

 

[Shortround6]

Just for completeness I would note the following WW II LMG/machine rifles as firing from a closed bolt in single shot mode.

German MG 13
German FG 42 (the paratrooper machine rifle)
Johnson LMG/machine rifle 1941/44 models.
Simonov AVS-36

and ?????

1st and 4th fire closed bolt at all times which hinders cooling and can lead to cook-offs. not as much of a problem with the Simonov as it wasn't intended for support fire. 2nd and 3rd were able to fire closed bolt in single shot mode but open bolt when fired in automatic mode.

A number of LMGs fired full automatic only with no provision for single shots except a well trained trigger finger. Slow rates of fire helped on this one.

I would also note that many armies differed widely in the amount of support firepower/weapons at infantry company level. The US Army provided a pair of Browning 1919A4 guns to most infantry companies.

which are hardly "light" machine guns but are about 1/2 the weight of a Vickers/Maxim/Browning 1917 machine gun and offer quite a bit of "firepower" to the company commander. US troops were not impressed by the 1919A6 as a substitute for the BAR in most cases.

Note that the carrying handle on the barrel is just that, a carrying handle, it has nothing to do with changing the barrel.
In many armies anything bigger than a LMG was held at battalion level although the battalion commander could parcel out the Battalion guns to the companies if the situation warranted it. A few armies tried to compromise and held heavier mountings and spare barrels at company level for a certain number of the squad/platoon guns.

Once you get away from the Bren/CZ and the M34/42 everything else is in much lower categories. And the MG 34 had a few problems of it's own, yes the barrel was "quick change" but some quick change barrels are quicker than others.

A reason the MG 34 was retained as an AFV gun after the MG 42 arrived?

A lot of guns had a whole series of plus and minuses and you can't pick just a few features to declare winners.

 

[The Basket]

Self loading rifles work well in the air as there is no mud.
The MG-42 was king so why in Korea was the BAR and Bren still widely used?