BAR vs Garand

The Basket said:

The MG-42 was king so why in Korea was the BAR and Bren still widely used?

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Because nobody was spending much actual money on new army weapons from 1945-50. They did a lot of experimenting but coming up with the money for tens of thousands of machine guns wasn't in the budget.
The British were practically broke and just buying jet aircraft and few Centurion tanks was about all they could afford.

You might also get a fair amount of argument about the MG 42 being that much better than the Bren gun too.


1st photo is in the Falkland Islands in 1982, 2nd photo is on the way to the Falklands, I believe the troops in question are the Royal Marines.
another photo, not real clear but appears 2nd man from left has a Bren.

It may have been used by the 1st para's in addition to the Royal Marines.

For elite units to be using the Bren in the early 80s they must have thought it had some advantages over the other weapons available.

The Bren can fire single shots on one pull of the trigger, this is due to the selector switch and not skill at pulling the trigger.
The MG 42 has no single shot position and trying to fire even short bursts from a 1200-1500rpm gun is not easy.
The high rate of fire of the MG 42 has several problems, one is how much ammo the squad can carry. There is no free lunch, if the gun fires 2 to 2 1/2 times faster than other guns you run out of ammo faster if using the same time length bursts. The gun also vibrates/moves more and the last rounds of a burst may be further from the target, generally wasted. And if you use the high rate of fire, as in Bren fires 120rounds per minute (four magazines) and the MG 42 fires 200 rounds in a minute (four 50 round belts) you have to change the barrel sooner to keep from wrecking the barrel.
The MG 42 was a general purpose machine gun, not a light machine gun. It was used to fill the roles of LMG, Medium Machine gun (tripod mount) and AA machine gun (the Germans had no 12.7-13mm AA machine gun), it was this last role that pushed the rate of fire up.
Somebody once said it took three Bren guns to make as much noise as one MG 42 but it took two MG 42s to make as many casualties as one Bren gun. This may have been a moral building statement rather than the result of any study or test but there may be an element of truth to it.

It happens that about the only experience I have with machine guns is one 50 round belt from an MG 42 ( and two short bursts from a Vickers) so my experience is certainly far from the last word. I got 7 bursts from the 50 round belt, average 7 rounds per burst? last burst may have been 5-6 rounds? The owner of the gun could fire 4 round bursts with occasional 3 round bursts. Gun climbed up and right (I am right handed) when firing from the prone position (rug on a macadam surface) and covered an area about 4 ft wide and several feet high from low left to high right at about 100 yds. Being a good machine gunner would take a lot of practice.
For perspective I am better than average rifle shot. For our Australian members back in 1989 I won 3rd place in the Queensland state championships in air rifle, small bore 3 position and small bore prone. It may have been a lucky weekend or it may have been that the people from Brisbane in the scoring shack would rather see the Yankee win than the guys from Sydney.
I have also competed in high power (full bore) rifle matches using Bolt action target rifles, two different M-1 Garands and a couple of times with M-16s.
No automatic fire but 10 rounds in 60-70 seconds from standing and including one reload.

Not sure if I say Falkland Isles or Las Malvinas? Anyhoo the 1st picture taken in glorious service to the Commonwealth has a L7 gpmg in the background...and SLRs which kinda make the Bren slightly archaic.
I always take Japanese guns with a pinch of Sake because of the poor press they get.

Now....would I take a BAR to war...yes ive read nothing to say otherwise. However my service rifle was the SA80 L85A1 so I can't say much!

Getting back a bit more on thread some weights from a BAR manual.

weight (complete with bipod and magazine assembly)...........19.4lbs
weight (less bipod)..................................................................17lbs
weight of bipod assembly.........................................................2.38lbs
weight of magazine assembly .................................................0.44lbs
weight of moving parts.............................................................2.25lbs
weight of barrel........................................................................3.65lbs
and from another source
weight of 20 rounds of ammo..................................................1.13lbs.

Weight of M-1 Garand goes from 9.5lbs for empty-bare gun to over 11lbs depending on if loaded, presence of sling, cleaning equipment in butt-stock or bayonet.

The weight of the moving parts in BAR is a hint at the problems of firing any open bolt gun in single shot mode regardless of trigger operation. 2.25lbs (?) moving 3 1/4 to 4 inches (?) depending on gun after trigger is pulled and slamming closed into the back of the barrel before the gun goes off. The heavier the gun in relation to the weight of the moving parts the better things will be. Differences in bi-pods and butt mono-pods may help but the butt mono-pods seem to be the first things to disappear in the field in many armies.

The Basket said:

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.

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The BAR was conceived, designed, and originally tested at a time when an infantryman carried a Springfield M1903, a bolt action rifle with a 5 round magazine. It was designed and adopted to give a squad an increased rate of fire. It somewhat fulfilled the role of what we now call the squad automatic weapon, although naturally it was not called that and has nowhere near the sustained rate of fire for such a weapon today.


It is absolutely a machine gun, probably should be called a light machine gun, and it continued to fill its original requirement after the M1 Garand was adopted. Although naturally it was probably not as big an asset as when squads were outfitted with the M1903. It was still used to increase the rate of fire of a small unit, having a higher individual rate of fire and requiring less time reloading for any given number of rounds. It probably excelled when suppressing fire from a small mobile unit was required.


After adoption of the M1 Garand it probably kind of filled the role that the assault rifle eventually filled. Yeah, it is not one, but it existed, in numbers, before those did in the forces using the BAR. During WW II it appears to have been most affectively used when short duration increases in fire rate were needed, such as breaking contact, on initial contact, or for suppressive fire. Stuff I have read seems to indicate it was more useful in the Pacific than in the ETO, I assume (this is only an assumption) because of the ranges involved, in the ETO a shorter, handier, weapon like the M1928A1 Thompson might have been a better fit.


I don't really think you can fit it into modern descriptive niches (things change), rather you have to look at the roles it actually served in.


I own a BAR (M1918A2) as well as various M1 Garands. I also own M1A's (civilian version of the M14) although not a full auto version. I have fired the M14 in full auto, as that was still in use when I entered service and was the rifle I was issued in boot camp. I never saw / used the BAR while I was active duty, they were about 10 years gone by then, in fact I never handled one until I bought mine. The M14 in full auto was a bit of a handful, a big man can run the gun OK if he is properly prepared, but really it is a semi-auto with auto ability. The BAR is much easier to run. I am a lot older now, but I can fire the BAR and control it much better than I ever remember doing with the M14 in full auto. Still it is, for me, a burst weapon (in fast fire) from the shoulder, 2 – 4 burst per magazine of aimed fire. On slow fire it is relatively easy to control for an entire magazine. I have seen others run the BAR in fast fire for a magazine and do quite well, but it is a bit much for me to be anything close to accurate with in that mode.

T!

There was the Lewis gun which kinda fits the bill.
The BAR and Lewis are strange bedfellows but in my view the Lewis is more of a proper machine gun.
To me the BAR is an automatic rifle which becomes a machine gun because there is no other alternative.
Of course the Lewis is big and bulky and heavy and pushing the idea of what is man portable but if you compare the Lewis and BAR then you see the strength and weakness of what are contemporary designs.

I think now we are talking a matter of semantics. Yes, I agree the Lewis was the better "light machine gun" if we want to pigeon hole weapons into more narrowly defined niches.


However I don't think the Lewis was ever adopted by the US Army for the infantry. The BAR was. So in use with the primary service that developed and fielded it (the BAR), whatever one might think personally of the weapon, it was used in the way similar to how a light machine gun would be used. Of course we can argue if it should have been, were there better choices, was a weapon used in ways it might not have been best suited, etc.


So I am talking about how the weapon was used as defining what the weapon is.


The US Navy, and Marine Corp, adopted both the BAR and the Lewis shortly after each was developed, but the Lewis was dropped decades before the BAR left service. The Navy used both M1 Garands (often in 7.62 NATO), and later M14s, side by side to the BAR. By the time I entered service a few of the M1s were still around, but it was M14s and M60s for the most part, with Mk 21 Mod 0 (Navy versions of the M1919 in 7.62 NATO) and Ma Deuce on pintle mounts.


I suspect the introduction of the Mk 21 Mod 0 was what led to the last BARs being dropped by the Navy. Previously the original M1919 was used, in its original .30-06 caliber. After the Mk 21 was delivered that left the BAR as the only weapon in .30-06 on Navy ships, everything else was in 7.62 NATO or .50 BMG.


T!

The American Army did not adopt the Lewis gun because of the personal animosity that the chief of US Ordnance, General William Crozier, had for it's inventor, Colonel Isaac Lewis. It had little to do with the merits of the Lewis gun or defects.

The Lewis gun, in original form was heavy, 26lbs 8oz for the gun, another 1lb 12 oz for the bipod and an empty pan magazine was 1lb 8oz. fully loaded the magazine weighed 4lbs 8 oz.
While much lighter than the typical water cooled guns of the day the all up weight of 32lbs 12 oz is a bit much compared to later LMGs.
The air cooling system was supposed allow for a high volume of fire. I am not sure if anyone really knows how well it worked as few, if any, test results seem to exist. All we have is anecdotes about stripped aircraft guns with bare barrels being used without problem but no details as to rounds fired per minute or barrel wear.
I would also note that the Lewis gun dates from 1913 and so has nothing to do with the conditions in the trenches in WW I or tactical concepts that came from trench warfare.
In the 1916 US army (which did have a small number of Lewis guns, about 350)) the scale of issue was FOUR guns per battalion. It didn't matter it they were Lewis guns, Benet-Mercier machine rifles, Colt 1895 (Potato diggers) or 1904 Maxim guns. It was four guns per battalion in a separate machine gun platoon/company.
The US Army of WW I was thoroughly (too thoroughly ) indoctrinated by French instructors and the earlier mentioned "walking" fire (in addition to artillery use and other French ideas) which lead to at least one test of suitable guns that included both a Hotchkiss machine rifle with top mounted magazine and a Berthier machine rifle. Pictures are in "Hatcher's Notebook"
There were no bipods and the intended use was to fire from the hip while advancing across no mans land for supressive fire. The BAR was the gun adopted but fortunately the war ended before this idea was put into practice.
The BAR didn't really become a unit support weapon until the 1922 model which was adopted by the US cavalry

Note heavy barrel with fins.

I don't know when it was decided that the BAR would be equipped with a bi-pod and issued as a LMG or support weapon for small units (company or below) but certainly by the late 30s or 1940. But this was well after it's design and initial adoption.

The Lewis didn't work early in the 30-06 cartridge but worked in 303 so it's early rejection was not misplaced.
The Americans did have the Johnson LMG which seemed the ticket. Lighter too. The Johnson and the Farquhar-Hill are proof that service life is no indication of quality. The Americans dropped the M1917 Enfield rifle even though its service was excellent.

The history of the US Army and machine guns is a bit convoluted and is marked in many cases by extreme lack of funding.
Pre WW I nobody really knew what the role of the machine gun was, that is to say there was NO tactical doctrine in existence.

I was also in error when I said there were 4 guns per battalion. It was actually four guns per regiment. A scale of issue totally removed from any consideration as squad or platoon guns.

This lead to a history/time line of the Army buying the Colt 1895 (Potato digger) in 30/40 Krag ? (Navy/Marines got 6mm guns?) followed by a purchase of the model 1904 Maxim gun. which was followed by the 1909 Benet-Mercier machine rifle. Please note that the army made no distinction between the water cooled guns and the air cooled guns. This machine rifle was the standard army machine gun. The Army bought 29 of these guns from the Hotchkiss company because that is all the money they had, enough for 29 guns. in the next few years the Army got another 670 of these guns with production split between Colt Firearms and Springfield Armory. This was not enough for either factory to fully solve production or heat treatment issues.
Around 1912/13 the Lewis gun shows up on the scene and yes, in it's first forms, it was a bit lacking in durability/reliability. but as a contender for standard machine gun the Army was running 20,000 round durability tests. The Army held a machine gun trial in 1916 that saw the Vickers gun win handily over the Lewis and the Vickers was adopted as the model of 1916. However the Vickers gun is not an easy gun to produce and by the time the US declared war on Germany on April 6th 1917 the total US inventory of machine guns was 153 of of the old Potato Diggers, 282 of the 1904 Maxims, 670 of the Benet-Merciers and 353 Lewis guns in .303 purchased in 1916 to beef up the machine gun inventory during the 1916 Mexican adventures (General Pershing chasing Poncho Villa). None of the 1916 Vickers guns had been delivered yet.
In May of 1917 the US made an emergency purchase of 1300 Lewis guns in 30-06 as they were about the only guns likely to be available (Savage Arms company having the Lewis in large scale production for the British). In May of 1917 there was another machinegun trial in which the new Lewis gun showed much better than it had in previous trials. What was even more important for the US Army was that John Browning had brought his recoil operated, water cooled machine gun and the rest, as they say, was history. The Browning was cheaper and easier to make than the Vickers and Colt turned out 9327 of the water cooled Browning gun during the war and 7502 aircraft guns while Westinghouse and Remington turned out 71,019 of the water cooled guns. The 1916 Vickers being dropped from production plans
It was at this same trial (called the "United States Machine Gun Board") in May of 1917 that the BAR was introduced and 85,277 were built by the end of the war.
Unfortunately it took time to get into full production of the Browning guns and while they would have been used to very good effect had the war gone on into 1919 for 1917 and much of 1918 the US troops were forced to use French Hotchkiss and Chauchat guns.

Getting back to the Lewis guns, after it's showing in the May 1917 Machine gun board the Army ordered another 2500 guns, the Navy and Marines ordered 9270, a bit later the Army purchased 47,000 Lewis guns for aircraft use.

Many automatic guns needed several years of development and improvements, Browning guns were almost an exception to the rule, being pretty much ready to go from the start although a few manufacturing difficulties did crop up, like improperly tempered springs in early 1918 BARS.

Had US ordnance offered more support and/or development assistance earlier in the Lewis guns development it's problems may have been sorted out out much quicker. One of the major changes between the early guns (.303) and late guns (30-06) was allowing a bit more movement of the gas piston before the bolt unlocked from the receiver. This meant a fraction of second delay and allowed pressure in the chamber to drop a bit more making extraction easier and reduced the battering on the gun which also reduced parts breakage.
This was accomplished by simply machining a bit longer slot in the bolt before the operating rod hit the cam surface to turn the bolt if I remember correctly.