In order to avoid confusion with the belt-fed M1917 machine gun, the BAR came to be known as the M1918 or Rifle, Caliber. Ī live fire demonstration of the BAR in front of military and government officialsĪdditional tests were conducted for US Army Ordnance officials at Springfield Armory in May 1917, and both weapons were unanimously recommended for immediate adoption. There, on 27 February 1917, in front of a crowd of 300 people (including high-ranking military officials, congressmen, senators, foreign dignitaries and the press), the Army staged a live-fire demonstration which so impressed the gathered crowd, that Browning was immediately awarded a contract for the weapon and it was hastily adopted into service (the water-cooled machine gun underwent further testing). Colt and the Ordnance Department arranged for a public demonstration of both weapons at a location in southern Washington, D.C. two types of automatic weapons for the purposes of demonstration: a water-cooled machine gun (later adopted as the M1917 Browning machine gun) and a shoulder-fired automatic rifle known then as the Browning Machine Rifle or BMR, both chambered for the standard US. In 1917, prior to America's entry to the war, John Browning personally brought to Washington, D.C. He demonstrated the prototypes to the US military, which did not see an immediate use for the weapon until 1917. Development īrowning began to design the weapon later known as the BAR in 1910. The arms donated by the French were often second-rate or surplus and chambered in 8mm Lebel, further complicating logistics as machine gunners and infantrymen were issued different types of ammunition. After much debate, it was finally agreed that a rapid rearmament with domestic weapons would be required, but until that time, US troops would be issued whatever the French and British had to offer. When the United States declaration of war on Germany was announced on 6 April 1917, the high command was made aware that to fight this trench war, dominated by machine-guns, they had on hand a mere 670 M1909 Benét–Merciés, 282 M1904 Maxims and 158 Colt-Browning M1895s.
The US entered World War I with an inadequate, small, and obsolete assortment of domestic and foreign machine gun designs, due primarily to bureaucratic indecision and the lack of an established military doctrine for their employment. Burton, the Winchester expert on rifles, discussing the finer points of the BAR at the Winchester plant Browning, the inventor of the rifle, and Frank F.
#308 browning automatic rifle portable#
The US Army began phasing out the BAR in the 1950s, when it was intended to be replaced by a squad automatic weapon (SAW) variant of the M14, and as a result the US Army was without a portable light machine gun until the introduction of the M60 machine gun in 1957. The BAR saw extensive service in both World War II and the Korean War and saw limited service in the Vietnam War. Īlthough the weapon did see some action in World War I, the BAR did not become standard issue in the US Army until 1938, when it was issued to squads as a portable light machine gun. 30-06 Springfield cartridge, though the limited capacity of its standard 20-round magazine tended to hamper its utility in that role. A variant of the original M1918 BAR, the Colt Monitor Machine Rifle, remains the lightest production automatic firearm chambered for the. The US Army, in practice, used the BAR as a light machine gun, often fired from a bipod (introduced on models after 1938). The BAR never entirely lived up to the original hopes of the War Department as either a rifle or a machine gun. This is a concept called " walking fire"-thought to be necessary for the individual soldier during trench warfare. The BAR was designed to be carried by infantrymen during an assault advance while supported by the sling over the shoulder, or to be fired from the hip. 30-06 Springfield rifle cartridge and designed by John Browning in 1917 for the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe as a replacement for the French-made Chauchat and M1909 Benét–Mercié machine guns that US forces had previously been issued.
#308 browning automatic rifle series#
The primary variant of the BAR series was the M1918, chambered for the. The Browning Automatic Rifle ( BAR) is a family of American automatic rifles and machine guns used by the United States and numerous other countries during the 20th century.
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