Browning Automatic Rifle

BTW, tag # 6864 is an M-14 carbine. The army made about 20 prototypes. The barrel was thinned and shortened, the flash suppressor got the same treatment and the bayonet lug was eliminated. The protective wings on the rear sight were ditched and every attempt was made to trim any excess metal wherever it could be trimmed. They only ended up saving about a pound and the gun overheated rapidly, even with the selector lock in place.

The entire program was dropped.

Fantastic movie.

But yeah, heavy weight, and a 20 rd box magazine. It only had enough capacity to rise so much. You had to pause to reload. No 100 rd belts to burn through. 3-5 rd bursts.

igotta40 said:

I was watching ‘The Sand Pebbles’ a couple nights ago and Steve McQueen was firing the BAR and it occurred to me- firing a full auto rifle loaded with 30-06, what were the odds of actually hitting anything with it? The closest hand held machine gun I’ve fired was the hand held belt fed M60 in the USN, at 160 soaking wet I wasn’t so much firing it as pulling the trigger and hanging on to it.

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"The Sand Pebbles" is a good flick. "Condenser! Makee steam all dead!" I have opined many times that movie shows how a Navy uniform is SUPPOSED to be worn.

Steve McQueen later bought that exact BAR.

I have never shot a BAR, but when my old man was in the Navy 1970-72, one of the Chiefs on my father's destroyer liked to shoot trap. They went to Culebra for live fire practice before a Med cruise, and my father's first time ever shooting clay pigeons was with a BAR. It is a real thing. You can do it.

We could have had the Lewis Gun but Ordnance Chief Crozier disliked Isaac Lewis.

BLACKHAWKNJ said:

We could have had the Lewis Gun but Ordnance Chief Crozier disliked Isaac Lewis.

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The Lewis gun is better as a light machine gun, but keep in mind that in WW1 they were looking for an "automatic rifle" to accompany troops armed with bolt actions. The BAR was probably better for that, although the theory didn't work out so well in practice.

I remember that, in the early 1960's, there was a Lewis gun display board on a wall at the University of Texas engineering school. There was a completed Lewis gun at the bottom, and above that the parts in the various stages of manufacture, in a sort of flow chart. Probably 2 or 3 more guns could have been assembled from the parts (with a little finishing work). A few years later, the display disappeared. I hope at least that someone had the presence of mind to register it under the 1968 NFA amnesty.

tark said:

Tag # 6852 is the prototype that was to be the M-15. Sorry about the glare from the lights but the weapons wall was behind glass. The weapon was actually not approved, for reasons that are obvious to anyone who has ever fired an M-14 on full auto. Even with the extra weight ( It weighed almost 16 pounds loaded ) the gun was uncontrollable in automatic fire. If the army could have found a way to lower the cyclic rate to around 350-450 rounds per minute, the gun might have been successful. But the biggest problem was still the lack of a quick change barrel.

oops...I posted the same picture twice...

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The M15 was "approved".

The T44E5 was classified "Standard A" as the M15 along with the M14 in March 1957.

It was not put into production because in 1959, US Army Infantry Board released "Service Test of Rifle, 7.62mm, M14 Modified for the BAR Role," which showed that the standard M14 with a modified stock with a rest on the buttplate, a slip-on compensator, and a removeable bipod was just as accurate as the M15 in the automatic rifle role, but quite a bit lighter. This report recommended:

d. For the Automatic Rifle role, the Rifle 7.62mm, M14, modified as above and with the addition of a bipod of the Type II design, be substituted for the Rifle, Automatic, 7.62mm, M15.

e. Termination of Production and type reclassification of M15 rifle to Standard B (STD-B).

The M14 so modified was designated the M14E2, and production orders for M15 were cancelled before any were actually manufactured.

In 1963, the M14E2 was standardized as the M14A1.

tark said:

BTW, tag # 6864 is an M-14 carbine. The army made about 20 prototypes. The barrel was thinned and shortened, the flash suppressor got the same treatment and the bayonet lug was eliminated. The protective wings on the rear sight were ditched and every attempt was made to trim any excess metal wherever it could be trimmed. They only ended up saving about a pound and the gun overheated rapidly, even with the selector lock in place.

The entire program was dropped.

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The T44E6 was 0.9 pounds lighter than the regular T44E4 (M14)

But, the idea of an aluminum buttplate was adopted when they switched away from the M1 type to the shoulder flap type.




Oh, and don't forget the aluminum magazine . . .

The M14E2 was another attempt to control recoil in full auto. I don't know how well it worked or how many were set up that way.

tark said:

The rate reducers on these guns sometimes gave trouble

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Roy Dunlap in 'Ordnance Went Up Front' wrote that in the PTO with lots of rain, seawater, and woods duff, crap in the 1918A2 rate reducer was a major source of repair calls. Older semi-full guns were less troublesome.

lysanderxiii said:

the standard M14 with a modified stock with a rest on the buttplate, a slip-on compensator, and a removeable bipod was just as accurate as the M15 in the automatic rifle role

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These modifications also improve accuracy in the semiautomatic mode. I have them on my scoped M1A. (The compensator precludes use of the bayonet, so it's not suitable for a standard infantry rifle.)

Jim Watson said:

Roy Dunlap in 'Ordnance Went Up Front' wrote that in the PTO with lots of rain, seawater, and woods duff, crap in the 1918A2 rate reducer was a major source of repair calls. Older semi-full guns were less troublesome.

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The same thing happens with BARs (with the rate reducing mechanism) that are stored for a long time upright in a rack. Oil and condensation migrate by gravity into the buttstock (which contains the rate reducer). Rust and swelling of the wood result.

The one GI I talked to who fired an M14E2 said it was hard to control. He said their unit armorer rigged up a recoil device-basically just a flat extension under the muzzle brake. He said it helped, but not much. Firing a full size rifle round out of a 10 pound rifle-who thought that up ?

Golfanaticshooter said:

If Steve McQueen was wielding it, it was MOA on full auto.

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best answer

The T20, going all the way back to 1944 did have a rate reducer.

The rate reducer was kept in the automatic rifle versions of the T44 all the way up to 1956, when they took it out of the T44E5 due to the lack of reliability.

My dad was a Marine and carried a BAR in Korea. He was pretty impressed with it.

Fired the BAR on several occasions in the US Army.

As early as 1930 FN Herstal made improvements to the BAR that the US military never implemented. The FN Model D has a quick change finned barrel, slow and fast firing options, pistol grip stock and bipod mounted on the end of the gas cylinder. i was the senior firing range advisor to the Saudi National Guard. Non modernized SANG units were issued the FN Model D in 8mm. i fired the gun every time a non modernized unit visited our ranges. Love that gun.

Those non modernized Saudi units were also issued the last military model 98 rifle (Model 50) and the MG42/58 machine gun.

FN Model D (BAR) – Forgotten Weapons

I owned a BAR, and a Thompson, for about ten years. The reason I bought these guns was that they were iconic, as collectibles. The reason I sold them was that I realized that they were impractical, as shooters (or rather, that better things had come along). In retrospect, I should have kept them.

The BAR was designed for a specific tactical use which was quickly rendered irrelevant. The same tactical environment that produced the Pedersen device.
It should have been replaced but those tight defense budgets of the 20s and 30s didn't allow for a lot of R&D-it's remarkable that John Garand was allowed to work on the M-1 all those years, and it was actually adopted.

BLACKHAWKNJ said:

The one GI I talked to who fired an M14E2 said it was hard to control.

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I had an M-14E2 ( or A-1 or whatever the army ended up calling it ) in Vietnam. Being a REMF in a supply depot at Qui Nhon, I had plenty of trigger time. We did H&I fire against the side of Vung Tau mountain two or three times a week. Never did fire the thing in anger but I always went full auto, I can truthfully say that, standing next a mountain, you COULD keep all of your shots...errrr...somewhere on that mountain. I called this "minute of mountain."
If you went prone, extended the bipod and got a death grip on that foregrip I would say you might be able to keep all of your shots inside a six foot circle...out to twenty or thirty yards. Maybe. OK , probably not.

An M-14, of any flavor, on automatic mode, is the personification of the word futility. It makes a blood curdling racket and that's about all its good for.

BLACKHAWKNJ said:

The BAR was designed for a specific tactical use which was quickly rendered irrelevant. The same tactical environment that produced the Pedersen device.

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Actually, the Pederson Device might have had some real usefulness on the battlefield. It has a large capacity mag and no full auto feature. Think of it as a semi auto subgun. But it could lay down a hail of bullets in a short period of time.

The BAR was popular.
BAR users [and manufacturers]
Algeria
Argentina
Austria
Belgium [manufacturer]
Brazil
Cambodia
Chile
People's Republic of China (Communist)
Republic of China (Nationalist)
Colombia
Costa Rica
Cuba
Cyprus
Egypt
Ethiopia
Finland
France
Nazi Germany
Greece
Honduras
Imperial Japan
Indonesia
Israel
Italy
Japan
South Korea
Kingdom of Laos
Liberia
Netherlands
Nicaragua
Norway
Philippines
Poland [manufacturer]
Spanish Republic
North Vietnam
South Vietnam
Soviet Union
Sweden [manufacturer]
Turkey
United Kingdom (WWII Home Guard)
United States [manufacturer]
Uruguay

tark: "... the Pederson Device ..."

I have wanted to take the Pederson Device (semi auto bolt for a 1903 Springfield rifle with 40 rd magazine, firing a cartridge roughly twice the .32 ACP, half the .30 Carbine), put it in a modified Panama Canal Zone Bushmaster carbine (a 20 in barrel 1903 Springfield), and put the combo on the hands of the crew of a 1930s Edgar Rice Burroughs fan-fic movie to deal with pirates. Then switch to the 1903 .30-06 bolt when the dinosaurs show up.

Dad sang the praises of the BAR.
He was a Marine Forward Observer attached to an Army unit that went ashore at Inchon.
Once they got far enough inland and the weather closed in, the Army needed a sniper far more than they needed a F. O.
So Dad set aside the radio and picked up a rifle.
He mentioned that the biggest fear in the unit was any Korean with a mortar.
They seemed to take to them almost instinctively.
As he would say, "Hand a Korean farmer a rifle and he'll shoot himself in the foot. Hand him a mortar and he'll drop a shell in your back pocket."
-And that's where the BAR would really shine... .

I've read that one of the design intents of the BAR was advancing (walking) automatic fire power (i.e. shot from the hip). But I don't think it worked out well for that.

One word solution... bipod

Keep in mind that the BAR weighs ~20 lbs. fully loaded.

As much as I like Steve McQeen, he's not exactly a big guy and I doubt he would be very accurate or effective shooting the BAR from the shoulder. And he certainly wouldn't swing it around all nimble and light like it was and M4.

It's Hollywood, what do you expect?

Besides being the King of Cool, Steve McQueen was a Marine!

Pretty sure he could handle a BAR.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mi...nsition/famous-veteran-steve-mcqueen.html/amp

Anything with JMB's name on it would sell. Though IMHO the Lewis Gun would have worked better.
W.H.B. Smith wrote of the Pedersen Device that there is a big difference between what a trained operator can do under controlled conditions and what an ordinary soldier does in combat. The submachine gun-the "trench broom"-a much better idea.
"Walking fire"-? Those UK and Empire troops who survived the first day of the Somme, the poilus-who survived the first day or so of the Nivelle Offensive in 1917 would tell you how effective that is.