Today each Army and Marine fire team contains at least one hard charger who is designated the squad automatic weapon man. This position, first conceived back in 1918, was until the disco era composed of a Joe or Leatherneck armed with a BAR. What’s a BAR you ask?
Officially designated “Rifle, Caliber .30, Automatic, Browning, M1918,” this 16-pound light machine gun was revolutionary when it was introduced in the tail end of the First World War. At the time, the US Army grew from 200,000 to over 4-million in the span of about 18-months. Far outstripping all of the arsenals of weapons, the new Doughboys needed a machine gun capable of being mass-produced, then carried into the field in huge numbers.
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Looks comfy, no? This was the rig to help carry the BAR for the WWI-concept of “walking fire.”
It was to be used along with such wonder weapons as the Thompson submachine gun, Pedersen-device equipped Springfield rifles, armed airplanes, and modern field artillery to scour “No Man’s Land” of the Kaiser’s Imperial storm troopers.
Capable of full-auto fire, the gun, usually just referred to as the BAR, could fire 30.06 rounds as fast as 550 rounds per minute, which meant it could drain its 20-round detachable box magazine in as few as two seconds if set to rock and roll (or we should say, the Charleston).
However, with the magazine change in there, typical effective rate of fire was between 40-60 rounds per minute. Although a beast, it was designed to be carried and operated by a single solider, which gave squad-sized units an incredible boost in firepower.
In September 1917, the Army ordered some 25,000 of these weapons from Winchester. With the prospect of having to put one in every squad in what was projected to be the world’s largest military, Uncle called up Connecticut manufacturers Colt and Marlin-Rockwell to help army the boys “over there.”
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A 1918-made Marlin-Rockwell BAR that was reworked for WWII service as a M1918A2. Image via RIA
Read the rest in my column at Marlin Forum
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
