50 caliber machine gun, and the Browning Auto-5 semi-automatic shotgun. 30 caliber air-cooled machine guns, the M2. He is known for such weapons as the M1911 pistol, the Browning Hi Power pistol, the M1917. Throughout his life, John Browning remained totally focused on his craft. His prolific work continued unabated until, while working on a design for a new self-loading pistol, he literally died of a heart attack in 1926 at his workbench in his son Val’s design shop in Belgium. Browningīrowning was born in Ogden, Utah in 1855 and at age 13 went to work in his father’s gun shop. Model M1918A2 Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) in the Varnum Memorial Armory Museum About John Moses Browning John M. He is credited with the development of modern automatic and semi-automatic firearms along with a range of accessories, used by the military and civilian communities worldwide. He is considered to be one of the world’s foremost firearms designers with 128 firearm patents. Introduced late in World War I and now known by infantrymen around the globe, the “BAR” was the product of the fertile mind of John Moses Browning. You want to be effective with an MG crew, you’d best be working at it, because if you don’t? You won’t.Sitting on a display case in the Varnum Memorial Armory Museum’s “World Wars Room” is a Model M1918A2 Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). The grunts just didn’t seem to care about the issue, in my observation. For many years, the Infantry units were absolutely dominated by their support elements like the Engineers when it came to the MG team portion of the competition. Give you an idea about the Army’s attitude towards MG crews: Time was, when the 9th ID still existed as a real unit, they held an annual military skills competition. They used to do MGs better than the Army, but that’s only true in selected cases, these days. Unfortunately, this cultural rot has spread somewhat, and you’ll find Marines with the same attitude today. Similar syndrome is observable with regards to the M60. The Army? It was seen as a burden, in a lot of cases, and pawned off on the junior guy… “Well,” sez him, “We didn’t see him after that…”ĭad always said his progress from lowly draftee to officer, aside from from falling in love with She who was to become my Mom…(an officer,) had almost as much to do with having, “someone else carry the damn BAR around…Don’t tell your Mom that…”Ī big one, as I recall from reading, is that the Marines treated carrying a BAR as a privilege, and gave it to their biggest/best/most experienced troops. “Jezze,” said I upon this tale being related, “Did you actually hit the guy?” Never underestimate the attention a US infantry type can give to a solitary opposing artillery observer. (His best, really long range accuracy shot was at a nearly two mile range, but as he said, it involved a borrowed AA rangefinder and a Sherman equipped with a 76mm rifle. but the real problem was that blasted open bolt that made real accuracy nigh on to impossible. Neither of us liked it much for all the well-known reasons-too heavy, too small a mag, etc. Me, as an armorer with lots of opportunity to play with a (very) vintage BAR, and my Dad as a Platoon Leader on Attu, Kwajalein, and Luzon. Nor an Army-Guy who didn’t swear AT the BAR. Interestingly, in my service, being an Army-Guy posted to a Marine-Guy Air-Facility, I never met a Marine that didn’t swear by the BAR. It is, however, one of very few fully transferrable Colt Monitors on the NFA registry. This particular example was owned by the late Jim Ballou, author of the Collector Grade book “Rock in a Hard Place” about the BAR, and has a couple non-original markings added by him. Another 20 or so were sold to other police agencies, but at $300 (roughly $5500 in 2017 dollars) the Monitor was simply too expensive for most depression-era agencies to justify or afford. In 1933 the gun was formally designated the FBI’s official Fighting Rifle, but the agency only purchased about 90 of the guns in total. 30-06 cartridge had no problem at all dealing with cars in the 1930s. It was targeted at police agencies which had experienced problems with Thompson submachine guns failing to penetrate the heavy steel panels of large automobiles – the. The Monitor featured a shortened (18”) and lightened barrel, no dust covers, a pistol grip, and a large Cutts Compensator muzzle brake. This was joined in 1931 by the R80, a law enforcement version also called the Monitor. In 1925 they introduced the R75, which was a military version of the gun with a bipod, pistol grip, dust covers, and a few other improvements. Colt had the sales rights to the BAR in North and South American (as well as a few other specific countries), and they worked on improving the design after World War One. The Colt Monitor was Colt’s improved version os the Browning Automatic Rifle intended for the law enforcement market.
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