Quote:
Originally Posted by x SF med
Yeah, the Browning time at the 11B-S course (PhII) made you wonder about JMB - he must have been on some bad acid to design all those moving parts into the BAR, and then follow up with the M-2 HB .50 ... what's up with that?  |
I am not old enough to have known John Browning personally, but I understand history to be this.
The M1917 .30 BMG was an evolution of existing Browning 1901 machine gun, which was also a recoil-operated, belt-fed, water-cooled gun.
The M1919 .30 BMG which followed was an evolution of the M1917 into a lighter, air-cooled version.
The M-2 .50 BMG (originally M1921) was an upscaled and evolved M1919. The original M1921 was water-cooled, like the M1917, but the M-2 evolution dispensed with the water-cooling in favor of air-cooling.
As you can see, there was an evolutionary development process, working off of the M1901 BMG.
The M1918 BAR was an effort to put portable automatic fire in the hands of the assault troops. It was designed as a replacement for the abysmal Chauchat and M1906 Hotchkiss. Trust me when I say that it was a tremendous improvement on those weapons. There was little carryover from those designs. Later auto rifles, like the 1935 Bren Gun, with a QC barrel and higher cap mags, were to improve on the BAR, but John Browning was the first to make a practical LMG/auto rifle. It has its problems and idiosyncracies, but if you were going to go "over the top" in WW I, the BAR was the gun to have. Consider it in the context of its time.
Also remember that in the 39 years between 1887 and 1926, John Moses Browning designed the M1895 Colt-Browning machine gun, the Colt Model 1897, the FN Browning M1899/M1900, the Colt Model 1900, the
Colt Model 1902, the Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammer, the Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless, the Colt Model 1905, the Remington Model 8 (1906), the Colt 1908 Vest Pocket, Colt Model 1908 Pocket Hammerless, the FN Model 1910, the U.S. Model 1911, the Winchester 1887 shotgun, the Winchester Model 1894 rifle, the Winchester Model 1897 shotgun, the Browning Auto-5 shotgun, the U.S. Model 1917 water-cooled machine gun, the Model 1919 air-cooled machine gun, the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) of 1917, the Browning M2 .50-caliber heavy machine gun, the Browning Hi-Power (initial design, finished by FN), and the Superposed shotgun.
I'd say he was pretty prolific and hard working.
TR