![]() The bulk of the first troops of the American Expeditionary Force arrived in France in January 1918. Generally, when you have a technological advantage over your enemy, it doesn't make sense to not use that advantage. ![]() military use began in 1918 and continued until the Vietnam war Army in an effort to break the stalemate of trench warfare in the battlefields of France and Belgium. This rifle, called the BAR M1918, was commissioned by the U.S. During all this time I had only one stoppage, and this was due to a broken ejector. Guns became rusty on the outside due to the rain and wet weather, but in every instance when the guns were called upon to fire, they fired perfectly. The condition of the ground on these five days was very muddy, and considerable grit, etc., got into the working parts of the guns. They had very rough handling due to the fact that the infantry made constant halts, causing the guns to be placed in the mud. ![]() The following report was sent General Pershing by the commanding officer of this detail:ĭuring the 5 days that my four guns were in action they fired approximately 13,000 rounds of ammunition. The war ended, however, before we had equipped even a small portion of our own Army.įirst combat use of the Browning automatic machine guns was on 26 September 1918 by a small detachment of the 79th Division. Requests came from the Allied high command to speed up delivery so as to have their presence felt at the front. They met with the enthusiastic approval of all who viewed them. The first of these weapons sent overseas were routed to machine gun schools to acquaint the soldier with the much publicized American product that would rid him of the French arms. The BAR was not put into production until after the US entered WWI so it took time until the rifle was ready to get the troops on the front line, but it did eventually get to them and saw active combat during WWI.įrom The Machine Gun, Volume I: History, Evolution, and Development of Manual, Automatic, and Airborne Repeating Weapons by George Chinn, page 179: No it was not, the guns were delivered to troops as soon as was possible. Why would Modern Marvels and Atwater make this claim and is there any evidence to back it up? There are numerous sources on the history of the Browning Automatic Rifle available on the internet, but I can’t find a single one that makes the claim that they were not issued to troops for fear of them falling into enemy hands. BAR’s began to be issued to troops by July 1918 and by the end of the war 52,000 of them had been produced. The order was switched to Winchester when Colt was unable to begin production right away. Wikipedia says that Browning was given the contract for the BAR on and on July 16 an order was placed with Colt for 12,000 of them. I can’t find any other reference to back up this claim. He claims that the BAR was “such a good weapon that the decision was made that, if it fell into German hands, the Germans could pruduce and use it against us.” For this reason, the show claims, the BAR was kept from American troops. Jack Atwater, former director of the US Army Ordnance Museum, makes the claim that American soldiers were issued inferior Chauchats even though the Army had the much superior Browning Automatic Rifle. On the History Channel show Modern Marvels: Engineering Disasters 2 (S05E30) there is a segment on the French Chauchat rifle.
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