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Browning Automatic Rifle model 1918 (A2) articles wanted

Discussion in 'Information Requests' started by ssjtristan, Dec 1, 2019.

  1. ssjtristan

    ssjtristan New Member

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    Greetings all! I have been diving deep, or attempting to at least, into the history of the BAR. However I'm coming up short on various historic reports written from back in the teens through 40's. Most are housed at the National Archives but I was hoping there would be a few researchers out there that would have some copies of various articles. If anybody is interested in sharing their copies I would greatly appreciate it. Would be willing to pay for copies too since traveling to the east coast to do it myself is pretty expensive, for me at least. I have done the standard Rock in a Hard Place by Ballou and various other smaller books but I'm looking for more. I'll share my wish list if anybody can help. Thanks.
     
  2. George Patton

    George Patton Canadian Refugee

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    Hello. Welcome to the forum! Please share a list of what you are looking for. Several members here are knowledgeable on the subject and may be albe to help.
     
  3. OpanaPointer

    OpanaPointer I Point at Opana Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    Do you have the field manuals?
     
  4. ssjtristan

    ssjtristan New Member

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    Opana: Yes, I have ALL the field manuals from 1918 to sometime in the 60's.

    Here is my wish list in hopes somebody will be kind enough to send me a copy. :)

    History of the Browning Automatic Rifle Cal. .30 M1918A2 as produced by New England Small Arms Corporation, Providence, Rhode Island. Prepared Major Robert W. Mojonnier, Ordnance Department, for the Boston Ordnance District, January 1, 1946.

    The "Butler Report" (typescript): Outline of Development and Manufacture of Machine Guns and Automatic Rifles During the Period of the War with Germany by Captain John S. Butler. War Department, Office of the Chief of Ordnance, Engineering Division, February 14, 1919.

    Or (same report below?)

    Volume I of O. O. war department file OMS 313/90 January 13, 1920, Browning automatic rifle, model of 1918 by Captain J.S. Butler under date April 21, 1919.

    From the national archives there are several files from Record Groups 156 and 177 including but not limited to:
    Automatic Rifle, Browning (M1918A2)--Engineering Study Vol. I (1 Sept 1944), Contract # 19-020-ORD-3270
    1046: Modifications On The Browning Automatic Rifles M1918A2
    Automatic Rifle, Browning (M1918A2)--Engineering Study Vol. II (1 Sept 1944), Contract # 19-020-ORD-3270
    90: Browning Automatic Rifle M1918 May 1919

    Anyway...I could go on and on but the two top files would be very interesting as would be the engineering studies.

    I'm hoping the "History of the Browning Automatic Rifle" report cited above lists what changes where made to the 1918a2 and why. Perhaps not since those changes were made prior to WWII. Is there an indepth report on that somewhere? I would think so.
     
  5. OpanaPointer

    OpanaPointer I Point at Opana Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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  6. OpanaPointer

    OpanaPointer I Point at Opana Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    Checked Archives.org?
     
  7. OpanaPointer

    OpanaPointer I Point at Opana Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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  8. ssjtristan

    ssjtristan New Member

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    Thanks for the info!
     
  9. OpanaPointer

    OpanaPointer I Point at Opana Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    If you haven't already noticed the G-men used BARs in response to people using Thompsons. They gave the Feds range and sufficient outgoing to deal with the cowboys using spray-and-pray. Trigger discipline wins in the end.
     
  10. harolds

    harolds Member

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    Actually, many of the bad-guys in the "Roaring-20s" were good shots. They practiced!
     
  11. OpanaPointer

    OpanaPointer I Point at Opana Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    Poor trigger discipline. They shot the shit out of a garage to kill just seven men. They invented the drive-by, wild shooting by definition.
     
  12. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    Clyde Barrow was famous for his "whip it" gun. He had sawed off the barrel of a BAR to about 12 inches, and sawed off the stock so it was more or less a pistol grip. It would hang under his coat where he could "whip it" out. He must has have been partially deaf after the first use of that gun, especially if he shot it indoors in a bank. I suspect Clyde wasn't very bright. The Thompsons of that era had removable stocks that would have hid just as well, had far more rounds on tap, and had far lower muzzle report. .45 ACP is loud, but 30.06 is LOUD.

    [​IMG]
     
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  13. Jack B

    Jack B Active Member

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    I've always wondered why the Colt version wasn't adopted by the military as well.

    "In 1931, Colt introduced a BAR specifically geared for the law enforcement community. It was a commercial Browning Automatic Rifle with a pistol grip, shortened barrel and an elaborate compensator. The first two were shipped to Charlestown Prison (later to become Bunker Hill Community College) in Boston, MA on March 25, 1931. (Serial No’s C-102792, C-102793). The official factory designation was R-80 and commonly known as the “Monitor”.

    The FBI purchased approximately 90 Monitors and put them on display in a series of propaganda films depicting Mr. Hoover overseeing some of his agents firing (with tracer) at cars. The Monitor did its job well and soon the cars were chopped to pieces by the armor piercing .30-06. This was Mr. Hoover’s weapon of mass destruction as it put his men on equal footing with the likes of Bonnie and Clyde. The Monitor was the first official “Fighting Rifle” of the FBI."
    -- James L. Ballou, The Colt Monitor B.A.R.

    [​IMG]
     
  14. harolds

    harolds Member

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    In several gangster-lawmen shootouts, the bad guys won!
     
  15. OpanaPointer

    OpanaPointer I Point at Opana Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    "You're born. Shit happens. You die."
     
  16. Jack B

    Jack B Active Member

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    Dalai Lama? ......or John Lennon?
     
  17. OpanaPointer

    OpanaPointer I Point at Opana Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    Maynard G. Krebs.
     
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  18. Terry D

    Terry D Well-Known Member

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    The Monitor gets a lot of attention these days, probably because a) it's a rare collector's piece, b) it looks boss, and c) some may regard it as a proto-assault rifle. Actually it was made only in tiny numbers and except for the FBI order it was not a success with the intended law-enforcement market. This was the Depression, and American law enforcement agencies had very little money to spend on new equipment. As for the US armed forces, they already had the M1918 BAR and adding another model would just have complicated logistics aside from the cost. Also, the military was in the process of modifying the BAR to make it more like an LMG by adding a bipod and other features. This endeavor resulted in the M1918A2, the WWII version. The Monitor, however, lacked a bipod and was thus a throwback to the original M1918. Also, the Monitor had pretty powerful recoil and wasn't the easiest automatic weapon to handle and shoot accurately. (Gun Jesus, AKA Ian McCullough, has test-fired a number of BAR types, including the Monitor, the M1918, the M1918A2, and the rare Colt R75A; the videos are instructive for comparison.) I should add that the BAR remained a common weapon in US law enforcement arsenals for decades, some still hanging around into the 1980s. Nearly all of these police BARs seem to have been ordinary M1918s and M1918A2s. I wish Ballou had covered law enforcement use more extensively in his otherwise excellent book on the weapon.
     
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