A History Question, well 2 actually......

H

HKMP5SD6

New member
1.What was the general purpose machine gun used by the US in WWII?

2.IS the Barrett M82A1 "Light Fifty" an anti-tank sniper rifle?
 
We didn't have a "GPMG" as such in WWII. The BAR was the Squad automatic, and the Browning M1919 was the medium MG.

The Barrett is properly termed an AMR or Anti Materiel Rifle. Not only good for extra long range anti-personnell work, it's real forte is shooting up vehicles, aircraft on runways, target acquisition radars for SAM sites, etc. from a distance. One 2-man team with one of these rifles and a good hide can shut down a small airbase or a supply column from a surprisingly long way off.

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"..but never ever Fear. Fear is for the enemy. Fear and Bullets."
10mm: It's not the size of the Dawg in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog!
 
But can the Barrett be used on tanks? I heard it was an anti-tank sniper from somewhere, just want to know if my belief is right.
 
Although the .50 BMG round was based on a light anti-armour round, modern MBT's are pretty much impervious to everything but other MBT's or LARGE shaped charge warheads. To engage a tank from a distance with a Barrett, SOP is to shoot for the vulnerable spots; radio whip aerials, Thermal Imaging sights, IR searchlights, vision blocks if you're desperate, but the best target of all it the tank's brain which sticks up through the open cupola and is unaware of the SF AMR team lurking in the bushes 800 yards away, picking off track commanders and whip antennas starting with the rear AFV and working their way forward up the column til someone notices that Joe-Bob ain't responding on the net...

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"..but never ever Fear. Fear is for the enemy. Fear and Bullets."
10mm: It's not the size of the Dawg in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog!
 
50bmg ROUND WAS DESIGNED WITH ANTI-TANK ROLE IN MIND -- IN 1918 (oops, caps) and was barely adequate back then. By WW2 it was no loger enough for tanks and neither were Boyz .55 (UK) or the 14.5mm (USSR) PTRD/PTRS. They were enough for AFVs and other soft and semi-soft targets.
 
The U.S. didn't employ a GP machine gunin W.W.II that wasn't doctrine for our forces at that time. We had the BAR at squad level, but it wasn't employed as the M249 SAW is today. There was just one per squad and it wasn't used to put down a base of fire to allow a part of the squad to maneuver. It just augmented the firepower of the squad.

At platoon and company level we had the Browning M1919A4 and (later in the war M1919A6) machine gun. The M2 .50 caliber machine gun was employed at company and battalion level.

The Germans came up with the G.P, machine gun concept when the fielded the MG34. Like the BAR there was one per squad, but it was a crew served weapon and provided a base of fire that the rest of the squad used to maneuver.

Contrary to current propaganda on the news, the .50 caliber "sniper" rifle is not an anti-tank weapon. .50 caliber was not an adequate round against tanks in the 1930s. It is quite effective against "soft" targets (trucks, crew served weapons, battlefiled electronics etc.)

HTH
Jeff
 
1.What was the general purpose machine gun used by the US in WWII?

The .30 caliber Browning Model 1919A6 because it was fired from a bipod. It was often called the "light machine gun" thus starting the old army joke "The man who named the light machine gun never carried one"

John Browning did design the .50 BMG as an anti tank weapom during World War One. It would have been extremely effective against any tank in service during World War One.
 
I read somewhere that the gutsy Russian two-man crews with PTRD/PTRS got close enough to blow the treads off tanks to immobilize them, then called in the artillery.

Have seen a few pictures of these being used, always in block-to-block city fighting.
 
According to a series of artcles in MGN that just ran the .50 BMG round was developed from a WW I balloon round. Sorry, I do not remember the article I'll have to go through the past issues.

The other thing is 800 yds. That is where I use a .308.

Cheers,

ts
 
BMWGS80:
At 800 yards, the .308 ain't got the wheaties to damage any part of a vehicular target. A sniper from a US SF outfit took out a wheeled APC at 1000 meters in Desert Dust with a .50 BMG SLAP round. There's a big difference between conventional sniping and anti-materiel work...

------------------
"..but never ever Fear. Fear is for the enemy. Fear and Bullets."
10mm: It's not the size of the Dawg in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog!
 
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