WSJ piece about Browning.

Leave it to the WSJ. Did ANY American soldiers, anywhere in the world, wear that style helmet during WW2?

Also, how very woke to ascribe moral ambiguity ("It’s also true that Browning’s inventions, including the modern slide-action pistol, have contributed to appalling suffering from gun violence in the civilian world. That was the sad, ironic duality of Browning’s mechanical creativity: His firearms could save a life or take a life, or do both, in a single instant.") to a machine -- an inanimate object.
 
Did ANY American soldiers, anywhere in the world, wear that style helmet during WW2?
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Many GI's and Marines were still in that helmet in the early days of the war. I don't know that any of them made their way to Europe, but lots of photos can be found of those helmets (and 1903's) in early Pacific island campaigns. Do an image search of the Bataan death march. But you're right, that certainly wasn't a photo taken in '45.
 
"Any way you could copy/paste the entire article here? You have to be a member of wsj to read the full article."

That is a solid NO.

Please go to TFL's rules page and read up on our Copyrighted Materials policy.
 
If that picture was taken in 1945, then it was surely done on some training post in the US where the old style equipment was still in use.

Its probably a pre war or early war picture without an actual date so "circa 1945"

I am not going to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal just to be able to read the rest of what is already shown itself to be a biased point of view.

Anytime I see the phrase "gun violence" (that isn't a direct quote from some anti-gun or other ignorant person) that tells me right away the author's point of view and probable agenda.

Also the use of the term "slide action pistol" tell me that the author does not know correct gun terminology (or does and doesn't use it in order to better understood by a target audience that doesn't know correct gun terminology, either).

I believe that just posting a link with no other comment, question or explanation meets our standard as a "drive by" post, but since a couple of the other moderators have let it stand, I'll take no action.

I've long held that if one were to credit winning WWII to any single weapon/system (which one shouldn't do) then that single thing would have to be the Browning machine gun, and in particular the M2 .50 cal and its variants.
 
It's a great picture though.



This photo was taken in the summer of 1942 at Ft. Knox. By then we had been in the war for several months and the classic WWII helmet had been adopted approximately a year earlier. It's an interesting dichotomy of the WWI helmet and M1 Garand. Shows how logistics work I suppose.

 
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It’s also true that Browning’s inventions, including the modern slide-action pistol, have contributed to appalling suffering from gun violence in the civilian world.
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Good grief!

And I suppose:

*Johannes Gutenberg is responsible for porno mags.
*Henry Ford is responsible for drunk driving.
*Alexander Graham Bell is responsible for obscene phone calls and telemarketing.

One of the best quips I've ever heard in the gun debate was this:

"Those guns are nothing but KILLING MACHINES!!!"
After a couple of seconds the thoughtful reply came back:
"You say that like it's a BAD thing."
 
All is not lost. In the September 2021 issue of the American Rifleman there's an article titled "The Genius of John Moses Browning".

I haven't got around to it yet but I bet it's less woke/hysterical/derogatory than the WSJ.

p.s. wokeness just makes me tired.
 
Huh. I was able to read the WSJ article and I don't subscribe. When a blurb came up telling me to subscribe to read more I just closed the blurb and the article was still there.

Seems like the article in the WSJ is a plug for the article's author's book “The Guns of John Moses Browning,” published by Scribner and authored by Nathan Gorenstein.

I might or might not read his book but the two star comments in Amazon gave me a lot of info. The book has very little technical information about firearms. Seems very similar to the book "Glock: The Rise of America's Gun" by Paul M. Barrett (note: NOT the Barrett that makes the .50 cal guns.)

Here's an excerpt from the top critical review on Amazon:
From the title I expected the book to be about Browning"s guns. It isn't . It was written for someone who knows next to nothing about firearms. The author has to explain what a "receiver" is. That tells you all you need to know.
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For those interested in the evolution of the U.S. military helmet, there's a good on-line article from the Smithsonian.

The helmet in the WSJ article appears to be the "Kelly" helmet adopted in 1936. It was replaced by the M1 helmet (1941-1979). Like others here, I've seen numerous photos over the years depicting soldiers wearing the Kelly helmet in the early days of WW II.
 
article

Read the same article (apparently edited) in the "Rifleman" last night. I do not recall the wonky statements evident in the WSJ version, but there was some type of tone or undercurrent in the Rifleman version that , for me anyhow, made the article come across not quite right.
 
Hmmm...I didn't notice it but the WSJ and American Rifleman articles were both written by Nathan Gorenstein and the American Rifleman included a blurb about his book.
 
Well then, it seems the author is having lunch with the right people...:rolleyes:

So, now I wonder, if his technical writing ability is good enough for the NRA to publish, why did he write such crap for the WSJ??

target audience??

that would explain level of technical terms and explanations, but doesn't explain actual misuse of terms, though it does explain politically slanted crap, because that's what one audience group wants to hear.

I'm sorry, but anyone who describes a semi auto pistol as a "slide action pistol"
and says how Browning's designs have contributed to gun violence is someone I'm no longer interested in reading, anything they write.
 
From March 1945 until the end of World War II, the skies over Japan witnessed some of the deadliest aerial raids in history. Fleets of B-29 bombers, the four-engine “Superfortress” that represented the pinnacle of American aeronautical achievement, firebombed Tokyo and virtually all of Japan’s major cities. The air campaign culminated in the use of another unique American invention, the atomic bomb, and 76 years ago, on Aug. 14, 1945, Imperial Japan surrendered.

The monthslong, war-ending aerial pounding was only possible, however, after Allied troops conquered enemy island strongholds from Guadalcanal to Okinawa and shot down thousands of Japanese planes. Those victories were won with other American inventions. Quite unlike the B-29, and most certainly unlike the atomic bomb, these other weapons were conceived by a single man—born before the Civil War and already deceased by two decades. His name was John Moses Browning.

In a life of extraordinary mechanical creativity, Browning created the weapons that armed every American fighter and bomber and equipped every American infantry unit. The nation may have forgotten, but every battle won in World War II was won with Browning firearms.
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Two-thirds of my collection are J.M. Browning designed guns.
 
The nation may have forgotten, but every battle won in World War II was won with Browning firearms.
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Absolutely true!

But, equally true, every battle we lost was lost with Browning firearms, as well.


and, a small point, hostilities with Japan ended in Aug 45. Japan didn't actually surrender until the official documents were signed in Sep 45, on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo bay.

People often point to a specific piece of equipment (or class of) and say "that won the war!"... they shouldn't, but they often do. Nothing, not even "the bomb" won the war all by itself.

That being said, Browning's firearms played a HUGE part, one that must be acknowledged and recognized, even though its impossible to specifically quantify.

By the time of WWII, aside from a handful of obsolete guns still serving, virtually all our belt fed machine guns were Brownings. All of our aircraft armament below 20mm size were Brownings. Our infantry machine guns were Brownings, the BAR, and the .30 and .50 cal Brownings were the fire support backbone of our armed forces.

If it could physically carry a machine gun, by the end of the war we had put a Browning gun on it. Jeeps, trucks, tanks, planes, ships, and even soldiers on foot all carried Browning machine guns of one type or another.

Browning's guns didn't win the war, but they damn sure were the best tool available for the job, at the time. And today, in many cases, Browning designed guns still are the best tools for the job.
 
My Dad crewed an M8 armored car as a cavalryman in France. His M8 was equipped with a .50 Browning, and a .30 Browning...and he wore a 1911 on his hip. Other than his M1 Garand, you might say Browning helped my Dad win his war.
 
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