Wiki History Listing
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Often improperly referred to as a light machine gun, the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle (abbreviated as "BAR") was one of the earliest automatic, (relatively) lightweight, and man-portable firearms in any caliber to become successful. In fact, in it's debut in 1917, the BAR was the best automatic rifle available, period, having no competition whatsoever at the time of it's adoption. While designed too late to be used widely in WW1, the BAR was beloved by those who did get the chance to use it and later on was extremely successful with police and foreign military forces such as the Belgium, Poland, the UK and Sweden. The early models of BAR were also famous for being used by American prohibition era gangsters, criminals such as Bonnie and Clyde and Al Capone, whom captured BARs from state arsenals and customized them to their own liking. Though obsolete by the time WW2 broke out, the BAR in the M1918A2 configuration was nevertheless used not only through WW2 but also through Korea and some of Vietnam, before being sold off to American allies and used all the way into the 1990s. Today the BAR lives on as the [[FN MAG]]/M240, which uses the same mechanism as the BAR, merely flipped upside-down and paired with an [[MG42]] cover in order to allow the usage of belted ammunition. On a pedantic note, it has become increasingly common for the weapon's name to be mispronounced as "bar". Because the name BAR is abbreviated from Browning Automatic Rifle, the weapon's name is properly pronounced as letters rather than as a word ("bee aye arr" rather than "bar"). In anime the BAR is best known for its usage by [[Charlotte E. Yeager]] from [[Strike Witches]]. h4. See also * [[List of weapons]] h4. External links * "Wikipedia: M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1918_Browning_Automatic_Rifle Updated by bot Sun, Sep 18 '22, 02:55 |