Why Everybody LOATHED American BAR

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-12

[00:00:02]How do you force infantry to lay down heavy fire right on the move? Engineers answered with rigid steel mechanics and a concept called walking fire. The United States Army designed the M1918 BAR specifically for this unique approach. Pouring vast resources into an assault tactic that ultimately never got a chance for real combat application.

[00:00:25]John Browning built the fire selector to fight the shooter's own panic. The switch was intentionally stiff. It required serious physical effort to push. From the safe position, [music] it moved forward into semi-automatic.

[00:00:39]Another hard push drove it forward again. A heavy metallic click marked the shift into full automatic mode. A spring-loaded stop made this upward transition fast, but pulling it back to safe was deliberately [music] difficult. A soldier shaking from adrenaline in the middle of a firefight could not accidentally lock his rifle at the worst possible moment. The weapon physically tethered itself to the operator. The military issued three distinct belt configurations. One served the gunner. Two equipped as assistants.

[00:01:10]A heavy steel cup sat riveted to the right side of the gunner's belt. It provided a rigid anchor for the stock on the move. The soldier locked the rifle [music] against his hip. He advanced. He fired in semi-automatic mode to pin the enemy inside their dugouts. When the distance closed to just a few meters, the tactic shifted. The gunner slammed the selector forward. Short automatic bursts cleared the trench. Factories rapidly scaled [music] up production. By the end of the war, assembly lines had delivered exactly 52,000 rifles. Tactics of the era were born from sheer desperation. The trench [music] stalemate drove infantry into a concrete trap. An artillery barrage was supposed to shatter the defense. Instead, the sudden pause after the shelling gave the enemy perfect time to man their machine gun nests. The heavy guns stopped.

[00:02:01]German defenders climbed out of their deep bunkers. A machine gun crew opened fire on the running Americans. Viscous mud of no man's land sucked the boots of the attackers. Every step drained their stamina. The standard assault relied on fire and movement. Half the squad sprints, the other half shoots. But halting in a cratered wasteland guaranteed death. The infantry carried standard bolt-action rifles. Five rounds per stripper clip. A highly trained soldier delivered [music] 15 aimed shots per minute. 15 rounds could never suppress a fortified position, spitting out 500 bullets in 60 seconds. The assault math simply failed. Attackers desperately needed continuous cover fire on the move. But the trenches relied on the maximum machine gun, 32 kg of dead [music] weight. That figure excluded the vital cooling water. A four-man crew operated the German variant on a massive sled mount. Dragging that heavy steel block across a blasted moonscape was physically impossible. The gap between the final artillery strike and the barbed wire became an open kill zone.

[00:03:12]The front lines urgently required a lightweight automatic weapon engineered exclusively for the forward charge. How do you merge machine gun power with infantry mobility? John Browning solved this exact engineering task. He used a movable gas piston. [music] Weight was slashed. In 1917, he brought a radically new design to Washington. The weapon fired the standard 3006 caliber. It shared ammunition with the Springfield rifle. Logistics remains simple. Powder gases rush down the barrel. The piston recoils. The empty shell ejects instantly. The rifle fired 500 rounds a minute. No delays. The finished weapon weighed exactly 7 kg. [music] 7 kg of solid steel and wood strain the arms.

[00:04:02]Aiming on the move requires [music] brutal strength, but the heavy platform remained highly stable. The sights [music] came from the 1917 Nfield rifle.

[00:04:11]They offered perfect target acquisition.

[00:04:14]It worked. Engineers initially tested massive 40 round magazines, but battlefield ergonomics dictated the strict design rules. The extended box dug deep into the dirt. It made prone shooting impossible. The military restricted the weapon to 20 rounds and discarded the awkward extended magazines. While Browning refined his new gas system, American soldiers marched into combat holding foreign mistakes.

[00:04:42]9 kg was the weight of a pan magazine machine gun that could have turned the tide of battle, but army command threw it away. The infantry received a nightmare instead. The French supplied the showot rifle. Engineers designed its open-sided magazine for a specific reason. The gunner needed a clear visual check of remaining ammunition. On a clean test range, the concept worked flawlessly. In the pulverized mud of the trenches, it became a perfect dirt trap.

[00:05:12]Filth poured directly into the feeding path. The spring jammed, the weapon seized. The Americans then converted this fragile design to their own powerful 306 cartridge. The heavier powder charge shattered the already weak internals. The guns failed almost instantly under heavy fire. An American inventor had already built the perfect alternative. Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis developed a highly reliable portable machine gun in 1911. It featured forced air cooling and a highcapacity pan magazine. But the chief of the Army Ordinance Department despised him. A bitter personal rivalry paralyzed the procurement board. Furious, Lewis packed up his blueprints in 1913. He moved to Belgium and then Britain, where his design changed the [music] war. The United States Marines bypassed the bureaucracy entirely. They bought the excellent Lewis machine guns for their own combat deployments, but Army command confiscated the reliable weapons upon arrival in France. They issued the failing showshot rifles instead.

[00:06:21]Generals sent troops to the front line with the worst gear available solely because two commanding officers hated each other. Studying fatal design flaws no longer requires digging through dusty military blueprints from 1911. Test them yourself. Want to see how a shell pierces steel from the inside? War Thunder simulates every node of a war machine down to the smallest details.

[00:06:45]Over 2,500 historical vehicles from 10 major nations clash across massive virtual battlefields. Forget health bars. The game engine actively calculates realistic damage physics and exact armor thickness for every impact.

[00:07:01]The X-ray camera reveals the precise trajectory of shrapnel tearing through the tank fighting compartment. Players hear the harsh scrape of metal when a heavy shell ricochets off sloped armor.

[00:07:12]Heavy shells shatter engine blocks.

[00:07:15]Ammunition racks detonate immediately upon direct impact, leaving nothing but burning steel behind. New commanders and veterans returning after a six-month break receive a decisive tactical advantage. The developers prepared a massive bonus pack specifically for PC and consoles. The bundle delivers exclusive premium vehicles, 7 days of premium account time, and exactly 100,000 silver lines. Click the link in the description to claim the gift package right now. How do you survive when the enemy hunts you specifically 11 magazines? Those 48,000 hoarded barrels eventually transformed one single infantryman into the primary target.

[00:07:57]Field manuals dictated a three-man crew for the weapon, a gunner, an assistant, an ammo bearer. Reality ignored the paper rules. One soldier hauled the entire burden alone. The weight of 11 loaded magazines exceeded 7 kg. One man carried this massive load, not counting the weight of the rifle itself. The enemy understood the tactical stakes.

[00:08:23][music] Snipers scanned the tree lines for the distinctive long barrel. They targeted the gunner first. He was the anchor. 220 rounds. That volume of fire dictated life or death for the whole unit. The man carrying the heavy steel drew every incoming bullet. His survival rate plummeted in seconds. The squad had to adapt. A dead gunner left the unit completely [music] exposed. The battlefield math demanded a grim insurance policy. [music] Instructors forced the rest of the unit to memorize the firing mechanisms. command trained every regular rifleman to step over a fallen comrade, pick up his weapon, and keep shooting. 52,000 produced units.

[00:09:08]Where did this massive arsenal come from? Rewind to the summer of 1918.

[00:09:13]General John Persing deliberately hid the new weapon from the front line.

[00:09:18]Production lines stamped out steel relentlessly. The army shipped 48,000 rifles to France, but they never reached the trenches. The guns waited. Wooden crates stacked up in silent French rear warehouses. The air inside smelled of thick preservation grease. [music] American troops kept fighting with obsolete gear. The new firepower remained locked away. Persing feared one outcome: capture. If a forward patrol lost just one rifle, German engineers would tear the mechanism apart. They would reverse engineer the firing cycle.

[00:09:54]They would copy the design. Persing refused to surrender this advantage. He planned to arm entire divisions simultaneously for a spring 1919 offensive. So he waited. Testers merely dropped the receiver into local mud to check tolerances. Combat trials waited.

[00:10:12]Command finally unleashed the guns just before the Muse Argon offensive. The sudden volume of fire shattered enemy defensive positions, but time ran out.

[00:10:21]The trench war ended before mass deployment of the weapon ever began. How did trench weapons end up in the hands of gangsters? Broken padlocks on weekly secured army reserves provided the immediate answer. Depot where 52,000 rifles lay for years became easy prey for roaming criminal syndicates. Clyde Barrow systematically stripped the heavy firearm down to its bare mechanical essence. He clamped the stolen rifle into a heavy vice and dragged a hacksaw across the steel barrel. The metal blade sheared off the excess length, allowing him to conceal the weapon under a coat.

[00:10:59]Next came the ammunition feed. Bright sparks and the harsh crackle of a welding [music] arc filled the makeshift garage workshop. Barrow fused three standard 20 round steel [music] magazines into a single solid block. The crude modification delivered 60 rounds of uninterrupted firepower. Law enforcement expected standard shootouts against pump-action 12- gauge shotguns.

[00:11:22]Instead, outgun police patrols collided head-on with heavy military machine guns. Standard police revolvers firing 38 caliber lead [music] physically could not pierce the fixed steel bodies of Ford V8 getaway cars. Barrow fired military 3006 cartridges that punched clean through heavy car doors and cast iron engine blocks. The balance shifted completely. The criminal sector [music] violently forced weapon evolution much faster than any rigid military bureaucracy. To equalize this lethal disparity, cult engineers manufactured the specialized R80 monitor machine gun and deployed it directly to federal agents. Why did engineers deliberately break a working rifle? They attempted to forge a heavy machine gun out of a light infantry weapon. Watching outlaws successfully modify trench guns, the United States Ordinance Department launched its own official engineering program. The result was a catastrophic downgrade. The military designated the new model M1918 A2. It was supposed to dominate the squad level. Instead, the upgrade ruined the weapon for the men carrying it into combat. Designers completely removed semi-automatic fire. They installed two fully automatic modes. One fired at a standard 600 rounds per minute. The second dropped the rate to 350 rounds per minute. To achieve this, engineers added a complex hydraulic buffer inside the stock. In a sterile laboratory, it improved precision. Trench reality hit harder. Viscous field mud seeped inside the receiver. The thick [music] dirt permanently jammed the delicate hydraulic mechanism. The expensive rate reducer became useless dead weight. Then came the bipod. Designers clamped heavy steel legs directly to the muzzle. The total weapon weight spiked [music] to 9 kg. Firing from the prone position became a brutal physical struggle. A soldier pressed his shoulder into the stock to aim. The muzzle bipod anchored the front. The immense pressure caused the long barrel to flex. The line of sight instantly broke. The shooter missed entirely. Overengineering crippled the accuracy. [music] The core mechanical issue remained unsolved. A real machine gun requires sustained fire. The Belgian company FN had already designed a quick change barrel mechanism for continuous shooting. The army rejected the foreign patent to save the military budget, so the fixed barrel stayed. The standard 20 round magazine emptied in exactly 3 seconds. Sustained fire was physically impossible.

[00:14:07]Frustrated soldiers took matters into their own hands. They aggressively stripped the official improvements in the field. They ripped off the bipods.

[00:14:15]They threw away the buffers. They stripped the heavy rifle back to its raw original configuration. Because infantry squads lacked any alternative, assembly lines never stopped. Factories stamped out almost 200,000 units. While the Vermacht scattered 20,000 Polish trophies across rear echelons, the Pacific demanded pure volume. The need for dense fire dictated new rules. Why did a heavy World War I rifle become the second most important weapon after the flamethrower? The jungle erased engagement distances. visibility dropped to zero. Japanese infantry always closed the gap to negate American artillery strikes. The standard M1 Garand simply lacked the necessary output for this chaos. Dragging the heavy M1919 machine gun through thick brush took too long. A sudden ambush erupted in the thickets.

[00:15:10]The Japanese charged at point blank range. A marine immediately pivoted, leveling the heavy barrel straight from the hip. The continuous deafening crackle of automatic fire completely drowned out the isolated clicks of bolt-action Arisaka rifles, pumping out up to 600 rounds per minute. One heavy rifle effectively replaced an entire infantry platoon in a frantic close quarters brawl. The brutal physical reality of the jungle required an overwhelming wall of lead. Marine squads adapted quickly. By 1944, they reorganized the infantry into three fire teams, four men in each group. Every single team centered around at least one bar.

[00:15:56]Combat experience forced a massive tactical shift. 500 barrels per division turned into 850 by 1945.

[00:16:06]Japanese forces relied almost entirely on slow bolt-action weapons and static light machine guns. Their famous bonsai charges shattered against this moving wall of automatic fire. Tactics had to change. By the time Marines hit the volcanic ash of Ewima, suicidal frontal assaults vanished. Defenders hid underground. Captured enemy documents revealed a grim Japanese calculation.

[00:16:34]An American division deployed five to six times more firepower than their own.

[00:16:39]7,000 produced FG-42 paratroop rifles.

[00:16:43]Pacific Island charges shattered against dispersed American squads. But in Europe, the Vermacht built its infantry combat entirely around the MG34 machine gun. A German squad lost combat effectiveness the moment its machine gunner fell. An American unit distributed automatic fire among every man. The German tactic relied on a single anchor. 10 men existed only to feed ammunition to a single barrel. The MG34 and the faster MG42 dictated the pace of every engagement. Then the anchor broke. An Allied sniper fired.

[00:17:23]The machine gun crew went down. Fire density dropped in a split second.

[00:17:28]Surviving infantrymen desperately worked the bolts of their CAR 98K rifles. It was not enough. The destruction of a single machine gun slashed the squad's firepower by 70%.

[00:17:41]The STG-44 arrived too late and in two small numbers. The Germans urgently needed portable automatic rifles. They possessed the FG42. It featured a bipod and a 20 round magazine, but factories completed a mere 7,000 units. They looked for enemy alternatives. Poland collapsed. The fallen nation left behind 20,000 Polish bars. The Vermock absorbed them all. They also scavenged every American bar they could find. Cold steel clacked. A German soldier slapped a 20 round box magazine into the captured weapon. The heavy rifle provided the exact mobile support their standard infantry lacked. Frontline divisions prioritized belt-fed guns. Rear units took the captured American and Polish rifles and turned them against partisans. How did a weapon from the trenches of the First World War reach armored trucks in the Vietnam War? Crews needed maximum stopping power without regard for weight. The exact design that covered the automatic fire deficit in Normandy punched through jungle ambushes a decade later. It held the front line relentlessly throughout the Korean War.

[00:18:55]The combat environment dictated strict engineering limits. Convoys faced pointblank attacks. Drivers welded heavy steel plates directly onto the sides of their cargo vehicles. Thick metal walls provided cover. Out from behind them protruded the long barrels of the bar.

[00:19:12]On foot, the rifle drained stamina.

[00:19:15]Mounted on a truck bed, its sheer mass perfectly absorbed the recoil. The heavy bullet delivered devastating kinetic energy. Its splintered wood. Its shattered engine blocks, but the limited magazine restricted sustained fire. The military replaced it with the M60. The new machine gun introduced the standardized NATO caliber. It featured continuous beltfed operation. A single soldier could carry the weapon and utilize its quick change barrel system.

[00:19:44]The aging rifle finally left the inventory just as troops entered the era of combat helicopters. Yet, its original mil steel receiver had operated flawlessly since 1918. Studying fatal design flaws no longer requires digging through dusty military blueprints from 1911. Test them yourself. Want to see how a shell pierces steel from the inside? War Thunder simulates every node of a war machine down to the smallest details. Over 2,500 historical vehicles from 10 major nations clash across massive virtual battlefields. Forget health bars. The game engine actively calculates realistic damage physics and exact armor thickness for every impact.

[00:20:28]The X-ray camera reveals the precise trajectory of shrapnel tearing through the tank fighting compartment. Players hear the harsh scrape of metal when a heavy shell ricochets off sloped armor.

[00:20:39]Heavy shells shatter engine blocks.

[00:20:42]Ammunition racks detonate immediately upon direct impact, leaving nothing but burning steel behind. New commanders and veterans returning after a six-month break [music] receive a decisive tactical advantage. The developers prepared a massive bonus pack specifically for PC and consoles. The bundle delivers exclusive premium vehicles, 7 days of premium account time, and exactly 100,000 silver lines.

[00:21:08]Click the link in the description to claim the gift package right