M1919 Browning Machine Gun

Origins

John Moses Browning's recoil-operated machine gun, demonstrated in 1917 by firing 20,000 rounds without a stoppage, was adopted as the water-cooled M1917 too late to matter in the World War I. The Army wanted a lighter gun for the new tanks, and in 1919 Browning replaced the water jacket with a heavy air-cooled barrel inside a perforated shroud. That tank gun became the M1919, and through the 1920s and 1930s it evolved through the A1, A2 and A3 into the M1919A4 of 1936, fitted with a 24-inch barrel and the M2 tripod, which was the standard American medium machine gun of the World War II.

Design & Construction

The M1919 is short-recoil operated: barrel and bolt recoil together a fraction of an inch before an accelerator flips the bolt back, and a cloth or metal-link belt of 250 rounds feeds from the left. It fires from a closed bolt at 400 to 600 rounds per minute, slow enough to be controllable and economical. The barrel is heavy — the gun's air cooling depends on its mass — and cannot be changed quickly, so sustained fire was limited by doctrine to bursts and the gun was never a true general-purpose weapon. The A4 gun weighs 31 pounds and the tripod 14; the M1919A6 of 1943 added a shoulder stock, carrying handle, bipod and lighter barrel to make an ersatz light machine gun that weighed 32 pounds and pleased no one. The aircraft version, the AN/M2, was lightened and sped up to 1,200 rounds per minute; the M37 of the 1950s was a tank coaxial gun with dual feed.

Combat Use

Every American infantry company of the Second World War had A4s in its weapons platoon, and they rode on every jeep, half-track, tank and landing craft; the US Marine Corps fought the Pacific with them and the 101st Airborne dropped with A4s and A6s into Normandy. Lend-Lease sent thousands to Britain and Canada, and the Browning was licensed abroad. It went to Korean War unchanged. In Vietnam War the Navy converted A4s to 7.62mm NATO as the Mk 21 Mod 0 for river patrol boats, and the gun served on Army and Marine vehicles until the M60 Machine Gun and later the M240 replaced it.

Legacy

The M1919's descendants are its own variants: the .50-caliber M2 that Browning developed alongside it is still in production a century later. The .30 Browning remained in use with allied armies into the twenty-first century, and Israel, Belgium and others rebuilt them for 7.62mm NATO. Semi-automatic builds on original parts kits are a staple of American collecting, and the gun's distinctive perforated barrel shroud is as familiar an image of the Second World War as the Garand and the jeep.