Comments by "TheThirdMan" (@thethirdman225) on "RE: Bren vs Spandau - which was better? @Lindybeige" video.

  1. I’d bet I’m one of the few here who was trained on and has experience with the Bren LMG.
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  2.  @MilitaryHistoryVisualized  Without experience of the MG-34 or -42, I couldn't make a meaningful comparison. From a personal perspective of the Bren, it was very well made and engineered and gave an excellent impression of sturdiness, reliability and, I suppose, a belief that it would be accurate. My experience on the range was that there was little point in firing more than three to five round bursts, which is what I was trained to do, because after that many rounds, the target usually became obscured by smoke (not much) and atmospheric disturbances anyway. For this reason I find the claims of "1,200 rounds per minute!" pretty pointless. On top of which, that's an awful lot of ammunition you have to carry to no great end. The other effect of such a high rate of fire is that it significantly shortens barrel life and time between changes. I found things like stripping and cleaning to be extremely easy and I could strip it in about 20 seconds. "Piston, barrel, butt, body, bipod!" Magazine changes were extremely easy because all that was required was to hit the catch with the base of your right hand and grab the magazine at the same time, so that it came off in one easy motion. Replacing it was almost as simple and if you got it right, it went on with a satisfying click. It was speedy and didn't - so we were told - expose the gunner to enemy fire. The magazine was supposed to hold 30 rounds but in practice this was reduced to 27 to prevent jams. I suppose everybody knows this. The charging lever could be folded but it was easy to use and within easy reach. The gas operation was very simple but I can't remember much about it or any of the "Immediate Actions" in the event of stoppages. It was the first weapon I ever used with aperture sights, which I found less intuitive than the U-notch and blade of my .303 service rifle (this was school cadets in the 1970s, though we were trained by army gunnery sergeants). By the time I used it, the Bren's reputation was extremely well-known and even I knew about it. Perhaps, as far as we Aussies were concerned, its most important contribution was in the jungles of New Guinea on the Kokoda Track and the Battle of Lae where it established a pretty formidable name. As you know, I'm not really interested in the minutiae of weapons; only their contribution. If I could offer one opinion on the Bren it is that its role was more clearly and better defined than either of the two German weapons. Sure, they were all LMGs and they all performed that role extremely effectively, as far as I can tell. In WWII, there seem to have been very few bad LMGs. The Japanese Nambu, the Italian Breda and the Soviet DPM all seem to have been very good. But the only force that possessed a decent medium machine gun in any significant numbers was the British and Commonwealth forces, who used the Vickers for sustained indirect fire. The best example I can think of for this was the lead up to the British and Commonwealth attack on the Italian forces at Nebeiwa in December 1940, when dozens of Vickers guns poured thousands of rounds into the Italian camp throughout the night at a range of about 4 kilometres, which made sure that 1) the Italians could not move around the camp effectively, 2) that they got very little sleep and 3) that they knew an attack was imminent. The Bren was never called upon to perform these duties and I very much doubt any of those other weapons could have sustained that kind of fire all night as the Vickers did (at about 300 rpm). I believe the gunners were from 11th Indian Brigade 4th Bn, 7 th Rajput Rifles under Maj Gen Noel Beresford-Pierce. The British and Commonwealth forces organised their units along those lines and had dedicated Vickers crews for just this purpose. The Bren was simply a squad LMG. I have little or no attachment to guns of any kind so what you're getting here is the first hand impressions of a teenage boy who had no romantic illusions about the Bren. But since it was the only machine gun I have ever used in my life, it left a singular impression on me. Hope this helps.
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  3.  @MilitaryHistoryVisualized  Thanks, I’ll have a look at those. I do need to clarify one point though. When I referred to the 1,200 rpm, I was, of course, referring to the claims made for the MG-42. Squad tactics rarely call for a long burst at a high rate like that and I doubt if it would be needed. I did meet one digger from 6th Australian Division who had to empty a magazine when he suddenly came upon a platoon of Japanese troops in a clearing in New Guinea in 1942 but such occasions were rare.
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  4. 4:17 You are exactly right. This is the product of an absurd overemphasis on technical minutiae. The differences between the German guns and the Bren were not significant enough to have been responsible for that in any way (and I say this as one who was trained on a Bren LMG). Unfortunately - and the internet is partly to blame here - people are now interpreting historical events through comparative detail. You find it everywhere and it's almost always wrong but it leads to incessant and irrelevant flame wars while contributing nothing to understanding. You're quite right: it's cringe-worthy.
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  5.  @MilitaryHistoryVisualized  "The rpm number is a mixed bag, it is mostly brought forward by the fan boys." Totally. No historical relevance. "Yet, it is important to note that the Germans in WW2 used both the MG 34 and MG 44 as light and heavy machine guns." My only question about that would be how long the barrels lasted with sustained fire, especially since the MG-34 and -42 were not water cooled? That was my point about the Bren: that it wasn't ever required to perform sustained fire. Admittedly, that tends to be a WWI technique but the way the British and Commonwealth forces used it in WWII, it remained and effective tactic for discouraging the enemy from putting his head up for too long. I believe there was a tripod mount for the Bren for airfield defence but the only LMG I can remember seeing mounted that way was a Lewis. "The light was in the squad with a bipod, the heavy was the same machine gun, but with a special mount on a tripod (which I think cost more than the whole gun) that had mechanism for "spraying an area" etc." Are you talking about indirect fire here? "Also on the Eastern Front, I guess those occasions were more common." The wide (mostly) open spaces of the Eastern Front were probably not unlike the desert scenario I described earlier. For the record, I didn't describe the use of the Bren on patrols. I trained at squad level as a machine gunner and carrying the Bren was certainly more arduous than carrying a .303 service rifle. The weapon wasn't super heavy but I didn't have the advantage of a sling so it had to either carry it over my shoulder or cradle it. The weapon weighed about 10 kg empty and probably 12 or 13 kilos with a full magazine. Another man was needed to carry mags and a spare barrel. As a youth, it eventually got pretty heavy but as an adult, I doubt it would have made as much of an impact. So while it was lot heavier than a rifle, it could have been a lot worse. The Australian practice was to put the Bren in the middle of the section, rather than at or near the ends. this was okay as long as you kept an eye on what your "tail-end Charlie was doing. That could be difficult because Australians trained to spread out, even in the jungle, meaning that the leaders and the tail-enders were not always clearly visible. But it limited the affects of grenades or ambush. On the other hand, the Bren gunner was usually a prime target for unwanted attention!
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  6.  @MilitaryHistoryVisualized  By the way, if I wanted to send you a book, how would I do that?
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