Browning M2 Sniper
Browning M2 Sniper
Browning M2 Sniper
“Anti-Mechanization Weapon”
February 19, 2014
by
Ian McCollum
During the latter half of the 1930s, the US Cavalry decided to experiment with adapting the
.50 caliber Browning M2 heavy machine gun into a bipod-mounted, shoulder-fired
configuration. The goal was to devise a variant of the gun that would be more portable and
flexible than the standard model with it’s separate tripod. Here is one of the early iterations:
Photo from Springfield Armory, October 9, 1936. Tech Sgt Lamar with an experimental conversion of the M2.
(thanks to Alex for sending it!)
This first version used a pretty much stock early M2 mounted in a spring-loaded soft mount
to absorb some of its recoil, and fitted with a large shoulder brace, semiautomatic pistol grip
trigger, and hefty bipod. The weapon was also fitted with a T3 prismatic optical sight, the
utility of which I would have to question. In a recoiling carriage like this gun has, the optic
seems like it would be much more of a hazard to the shooter’s eye on recoil than a helpful
sighting aid.
As the experimenting continued, the soft mount was abandoned, and the later versions are
actually more akin to normal M2 machine guns with shoulder pads and bipods – longer
barrels were also used, probably to help dampen the recoil and blast:
Modified Browning M2 with semiauto trigger, 36″ barrel, and T3 optical sight (photo: Goldsmith)
Final version of the Anti-Mechanization Weapon, with 45″ barrel in firing position. (photo: Goldsmith)
Presumably, the gunner would have used short belts of ammunition with the guns, since they
were not capable of full-auto fire. The targets would probably have been basically the same
as the obsolete AT rifles used in WWII, and the anti-material rifles used today – light
vehicles, structures like radio transmitters, parked aircraft, etc. Not a bad idea, but the M2
was probably not the best way to approach the goal.
Ultimately, the project was abandoned just before the US entered WWII. The reason was that
these modified guns actually wound up being heavier to carry, slower to bring into action and
required more space to get the same amount of traverse as a standard M2 and tripod. The
problem with weight was that the regular M2 broke down into three piece – action, barrel,
and tripod. The experimental guns here all used permanently attached bipods, meaning that
while they were about 20 pounds lighter overall, they only broke down into two pieces, and
the action was heavier than the standard one. With the final version, the heavier of the
components weighed in at a rather staggering 77 pounds – imagine the poor grunt who had to
add that to his standard loadout. Now, these were intended to be Cavalry weapons and not
Infantry, but with the added broken-down weight they failed to provide an improvement over
the existing M2.
Reference:
Goldsmith, Dolf.
The Browning Machine Gun: Semper Fi FIFTY: Volume IV
Collector Grade Publications, 2008.