With the entry of America into the First World War in 1917, the US Government, working very much on the ‘stable door’ principle, invited Browning and a number of other firearm designers to produce suitable weapons with which to fight it. Browning’s response was to offer both the BAR and the water-cooled machine-gun he had perfected, and they first saw the public light of day in a weapon test at Congress Heights outside Washington on the 27 February 1917.
As with all previous official and unofficial showings of Browning weapons, the demonstration proved entirely successful. The BAR showed that it could fire an entire twenty-shot magazine in two and a half seconds — a rate of fire of four hundred and eighty rounds a minute — and the weapon’s simple construction permitted it to be disassembled and reassembled in under a minute.
The decision was made to immediately adopt both the BAR and the established Colt Model 95 for use by American forces. The problem then faced by the US Government was that of volume production of both weapons, and the solution was to buy the production rights from Colt and then farm out the required manufacturing. The indirect result of this was the return of John Moses Browning to Winchester, where the design of the BAR went through its final refining. By the end of the war, Winchester was producing these weapons at the very creditable rate of 300 a day. This rapid production of both Browning designs by the two major arms manufacturers redressed the balance, and by 1918 thousands of Model 95s had been made. For some time after the end of the First World War these weapons were the primary machine-guns on US aircraft.
The BAR adequately fulfilled the US Army’s need for a fully automatic weapon able to be carried and operated by one soldier, and the first BAR used in combat was carried in July 1918 by another Browning: John’s son First Lieutenant Val Browning of the 79th Division. Field reports passed up the chain of command made it clear that the weapon was a total success and, with only minor changes, it would be used again in both the Second World War and in Korea.
The Browning water-cooled machine-gun, despite its successful public showing, was not immediately adopted, and further tests were scheduled. In May 1917 at the Springfield Armory a total of 40,000 rounds were fired through one example at a rate of 600 per minute without malfunction, and Browning then produced a second weapon just to prove that the first successful test hadn’t been a fluke. This gun was fired continuously for over 48 minutes without stoppages, the sustained fire being made possible by joining ammunition belts together to provide the almost 30,000 cartridges required. As with the Colt 1911, this weapon achieved a perfect score in the test.
The rather tardy subsequent acceptance of the weapon by the US Government meant that this Browning saw very little service during the First World War, but since that conflict, and with only minor modifications, the gun has been used in virtually all theatres of war with conspicuous success — a tribute to the design genius of John Browning.
Once America had decided to go to war, arming its troops took the highest priority and substantial quantities of the BAR, Colt 1911 and the heavy machine-gun were ordered, which raised the issue of royalty payments to John Browning. At the end of 1917 an officer called to see him at the Colt factory to transmit the Government’s initial offer for the manufacturing rights for the duration of hostilities.
The officer emphasized that the offer was considerably less than Browning would receive if he accepted normal royalty payments for weapons already ordered, and that further negotiations were possible. Browning shook his head, and accepted immediately. Some years later it was revealed that John Browning had accepted a single payment of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a typically niggardly government offer. If he had held out for the royalties he would have collected a little under thirteen million dollars, but John Browning had never been a greedy man, and was far more interested in ensuring that his fellow Americans involved in the hostilities were equipped with the best possible weapons to fight their battles.
His brother Matt argued with John over the low offer and hadn’t even haggled over the price, but John stopped the conversation immediately by reminding Matt that if they’d been a few years younger, they themselves would have been over in France standing in the mud of the trenches, dodging bullets, and this way they were doing their bit for the war effort. All the Browning brothers were too old to fight as soldiers, but John was determined they would do all they could to support their country and their countrymen, and the only way they could do that was as gunmakers. But he certainly wasn’t prepared to profiteer from the weapons he had designed.
A condition of the offer from the US Government was that John would supervise the manufacture of his weapons in all the factories which had been sub-contracted. This brought him into intimate contact with the red tape which surrounds all government operations, so one of the first tasks he set himself was to slice through it.
He finally rang the Chief of Ordnance directly to explain his difficulty. If he wanted to make a minor change to one of his guns, the Ordnance Department official on the spot would have a blueprint made of the proposed alteration and send it, with a covering letter, to Washington for approval. Two or three weeks later, the necessary permission would be granted.
As far as Browning was concerned, this was ludicrous. His parting shot to the Chief of Ordnance was to suggest that he should find the man in Washington who apparently understood the John Moses Browning designs better than John Moses Browning did, and then send him to Hartford, which would allow John to go home. He had no further problems with red tape.
A major problem faced by the allied forces in Europe was the armour plating on German vehicles, which the relatively small .30 calibre rounds fired by the Browning weapons would not penetrate. Browning was called in to assist after army engineers had tried, and failed, to modify his 1917 water-cooled machine-gun to take the French 11 mm round. Quite why he was not asked to assist from the start is not clear — presumably the American Army believed they could design weapons as well as fire them — but within a short time Browning had completed the modifications and was able to test-fire a .50 calibre weapon similar in basic design to his smaller gun.
This weapon was officially tested at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland on 15 November 1918, four days after the signing of the Armistice. The test was typically successful and, though too late to see service in the First World War, the gun was used to good effect in the Korean War and the Second World War. It was designated the M2, but became known almost immediately to most American soldiers as the ‘Ma Deuce’.
Both the .30 and .50 calibre weapons later spawned air-cooled variants intended for aircraft use, and both proved highly successful. The .50 aircraft gun was outstanding: firing an 800-grain bullet at 2700 feet per second, it could penetrate over an inch of armour plate at close range, and during the Tunisian campaign thirty five allied fighter aircraft armed with Brownings accounted for seventy two enemy aircraft for a total expenditure of under two hundred rounds per gun.
The Ma Deuce is being used in military operations around the world even today, and is still giving good service, despite being one of the oldest models of firearm in the American military arsenal. The evolution of tank armour meant that it soon lost its role as an anti-tank weapon, but became standard equipment on US military vehicles, ships, aircraft and for infantry formations. It’s still a very effective anti-aircraft, anti-vehicle and anti-personnel weapon. Reportedly, during the Second World War, Herman Göring stated that if the German Air Force had been equipped with the Browning .50-calibre machine-gun, the outcome of the Battle of Britain would have been very different. During the Korean War, quad-mounted M2s on half-track vehicles became life-savers for the heavily outnumbered American troops as they faced massive human wave attacks.
In one celebrated incident, at Holtzwihr in France in January 1945, Lieutenant Audie Murphy and his small force of troops were attacked by a superior infantry force and six German tanks. Murphy ordered his troops to withdraw while he tried to defend the positio
n by calling in artillery strikes. As the enemy forces advanced towards him, he jumped onto a wrecked US tank destroyer vehicle and used the M2 mounted on it against the Germans. He killed scores of enemy soldiers, some within a few yards of his position, and eventually forced the German tanks to withdraw. Murphy was wounded, but survived the encounter, and was awarded the Medal of Honour for his bravery and courage.
The M2 has been both copied and imitated, but modern technology has yet to produce a convincing replacement weapon which is clearly capable of surpassing the total reliability and rugged performance of the Browning design, now well over a century old.
14. THE 37 MM CANNON
John Browning’s final military design was the 37 mm cannon, and was a development in which he was extremely reluctant to become involved. Ordnance engineers in America had commenced work on two weapons of this type before the end of the First World War, but neither was a resounding success. One failed to operate at all, while the other — the Baldwin cannon — was never able to fire in excess of eight rounds without malfunctioning.
When John Browning was asked to look at the cannon to attempt to rectify its defects, almost the first thing he asked was where the cheese should be put, for it resembled a large and poorly-designed mousetrap. It was obvious even then that a completely new concept was required, but John was still reluctant to undertake the work.
Ostensibly, his reason was that he was too busy with developing his various sporting arms, but the truth, as he explained in 1920 to the Chief of Ordnance, General C C Williams, was that he knew from past experience of government contracts that the design was only the beginning. As soon as the 37 mm cannon had been successfully fired, someone would want a higher velocity or a faster cyclic rate or a larger calibre weapon of the same type. And Browning could frankly have done without the aggravation; he was sixty-five years old and very tired, having worked virtually every single day of his life.
But he thought about the gun, even if had said he wasn’t going to, and in January 1921, probably against his own better judgement, he started work on it. Within three months it was finished, though the cartridges for it, ordered when he commenced work, had not yet arrived. Fortunately Browning managed to obtain a supply, albeit carrying TNT charges, from a government arsenal not far from Ogden.
The first test-firing outside Ogden was of a clip of five cartridges, which raced through the action in a little under two seconds, the TNT heads exploding against the mountain. With the action thus proved, the very basic mount was modified and John took the cannon to the Aberdeen Proving Ground for official demonstrations.
The contrast there between the unsuccessful, but beautifully made, Baldwin weapon and the battered Browning prototype was very marked. The former looked superb, with fine detailed workmanship, but broke every few rounds, while the Browning, with hammer and forging marks all over it, fired and kept on firing without a pause unless it was intentional.
As the echoes of the last shot died away, Browning’s prediction to the Chief of Ordnance was proved accurate. One of the first comments was an expression of regret that the velocity of the cartridge was only about 1400 feet per second, and could Mr Browning possibly adapt the weapon to a round with a muzzle velocity of about two thousand feet per second?
The answer was that he could and did, and then produced a third derivation which fired a round over a foot long with a velocity of over three thousand feet per second. But the war was long over by then and, though a few units were made in England in 1929, there seemed neither need nor inclination to produce such weapons, so the working models and the associated drawings were put into store. They were not to be seen again until 1935 when the expanding German nation again cast its shadow over Europe, and volume manufacture of the largest Browning-designed cannon commenced in earnest.
15. EPILOGUE
Browning’s work with Fabrique Nationale inevitably resulted in him creating a second home for himself and his family in Belgium, and on the streets of Liège he became a familiar and well-loved figure. Wearing his wide-brimmed hat and cape, his six-foot tall figure was quite unmistakable. So as not to have to rely on interpreters in his dealing with the craftsmen and workers at the FN factory, and to avoid any misunderstandings in translation, Browning taught himself French.
At the plant, he was nicknamed Le Maître or ‘The Master’, and in 1914, in recognition of his genius, and also because he had virtually single-handedly transformed Fabrique Nationale from a near-bankrupt bicycle factory to an enormously profitable world-class manufacturer of firearms, he was knighted on the orders of King Albert of Belgium, despite the fact that he was still an American citizen.
Browning, typically, was embarrassed by such awards and by the inevitable fame and attention they generated, and probably also because of the comments he attracted from his equally down-to-earth brothers, who found the ‘Sir’ in front of his name a source of great amusement.
Despite the enormous wealth he had accumulated during his lifetime, and the fame which was inseparable from this fortune, John Browning was one of those very rare individuals who simply never changed. He was a country boy from Utah by birth, and he remained essentially unchanged for the rest of his life. He was a simple man with a plain and simple outlook on life.
He was always happiest when he was in his workshop tackling a new problem or working on a new weapon. His dislike of the pomp and ceremony is clearly shown by the fact that, as his brothers often reported, whenever he returned from some meeting or event, he would frequently go immediately into the workshop in his dress clothes, not even bothering to change. And his mother Elisabeth perhaps said it best when she remarked, after describing her son’s younger days in the family workshop: ‘And there’s been grease on John’s face to this blessed day!’
John Moses Browning died on the 26 November 1926 in Liege at the age of 71. He was, naturally, still working, and died at his bench in his son Val’s design shop, of a heart attack. It was probably the way he would have wanted to go, doing the work he loved, if the choice had been offered to him.
The weapon he was perfecting was a self-loading pistol, a weapon that was finally released in 1935 as the FN GP35, but became much better known as the Browning Hi-Power, one of the most successful pistol designs of all time.
The last design Browning completed was the superposed shotgun, an over and under weapon that was arguably the most elegant design he ever made. It was first manufactured with twin triggers, but the design was later modified to incorporate only a single trigger by Val Browning. It was added to the FN catalogue in 1931 and, like so many of Browning’s designs, it continues to be produced nearly a century later.
Because of Browning’s enormous, and largely selfless, contribution to the arsenal of weapons used by the American military, his body was escorted back to the United States with a full military escort, and at his funeral the eulogy was read by the then Secretary of War, Dwight F Davis.
Browning himself was consistently modest about his abilities, and notably once remarked: ‘The time and place for a gun maker just got together on this corner. And I happened along.’ But there is absolutely no question of the importance of this inventive genius in the world of firearms.
The title of this work is The Man Who Made Guns, which is appropriate on two levels. First, John Moses Browning made guns — he was a manufacturer of firearms — but, second and more importantly, his designs quite literally made Winchester, Colt and FN, and contributed to the success of other manufacturers such as Ithaca and Remington. Very few major manufacturers of firearms anywhere in the world during the twentieth century managed to survive unless they purchased a licence to manufacture at least one of his designs.
Browning’s massive contributions to the advancement of firearms technology had a huge and lasting effect upon weapon design, and they continue to be of enormous importance even today. In the early days he was instrumental in the transition from black powder weapons to the age of modern smokeless powders with their va
stly increased breech pressures. And it wasn’t just the weapons. Browning also developed a number of cartridges which are still listed among the most popular in the world, including the .45 ACP and the .50 BMG.
Perhaps the neatest summary of the enduring legacy of John Moses Browning comes from weapon historian Philip Sharpe, who said: ‘Browning developments all had one peculiar and very necessary feature. They worked, and kept on working. There are few modern guns today that have not been influenced one way or another by Browning’s hand.’
It is difficult, if not impossible, in a work of this length to convey more than the briefest of impressions of a man of Browning’s stature and genius. In a gunsmithing career spanning more than half a century, he designed and built 80 separate firearms, 44 of which were commercially manufactured by Winchester. And the range of weapons was simply astonishing; from the single-shot .22 rifle intended as a boy’s first gun up to 37 mm cannon designed for naval and artillery use. His designs covered almost every type of firearm, included singe-shot rifles, lever-action, pump-action, semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapons. Probably he will best be remembered for the design of the two most efficient and popular semi-automatic pistols of all time; the Browning Hi-Power and the Colt Model 1911, both still in production.
In his home town of Ogden, Utah, the John Moses Browning House stands at 505 27th Street as a monument to the man. The property was built between 1890 and 1900, and in 1973 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In the same town is the John M Browning Firearms Museum but, despite the single name, four generations of Brownings are represented there, starting with Jonathan Browning, John’s father, as well as Val Browning, John’s son, responsible for much of the work on the superposed shotgun, and Bruce Browning, John’s grandson, who has been involved in the design of some of the more recent Browning firearms.
John Browning: Man and Gunmaker Page 5