Browning 50 caliber Machine Guns - Weapon Author:Gordon Rottman The Browning "50-cal" has become the longest serving weapon in the US inventory first entering service in 1933 and it will remain in use for many years to come. The "fifty" has been employed in every imaginable role for a machine gun - antipersonnel, light antiarmor, antiaircraft, mounted on aircraft as both defensive and offensive armament, de... more »fensive armament aboard vehicles (armored and soft-skin), mounted on watercraft, and others.
It is considered such an effective and reliable weapon that few countries ever attempted to develop an equivalent weapon. Instead, the US 50-cal is used worldwide by scores of countries. Even the Japanese created a copy of it during World War II when the US was producing literally thousands every month to use in every theater.
This is a history of the development of this famous weapon, its most critical operational use and the variants that have been produced to keep it at the forefront of the action. Moreover, it places the reader on the frontline of war, describing such things as how a fighter pilot un-jams and re-cocks a wing-mounted machine gun and the devastating effects of an armor-piercing round fired from the .50cal of a Humvee.« less