There was a former Freeper here whom I miss very much named ‘SneakyPete’ who was a US Army Special Forces soldier in Vietnam from 1966-1968 and wore sterile uniforms and non-standard weapons who used a Browning BAR in their SF base near Cambodia against NVA regulars on the Ho Chi Minh trail.
He had nothing but great things to say about the BAR, even with it’s non-changeable barrel and limited mag size: He said that from the bipod it could shoot arms and legs off of oncoming enemy soldiers from 800 yards out and was a sure kill weapon against anyone you aimed it at. If you could see them, you could directly engage them with the iron sights. You would certainly hit and they’d certainly go down and not come back up. Anywhere on the body and they’re done for. All he said negatively about it was that it was heavy but that made zero difference since all the BARs they had were entrenched in sandbagged fortified locations and never moved from their spot. Even the Browning .30 cal LMGs they had firing the same .30-06 round just didn’t have the ‘bingo’ dead-on accuracy as the BAR had.
The 7.62x51mm NATO light machine-guns by comparison also just seemed to have less reach and less effectiveness than the BARs past 600m, which I must agree with. Among my other duties in a USMC Weapons platoon I served as an M60 gunner for awhile and always thought of that gun as too lightweight for sustained fire and seemed to lose it’s oomph out past 600m. That .30-06 round just has a good deal more energy behind it than 7.62 NATO even if the ballistics charts for the load don’t seem to suggest much difference.
I still run across Sneaky Pete on other forums - from time to time.
Father-in-Law carried one in Korea. They regularly ‘lost’ the bi-pods before moving out on patrol. He complained about them getting caught in vegetation or wire (barbed?) when moving about at night. I suppose if the weapon was supported on a sandbag, the lack of the bi-pods probably didn’t much matter?
I enjoyed conversing with pete.