[wyowolf]

I wonder what the recoil is on it, at 30 pounds it shouldnt be too bad...maybe.

[lefty-lie-spy]

I have three BMG .50 shells I found on a mountain in Tokyo. The head stamps are De Moines ‘44 and ‘45. Pretty awesome, eh? Real relics with real history. I still can’t figure out why they were on the ground though, or where they came from.

[Lurker]

Want one.

L

[grobdriver]

The rifle is preferred because of its capacity to fire aircraft, vehicles, and buildings, including enemies hiding behind barriers.

They must have a hell of a time getting "aircraft, vehicles, and buildings" in the cases!

Dragging the enemy out from behind barriers and stuffing them in a .50 BMG case might be easier...

[jeffersondem]

“Typically, the best shots are taken from a distance of about 900 meters.”

This. Although longer successful shots are not uncommon, the Barrett semi’s like the 82A1 are not tack drivers. The Army only requires the rifles to shoot 2.5 MOAs.

During firing, the bolt moves, the barrel moves, the main action spring moves, and the soldier’s shoulder moves. Everything moves.

Fine gun though. It will send the mail. Right now.

[Lurker]

Want one.

L

[Svartalfiar]

The rifle is preferred because of its capacity to fire aircraft, vehicles, and buildings, including enemies hiding behind barriers.

That's pretty cool! Are these full-size vehicles, or just matchbox size? I've seen catapults that can fire this stuff, but never a small, portable firearm that can! Also, does it only fire the enemies, or is the barrier included with each shot?

The Barret .50 BMG rifle is about 5 feet long and is close to 30 lbs. in weight. Most .50 BMG rifles weight over 20 lbs

That's nothing, I had to haul a 240B all over Ft Polk last summer. 33+lbs, not including ammo.

But seriously, is this a Russian magazine translated into English? Every article I've seen posted from them is so bad with grammar and spelling it can't be on accident...

[Paal Gulli]

Ronnie Barrett was working as a professional photographer when he got the chance to shoot a military-style riverboat with twin M2 Browning machineguns mounted. The idea of the Ma Deuce got its hooks in him and he decided he was going to have one, even if he had to build it himself. That morphed into the idea of a hand-held rifle to shoot the .50 BMG.

He gathered up every book on firearms engineering he could get his hands on, trying to get a handle on just what it would take to build a rifle capable of enduring the power of a .50 BMG round but also capable of being fired off-hand, then he sketched all the big pieces of his design. Barrett had very little experience with fabrication so he sought help with it from the local machine shops. I'll be kind and just say they were less than encouraging. They all turned him down but he did get an acquaintance who was a professional tool and die maker and who also had a mill and a lathe in his garage to agree to help him out. And the two of them set to building the prototype of what was to become the Barrett M82 self-loading recoil-operated .50 BMG rifle in their spare time.


The prototype of Barrett's brainchild on the workbench in Bob Mitchell's one-car garage

I think I see some chewing gum and bobby pins in there. ;) Note the disk-shaped muzzle brake, compared to the later arrowhead-shaped design.


Same prototype, dressed in its big boy pants, configured for the first test firing

This looks like prototypical hillbilly engineering ("Hyar, Clem, hold mah beer fer a sec ....") but the remote firing of a test mule actually is a standard practice in the firearms industry. This was just a low-tech and low-cost means of doing it.

Note the string tied to the bipod and staked to the ground, in case the recoil was more rambunctious than they counted on. Pulling the string on the loud switch put a big grin on Barrett's face because not only did the rifle NOT explode, it cycled properly and barely moved from the recoil.

Initially Barrett sold most of what he built to enthusiasts, even sold a few to the spooks (who smuggled them to the Muj in Afghanistan, where they were in the midst of fighting the Soviet invaders), but it took him a further seven years of essentially peddling them door-to-door and constantly beating the bushes, trying to get people to take notice of what he was building before military elements began buying them in serious numbers.

Altogether it had taken him about 10 years to reach that point, all paid for with his own sweat-equity and from his own pocket. Eventually it also became the first rifle officially adopted by any US military service in more than 50 years, and making Barrett one of only seven men solely responsible for the design of a weapon to be formally adopted by any US service, along with Browning, Stoner, Garand, Thompson, Johnson Jr and Reisling. Pretty damn august company.

I'd love to see King Ubama confront Ronnie Barrett and tell him, "You didn't build that." I'm not sure if he'd spit in his eye of if he'd settle for just laughing in his face.

[Geronimo]

The IRA had a few in their arsenal in the early 90’s and put them to devastating use, particuarly in the border county of South Armagh...

They were very damaging both physically and psychologically to British security forces...there were road signs installed by the Provos warning of being in ‘Goldfinger’ territory...

[Oatka]

The Russians had a similar rifle during WWII, the PTRD-41, firing a 14.5×114mm cartridge. Supposedly used to blow the treads off of tanks so the aretillery could have a crack at immobile targets.