Browning .50-caliber Machine Guns

(Paperback)

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Description

The Browning 50-cal has become the longest serving weapon in the US inventory. The fifty has been employed in every imaginable role for a machine gun. It is considered such an effective and reliable weapon that few countries ever attempted to develop an equivalent weapon. 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.

Reviews

"This book provides you with the history of its development and its various important operational uses. But more interestingly, it puts you on the front lines of war see firsthand how a fighter pilot un-jams and re-cocks a wing-mounted machine gun. You get to witness through the author's own personal experiences of how he used the 'fifty' during the Vietnam War. He brings to the life the devastating effects of an armor-piercing round fired from a Humvee." --www.mataka.org (November 2010)

Author Bio

Gordon L. Rottman entered the US Army in 1967, volunteered for Special Forces and completed training as a weapons specialist. He served in the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam in 196970 and subsequently in airborne infantry, long-range patrol and intelligence assignments until retiring after 26 years. He was a Special Operations Forces scenario writer at the Joint Readiness Training Center for 12 years and is now a freelance writer, living in Texas. Johnny Shumate works as a freelance illustrator living in Nashville, Tennessee. He began his career in 1987 after graduating from Austin Peay State University. Most of his work is rendered in Adobe Photoshop using a Cintiq monitor. His greatest influences are Angus McBride, Don Troiani, and Edouard Detaille. His interests include karate, running, Bible reading, history, and making English longbows.