The Bren light machine gun is far from a forgotten weapons, but some of the accessory bits that were used with it are pretty rare today. The 100-round drum magazine issued for anti-aircraft use are one such item.
Bren gun with 100-round drum magazine
You might be wondering how you are supposed to use the sights with that drum in place – well, you don’t. The drums were intended for antiaircraft use, and thus the guns using them would have taller AA spider sights installed. Some were also uned on armored vehicles, but this was more of an afterthought and not the original intent. The drum requires an additional mounting bracket to hold the front end in place, while the rear of the drum has a set of feed lips like a regular box magazine and snaps into the magazine catch. As you can see below, the drum adapter does not preclude the use of standard box magazines.
Bren with drum adapter and box magazine in place
We have a few more photos of one of these drum magazines and its setup on the gun (click here to download them all at high resolution):
Edit to add: Oleg Volk has a great photos of one of these drums as well, including one of the piece disassembled:
Bren mags, by Oleg Volk
Bren drum mag, by Oleg Volk
Bren drum disassembled, by Oleg Volk
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Might these also be intended for use in the sustained fire role on the Tripod? Because 30 rounds a box magazine does not seem like much sustained fire.
That’s the big edge the Germans had in their MG34 and MG42. Belt feed is innately superior for the sustained fire role. With the Bren, you had to be quick at changing mags. The top-mounted magazine helped with that, though.
Belt feed is one thing, but the MG34 and MG42 were both air-cooled weapons, obviously, and that, coupled with very high rates of fire, means frequent barrel changes. The MG42 was supposed to have its barrel changed every 250 rounds! Not exactly conducive to true sustained fire. Good weapons, both, but for sustained fire the old water-cooled designs were still the masters.
I’m not sure they really would be because they obscure the sights. It would have been pretty cool though, Bren’s probably could have replaced quite a few Vickers MGs.
Well the rear sight dovetail looks to be the same as the one on a Vickers gun. Maybe it was intended that the dial sight for the Vickers was to be used on the BREN in the sustained fire role. Does anyone know if a Vickers dial sight fits in the dovetail on a BREN?
~Big Al-
The pictured BREN is a MkI, where the more common MkII and later series did not have that complicated rear sight.
The reasoning I was given as to “it blocks the sights” was “the drum will be loaded with tracer or incendiary, adjust fire as needed”.
Meplat,
Thank you, I am familiar with the various marks of BREN. The reason I thought the Vickers dial sight might be used in the sustained fire role in conjunction with the drums is that the sighting tube of the dial sight is higher than the primary rear sight of the BREN and does not require a front sight to use. However, with a little hunting around the interwebs, I came across a reference to a Sight, Fixed Line, BREN .303 MG. After further digging, I found a pic on the forum in the following link (post #158, third photo):
http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/weapons-technology-equipment/5880-bren-gun-16.html
The gun depicted has two dovetails. Even though the sight is mounted in the forward dovetail in the photo, both dovetails (and the one on the gun pictured here) look to be similar if not the same. The fact that that this gun has only one dovetail tells me the design was simplified over the years as it was realized that you don’t need two dovetails of the same dimensions for mounting the sights.
The defense rests, your Honor.;)
I would really like a set of these with the bracket to allow it to be used.
That would be nice. But mainly, I’d just like to have a Bren.