There’s also a persistent story (I don’t know how accurate it is) that the Johnson LMG design strongly influenced the development and the physical layout of the Rheinmetall FG-42.
Even with it as an aggravation, the Johnson LMG did good service with some special operations forces during the war. Johnson’s LMG design was well thought-out, except for that magazine. It made moving through underbrush with the magazine mounted interesting, to say the least. 30-06 or 7.9 x 57 in a single-row magazine ended up with something twice the length of a Bren’s 0.303in box sticking out the left side. This wasn’t a problem on his M1941 rifle that used a 10-shot detachable box instead of the 10-shot rotary internal magazine of his earlier model rifle, but putting 30 or (in the case of the Dror) 40 rounds of. The main problem with the Johnson LMGs (including the Dror) was M.M.J.’s thing for a single-column, single-feed box magazine. No holes in the barrel (spare barrels are for machine guns, not for rifles!!!!!) No reciprocating charging handles, must be able to simulate K98 charging step if gas system fails (did anyone want a Garand thumb or a Pedersen thumb, and how about the guys who don’t know how to operate the new-fangled automatics?) No moving parts on the outside of the rifle (no snagging dangers here) The guys in charge of weapons procurement, saddled with the ideas of giving the soldiers weapons not too different from the toys they already played with years ago, stipulated the three ridiculous limits: And thus, we are left with the ideas surrounding gas-operation.
Blow-back rifle designs usually didn’t work that well in the 30’s (poor Pedersen got rejected because of the price tag). Recoil-operated rifles usually didn’t get far (over-emphasized Chauchat failures, anyone?), and even the really light machine guns that could qualify as automatic rifles would be unfamiliar to most troops of the day. This means that while there are a few that will make the cut and become great success stories, finding those select few in a sea of rejects will take weeks, if not months. How about this: looser requirements may cause you to receive a flood of potentially disastrous designs just because each inventor wants to be as original as possible.
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