Meet the Bren Gun: The Best Machine Gun of World War II?

Warfare History Network, Arnold Blumberg

Security, Europe

One of the most iconic British WW2 weapons today, the Bren Gun was in short supply in 1939 but quickly became the backbone of the British infantry.

While all the combatant nations engaged in World War I fielded machine guns during the conflict, the British Army’s Vickers was arguably the best medium machine gun of the war, while their Lewis gun—an American design but perfected by the English—was the most effective light machine gun.

However, both weapons had their problems. The Vickers Machine Gun was a heavy Maxim-type weapon. Water-cooled and belt-fed, it was very reliable. But it was also a very complex war tool requiring a specially-trained crew, and the weight of the gun and the prodigious amount of water and ammunition it required meant the Vickers was restricted to a purely static defensive role.

The Lewis gun had been adopted during the Great War to provide close support for advancing troops. It had an air-cooled barrel and fired .303 caliber bullets from a 47-round pan magazine mounted on the top of the piece. Unfortunately, the Lewis gun was still relatively bulky, complicated, suffered from a high rate of stoppages, and could not maintain sustained rates of fire due to its barrel overheating, causing the gun to simply stop working.

Replacing the Vickers & Lewis

Faced with the shortcomings of their standard medium and light machine guns, the British Army sought to replace both in the 1930s. That year, a contender to replace the Lewis gun appeared in the form of the Zb 26: a light, air-cooled, magazine-fed weapon produced by the Brno Firm of Czechoslovakia. Modified to shoot the standard British Army infantry and machine gun .303 caliber ammunition (or 7.7x56mm), the gun—now designated the Zb 30, with a 30 round curved magazine—caught the attention of the Small Arms Committee. After a few minor alterations, the Czech fire arm-called the ZBG 34, was adopted by the Army. Referred to as the BREN, from “Brno” and “Enfield”, assembly lines were set at the Royal Small Arms Factory in 1935, with the first finished product appearing in September 1937.