Full Auto Friday: Bren gun edition (VIDEOS)

By Chris Eger

Bren gun girl, Veronica Foster, found similar recognition in Canada as “Rosie, the Riveter” during WWII, dubbed “Ronnie, the Bren Gun Girl.”
Used famously by the British and Commonwealth military for generations, the Bren light machine gun is a classic top-fed LMG with Czech origins. Based on the Brno-designed ZB vz. 26, the handy weapon was designed by Czech firearms engineer Václav Holek.

Modified and put into production in the UK in 1937, its name came as a combination of the “Br” from its original place of birth and “En” for Enfield, where the Brits made their own version in .303.

Fed from a 30-round detachable box mag, the Bren weighed between 20 and 25 pounds depending on the variant and could fire at about 500 rounds-per-minute as long as the bullets held up. There was also a 100-round drum.

Besides use by the British and their allies, Canadian manufacturer Inglis cranked out over 40,000 Brens for the KMT army of Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, which ensured the gun would continue to pop up in Asia for decades.

Gas operated with a tilting bolt, the Bren proved so popular in WWII that in the 1950s the British redesigned the gun to fire the same 7.62x51mm

Source: Guns.com