Loading Machine Gun Belts

I was reading an article in World War II History magazine (Dec.2014) A Memory of Pearl Harbor about John Sanford Baird, a tank crewman on a Mae West light tank. It described his progressions from the initial attack. It was quite shocking, to say the least, how unprepared the the Island of Oahu was during the attack. He goes into detail carrying out his orders: getting ammo for his sidearm, setting up his M2A4, turning over the engine and rolling over to retrieve the .50 and .30 cal machine gun and ammo from a storage shed. All of this while Japanese aircraft are bombing and strafing the runways.

Anyways, the question I have is based on the following excerpt from Baird:

"The .30 belts were much more frustrating. Unlike the Japanese metal link belts, we used cloth belts, parallel ribbons of white or green fabric stitched together at intervals just large enough to hold a cartridge. The loading machine had a feed gate in which they had to be exactly aligned. A small hand crank caused a gate to open and drop a cartridge down to the belt level. Geared also to the crank, need-lined jaws were forced into each side of the belt and held open a space, in theory, between the lines of stitches. Another gadget shoved the cartridge into the belt opening. That is true if things worked properly, which did not happen often. The loading machine was too intricately designed to do a reliable job. (Baird, p. 57)

My question is, was this always the case with .30 ammo belts or was this an exception based on the cloth belts?

He goes on to state how he and his fellow tank crewman spent hours checking each cartridge because many were improperly set to load. I assume this continued to evolve like most weaponry of the war. How common was this during the early stages of the conflict?

 

I don't know the answer but found this youtube which is kind of interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgtdmGlXjio