Cheers Tony.

The MG 34/42 sustained fire statement needs some backing up.

According to the holy scripture (field manual) you must change barrels every 600 rounds on the German MG. This is in wartime, peacetime regulations allows for half of that.

I can vouch for these figures since I was officer in charge, when we were seasoning our new barrels for the MG's back in 2001.

The 'worst case' was an old german barrel that took around 800 rounds turning red and white before giving in. These old barrels were sent back to germany for analysis. (God knows what they made of them)

Now let's look at some practical issues.

In combat simply holding down the trigger 'til Doomsday isn't helping anyone bar the owner of the munitons plant. You fire in burst at targets, and places where you think the enemy might be or try to pass.

Using a german MG you get to fire a large amount of burst before changing belts. For defencive duties linking two or more belts is not uncommon. So before loosing time spent on barrel change or feeding a new belt, the german MG gets to shoot 200-300 rounds.

The Bren gunner needs to change mags many times during this period, so he is loosing ground from the first shot.

The other advantage the MG has got is it's higher cyclic rate, meaning that the one second the gunner gets to shoot at it's target he fire more rounds at the enemy.

WHAT of the Bren then?
It is mobile, reliable and dead accurate.
It is a versatile weapon that can be shifted around the battlefield without killing the man carrying it. It is just as effective on the attack as in defence.

As for my grandad who was a Bren gunner. (in the words of Kevin Keegan)
He loved it!

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'We march. The enemy is retreating in transport. We follow on foot.' Lt.Neil McCallum 5/7 Gordons 19th November 1942

I'll go for the Bren as well, for all the reasons mentioned. It's a fine example of lessons learned and a montage of good ideas put together before others thought to do it. Upon its entrance and far beyond the lifespan of other weapons, it either dominated or held its own.
As to the comparison with the BAR (also a fine weapon) there is a slight age disparity. One adopted for military use in 1918, and the other in 1937. A significant separation, roughly equal to that of the "Sopwith Camel" & the "Spitfire".
I also like the Japanese Type 96 (at least in Battlefield 1942), I know nothing about how it held up under constant use/accuracy.

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For one thing, the Type 96 had to use greased cartridges. That alone damns it to hell as an LMG for obvious reasons.

Greased Cartridges-the worst thing for any gun, ever, IMO.

The Italian LMG Who's-name-escapes-me was notorious for it getting sand in the grease well. A devil to clean.

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I think most true LMGs in the late 20s/early 30s tended to borrow a bit from each other's design - the tipping-bolt locking system was common to all. (A little-known design was the Anglo-French Vickers-Berthier in the early 20s. Passed over in favour of the Bren, it was retained by the Indian Army with great success.) The Korean War sounded the death-knell for both the Bren and the Vickers tripod-mounted Medium MG. The Bren was too pinpoint-accurate & couldn't deliver the huge volumes of fire needed against massed infantry assault. Vickers MMG was not mobile enough. Hence adoption of the MAG 58 GPMG by the Brits (a philosophy the Germans had embraced nearly 30yrs earlier). As for my personal preference: I've handled both BAR & Bren, but fired only the latter. A beautiful weapon - simple, robust & reliable. The BAR just didn't feel like a LMG.

Klive

The Bren was converted to 7.62x51 (designated L4) and remained in front-line British service alongside the GPMG until the late 80s, and in second-line units until at least 1993. It is still missed...

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Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website

The advantages of the Bren was that it was accurate and had a beter range than the BAR and that every section member would carry a few magazines, becuase in the British field manual it explains that the Bren is the heart of the section.

As for the BAR, it was not truly an LMG in the fact that it had a slower firing rate than most LMGs of the time and it had only 20 rounds in a box magazine. In this sense it was not a squad-dependent weapon like the Bren or MG 42, but it was an excellent supression weapon and lighter than almost all other squad automatic weapons of the time, not counting submachine guns.

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"Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts." - Cicero

I have fired the BAR when I was still a cadet during weapons training. It's a bitch to carry and I didn't particularly like the recoil. Also too few rounds per mag. Stripping it apart is relatively easy, though. I can't say anything about the Bren because I don't have any first hand experience with it.

Wrong on two points. The Bren bipod was often moved forward to adjust the rate of fire, moving the bipod uncovered an adjuster in which a round was placed and turned clockwise to increase rate and anti clockwise t o decrease rate. I know, I've done it!
Ken