Check out this guy's B.A.R., if only the ordinance department figured out a drum mag for this thing.
Ack-ack-ackshually...
The "Problem" of the puny 20 round box mag for the BAR was because it genesis was as a WWI-era "walking fire" weapon.
Military minds were just starting to wrap their heads around the idea of "suppressive" fire late in WWI. Prior to that, conventional wisdom was a shot that missed was a waste, with riflemen being trained for accuracy above all. This "worked" on nice and sterile target ranges, but it took the horrors of the Great War to convince the brass that an infantryman who stopped to line up a perfect 1,000 yard shot on a live battlefield was a dead man when the other side had machineguns. Most engagements happened at less than 100 yards, so it was rate of fire, not accuracy, that would win the day.
And while they begrudgingly accepted the idea of suppress-and-move tactics, they still didn't understand just how MUCH fire you need to effectively suppress. The original BAR (and Chauchat MG) were designed not as MGs (as we'd recognize them) but "automatic rifles" . The doctrine behind walking fire was a line-abreast of infantry, walking briskly towards an enemy trench and firing once every time their right foot touched the ground would keep the enemy on the other side dug in until the attacking wave came to grenade and bayonet range. This also called for infantry to work in pairs, with an assistant following the actual gunner whose only job was to carry extra ammunition and quickly swap out the magazines of the man ahead of him.
In practice, walking fire didn't work, the MG nests on the opposing side still slaughtered everyone, and designers went back to the drawing board and came up with light machine guns like the .30 cal Browning, to do the job of giving dismounted infantry something that could keep an opposing MG position suppressed or outright destroy it while still being "light" enough that you could carry one around without the use of a mule or truck. An idea that eventually birthed arguably the BEST light/multipurpose MG ever devised, the German MG42.
This left a lot of "automatic rifle" type weapons in inventory that had no real "good" use, they were too bulky and "overkill" for regular duties, but not quite heavy enough to provide assault-level fire. The reason the Marines had so many in the early years of WWII when they got tossed into the grinder of the Pacific was because the Army got priority for new guns, so the Marines had to make do with what the armorers had on the shelf. It's also why they had to spend a year with the finicky hand-fitted and jam-prone Reising M55 submachine gun, because the Army was getting all the Thompsons....
The guns were NEVER intended to go full-auto, which is why the BAR had limited mag capacity (and why the Chauchat got a rep as a piece of garbage that would jam after a few shots), the problem was overheating, not anything fundamentally wrong with the design. It was a case of them being pressed into service they weren't intended for, with obvious consequences. Also, the Chauchat had a mag with OPEN SIDES. This was so the assistant gunner could see how many rounds were left and ready a new mag, but in practice, in the horrific mud of the trenches, it only provided a huge hole for dirt and sludge to enter the weapon and turn it into the jam-o-matic everyone "remembers" it as.
The reason they never upgraded the BAR to a drum was largely because they just built better weapons for the same cost it would take to retrofit all the existing ones. Though it did find a niche as the precursor to what we'd call the SAW today, a heavier-than-average weapon that could be called upon for a particularly tough target, but not so specialized a squad would have to wait around for an artillery or MG company to lend support, they could carry one with them without compromising mobility or logistics since it used 30.06 just like the Springfields and Garands.
But you're dead right about the brutality of the Island Hopping Campaign. The scene in
The Pacific where the Marines are gleefully, methodically shooting the sole "survivor" of a falied Banzai charge in his limbs, so he'll die slower and in pain? While hurling insults? That's depressingly accurate.
Speaking of depressing..... here's a case of safety only moving forward when lives are lost.
1995 - Charlotte Motor Speedway. During a Sportsman Division Race (lower-tier NASCAR) driver Russell Phillips swerved to miss an accident happening low on the track coming out of turn 4. His #57 car went high, accidentally clipped another car, and was rotated onto it's passenger side, causing him to slide roof-first into the trackside catch fencing and a hanging caution light assembly. The impact tore the roof and upper "halo" of the roll cage from the car, leaving Phillip's unprotected body to be gruesomely eviscerated by the metal stanchions. His left arm can be seen visibly protruding from the wreck as it rolled back onto it's wheels and skidded to a stop on the infield.
Video footage exists of the crash, and while you can't see much, the horrific nature of it is best understood when the first safety official runs up to the car, extinguishes a small fire, then looks inside, and just walks away.... Decapitation is one of the very few situations where a first-responder can abandon lifesaving measures without approval from a qualified doctor first. There was nothing the man could do, and he grimly knew it. Body parts would be found snagged in the fencing, and Phillip's helmet would be recovered some distance down the track.
The accident mandated the installation of a third roll-cage member running from the roof, down the center of the windshield, and through the dashboard, to protect roll cage integrity and prevent similar accidents in the future. Since then, no NASCAR driver has lost their life in a roof-first collision.
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