Water-cooled .50 cal M2HB

[Joe Pike]

I just saw a picture of the M2HB with a water-cooled jacket, from 1944, European Theater. Does anyone know what vehicles these were used on, or how common they were? How much was performance improved?

[baboon]

As far as I know they were pretty much used as fixed-position anti-aircraft weapons, not really on vehicles. I have seen very few pics of them in European theatre, mostly in Pacific and North Africa, 1942-43. The water-cooled .30 Browning was the standard battalion support weapon. I can tell you that over here we used water-cooled .303 Vickers guns in the sustained fire role until quite recently, a water-cooled gun is actually far more effective in this type of thing eg. covering fire for a full-on battalion attack on an enemy-held hill. I read somewhere that in fact the .30 Browning 1917 was one of the few weapons that could be counted on to work in the Korean winter of 1950-51, they filled the barrel jackets with anti-freeze.

[Joe Pike]

Thanks for the info. Picture looked as if the only difference was the barrel, so maybe they could swap those out, from air-cooled to water-cooled. Caption said it was vehicle mounted, but not what vehicle, maybe just a jeep.