Page "M1917 Browning machine gun" Paragraph 16

The original gun suffered from a weakness related to the design of the receiver-under field conditions, the bottom plates, which were dovetailed into the gun's two side plates, tore out.

An early fix was to attach a roughly horseshoe-shaped steel bracket around the rearmost part of the receiver.

A later fix was to rivet " stirrups " ( right-angled steel pieces ) to the bottom and side plates.

The stirrup fix became the standard reinforcement until a more permanent fix for the problem was developed.

reported problem was bulging in the sideplates, which was probably caused by stresses put into the sideplates when hammering the dovetails closed.