Neither Ma Deuce nor the Bofors wants to die…
…and they’re both over 80…
…
34 Replies to “Rapid fire”
Sometimes reliability with simplicity of use, trumps elegance with its technology.
So much fun you can have with a belt of 50 cal and an open range.
So much fun.
Fred
So much fun you can have with a belt of 50 cal and an open range.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Depends…..Speak with the birds, cars with holes, trees missing trunks. Bet they don’t agree.
LOL (-:
Brings back memories of Korea . We had a Quad mount mobile 40 MM Bofors right beside our camp for some time.When they opened up on an aircraft it was just like music to our ears.I never saw a kill , but did see a couple smokers hightailing back north. Ahhh Dustoff…. there’s one in every crowd.
“Depends…..Speak with the birds, cars with holes, trees missing trunks. Bet they don’t agree.
Tree trunk missing tree 🙂
The .50 is about as much fun as you can have while standing and clothed.
The next best thing is being in the Port Breezeway on a Halifax class frigate when the port side bridge .50 is about to fire. You make sure you are looking in the direction of someone who has never experienced a .50 firing directly over their head while standing in a steel can. Pretty sure I have watched a dozen or so people have the experience of swallowing their heart back into their chest. 😉
One of the best feelings in life is calling in artillery over the radio and then hearing the thump, the long whistle, and then the boom as rounds hit the ground exactly where you intended. “Fire for effect, over.” “Fire for effect, out!”
…as rounds hit the ground exactly where you intended… ~ VancouverGuy
I guess you’ve forgotten about all the “add 400; drop 200” stuff.
“as rounds hit the ground exactly where you intended.”
So I am guessing you were never a Lieutenant ?
Almost as dangerous as an Officer Cadet with a map.
Please note, Ma Deuce is designed by quit possibly the greatest designer of firearm in the history of the world, John Browning.
Fred
[[[“as rounds hit the ground exactly where you intended.”
So I am guessing you were never a Lieutenant ?
Almost as dangerous as an Officer Cadet with a map.]]]
It really is gratifying when the smoke needs no adjustment….it happens….
Ma Deuce is a phenomina….even mounted without a shield…it seems like a shield when it barks. The newer units with quick change barrels and auto-headspacing will extend it’s useful life for a long time. The main complaint is it’s slow rate of fire and single feed….it seems the desk jockeys want instant selection of ammo—which dual feeds provide. My answer is mix the ammo in the belt and have a wee bit of patience….
The Bofors survives because there is nothing really magical about it….just good engineering.
The newer models fire a lot faster than the WW2 versions, are hotter loaded with longer barrels and ammo of increased lethality (minturized proximity fuses) to allow one gun to do the job of several older models. A while back, NATO came to the shocking discovery that although 40mm was a NATO standard the ammo was not very interchangeable at all. It seems all users had tweeked it a bit in many different ways.
However it is not just Ma Deuce and the Bofors which stolidly soldier on with a fierce loyalty from their users…..the venerable BREN….long discarded by Canada is still in reserve statis in the UK and many countries. The move to standardize on 308/7.62 NATO….spawned conversion from .303 to 76.2 and gave a new lease of life by eliminating one of the BREN’s few vices…occasional stoppages from feeding the rimmed 303….in originally a Czech gun designed for 8mm Mauser…a rimless round.
Designed as the main fire-power for a section of infantry…it still cannot be replaced in that role…..despite many serious attempts.
Our guys are currently finding themselves on the noisy end of BRENs, still in .303 mostly, in the hands of the Taliban….whose acceptance committees seem to have never got the memo.
Nothing more fun than a .50 and an open range?
Agreed. Although direct fire against tank hulks at 600 m with a 105 and an elbow telescope is a close second.
First round direct hits with indirect fire? It DOES happen. Personal experience, Ph IV Arty; I was required by an AIG (Assistant Instructor in Gunnery, typically a senior WO) to adjust a rusty car body in Lawfield Impact in Gagetown.
Conversation between the OP and the Battery command post went something like this:
Me (OP): [after all data given] Adjust fire, over.
Bty CP: (slight wait) Shot, over. (18 seconds later) Splash, over.
Me: Splash, out.
(car explodes)
Me: Hunh. End of mission, target destr-
AIG (in my left ear): You adjust that f**king target, sir!
Me (no longer having any target to adjust): Well, okay then. Right five-zero, drop two hundred, I guess…
Given all the built-in inaccuracies of howitzers that create probable errors in bearing and range (it is an area weapon after all, and dropping HE-Quick in the same hole over and over doesn’t get the job done), and the vagaries of weather, barrel wear, charge temperatures, projectile weight, Coriolis force and so on, even if you try to hit something on the first adjusting round, it’s almost impossible to do it. It’s dumb luck when it happens. But it DOES happen. Sooner or later, it happens to everybody.
Oh, and that was as a 2Lt. Never got lost in Gagetown, so long as there was a cemetary to triangulate from. Which doesn’t change the fact that the one thing officers fear more than anything else is a Sergeant Major looking at your map for a few minutes, then saying very politely, “So just where do YOU think we are, sir?”
BigFire
“Please note, Ma Deuce is designed by quit possibly the greatest designer of firearm in the history of the world, John Browning.”
Browning fit right in with other prolific inventors of the 19th century such as Gatling and Edison. These guys reflected the times and all designed agricultural devices which mechanized agriculture….a reflection of the importance of agriculture at that time.
While Gatling is remembered for his gun….he invented the plate-corn planter, the fluted grain drive feed and the KNOTTER (making binders and autobailers possible).
Browning’s talent was refinning Gatlings inventions….indeed his knotter patents were only abandoned with the introduction of plastic twine. Browning’s unique contribution was the trip hitch/trip plow beam for tractor drawn plows.
Edison’s milker transformed dairying.
Bad things happen to those who don’t head space a .50 properly..
Serious question for all you small arms heads. When are we going to have caseless ammunition?
Nothing more viscerally satisfying than watching the tracers from your “fifty” enveloping your target at the range. The hardest thing I found was firing the full three to six tracer rounds at a single burst since the power of the weapon was so awe inspiring as to make you want to pause to take a breath and savor the effect after only a few rounds.
The durability of Browning’s basic design speaks to its genius. It solved a problem by a mechanism which was, while perhaps not perfect, sufficiently close that there has been little to no improvement upon it in 80 years. Some designs simply represent the optimization of the technology, and such may be the Browning .50 cal.
As for indirect fire, one of my friends on Arty training reported a “winger” fired on his course in which the bagged charge was accidently doubled. The round landed well within the Gagetown training area but unfortunately hit one of the many cemeteries found there. The ultimate irony was that the original target description had been, “troops dug in”.
Dave: When it becomes necessary for shooting down the flying pigs.
Seriously. I used to think the same way. Then I realized that retaining the round and supporting storage and feeding requires a whole different set of characteristics than going *boom* does. Division of labor. It’s characteristic of an industrial economy.
Regards,
Ric
Dave in PA. Caseless ammo has been tried many times and it hasn’t proved a success. The closest we got was the H and K G11. I think they eventually gave up on it because they couldn’t develop a propellant that would not “cook off” in a hot chamber , and burnt clean enough to not overly foul the weapon to quickly. The big problem with caseless ammo is that in conventional ammo the cartridge case acts as a gas seal, so you have to design a system that will work without that.
I don’t know if we still have them, but I assume we do because we still have the MCDV (or whatever, the coastal defence vessels). The are equipted with 40mm Bofors guns that were taken of the army who used them for airfield defence in Germany who got them of the navy who had them mounted on our last aircraft carriers. They were probably built during WWII and they are still in service.
I have zero experience with the .50 cal, but another one of Browning’s designs, the 1911 pistol, is due for its 100th anniversary next year an is still going strong.
Browning was one of those rare people that could see to the heart of a problem and solve it the simplest possible way. In 100 years there have been many other pistol designs, none have been significantly superior to those of Browning. IMHO, anyway.
Although I must say I do like the Walther PPK. Not as powerful as the .45, but easy to carry inside your pants all day. Additionally a PPK is supposed to be what finally killed Hitler, so that’s a major plus too. Pity I had to sell mine. 🙁
minuteman, Dave: I had a chance once to chat briefly with one of the guys who helped develop the CIWS “R2D2” guns for ships. They seriously considered caseless ammo just to reduce the storage volume. Cookoff and gas sealing they could do, and fouling could be solved, but getting the etaoin shrdlu things to transport, feed, load, and obturate while still solving the other problems killed the notion dead, and quickly.
Regards,
Ric
I sorta disagree with you there, as I was fortunate enough to see ( no touching, only drooling) a G-11 being fired in Germany. I was told that it functioned well, and I saw it fire about 200 rds without incident; each individual (caseless) round cost 3x as much as a 5.56mm which pretty much killed it in post-war Germany. Fired a Bren in England, like the c-9 better. You can* fire the whole 200 rd belt with one trigger squeeze.
* sure it makes little sense; but it’s fun!
“The durability of Browning’s basic design speaks to its genius. It solved a problem by a mechanism which was, while perhaps not perfect, sufficiently close that there has been little to no improvement upon it in 80 years. Some designs simply represent the optimization of the technology, and such may be the Browning .50 cal.”
It’s not only the Gun design, it’s the gun design PLUS the .50 cal cartridge.
Bigger n’ that you have something too large to haul around without a waay serious mount, smaller than that you can armour against it. And it’s (mostly) ball ammo so it’s relatively speaking DIRT cheap comapred to the next step up. And it positvely outranges anything lighter and can destroy anything that’s not “seriously” armoured.
You know they’ve spent millions upon millions trying to come up with an improved model? Several times since WWII… The answer is is SURE we can build something wicked, but at 5-10x the cost + the cost of the new ammo is so high you can’t practice…and it’s 15% better.
Even the 4star generals and retard politicians can do the math on that.
Speaking of artillery, so why can modern Naval artillery drop a 6-8″ shell into a garbage can omnthe first shot ( or close enough) from 25 miles away from a moving platform in foggy darkness. ( And follow up at 30-60rounds per minute per tube)
I know they have wicked cool mounting that allows them to stabilize barrels and no (compred to an army mount) weight restriction, instant feedback from exit velocity, radars, computers, and so forth.
But heck you army guys are shooting from one known spot to another known spot. You’d think that by now, unless the mission calls for “hose down this area” that you could hit what you were aiming for with a little more panache than WWII era CEP’s?!
The guns may not have changed much, but I’ll bet the rounds and the gunners have!
Gunners some, Scripto. Rounds, erm, not so much.
Some things are just right. I reckon that a millenium or so from now, when the Galactic Empire’s shock troops land on a native pacification mission the weapons they carry will use a brass case containing propellant to drive a heavy pellet down range, and the crew-served weapon on the antigrav patrol skimmer will be recognizably a Ma Deuce. The methane-breathing spideroids that are the Empire’s main enemy will use the same system. Hell, the rounds might interchange.
Regards,
Ric
The M2 and 1911 are true testiments to the brilliance of the designer. One born just before WWI, and one just after. Both are equally useful on today’s battlefield, and often do the job better than their contemporary “replacements”.
Take note, the sidearm carried by most Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan is another mostly Browning creation, the High-Power. Also, not that long ago Canadian soldiers still relied on his Model 1919. Finally, any duck hunter worth his salt has probably heard of the Browning Auto-5, the first successful semi-auto shotgun, designed in 1898, production ended 1998. Now what other modern device can you think of with that kind of longevity?
John Browning; still my favorite morman 🙂
Caseless ammo, neat idea, but $$$….Maybe better to spend money upgrading all of our .223 to 6.8mm’s or something of the like.
Dave in Pa
[[ Serious question for all you small arms heads. When are we going to have caseless ammunition?]]
Besides sealing problems the main insoluable problem with caseless ammo is getting the heat away from the chamber. Repeating arms are not all that forgiving about dimensions changing from heat expansion.
Ma Deuce gets awful cranky with the idiots who blast through an entire belt(100rd approx). Having a round in a partly closed, overheated, seized breach is a traumatic experience….and a busted gun……when it inevitably cooks off….I just hate it when that happens…
BTW Ma Deuce is usually mounted on a vehicle….due to it’s weight and the ammo load.
Technically the boundary between small arms and artillery is 20mm but IMHO 50cal is the boundary…
the viggen
[[ Fired a Bren in England, like the c-9 better. You can* fire the whole 200 rd belt with one trigger squeeze.
* sure it makes little sense; but it’s fun! ]]]]
Congradulations…a MEDIUM company gun is superior to a LIGHT squad automatic. That’s like saying an el camino is inferior to a 3/4 ton…….
Mr. Browning was a genius. I wonder what he could come up with to get rid of our socialist problems.
Oh…
Nevermind. He’s already BTDT.
I’m not sure I understand; both the Bren and the Minimi are/were used as section support weapons. In the 80’s the medium company gun in Canada was the GPMG (not a fan). I like the Bren, but it’s weight of fire is poor, so at long range it has a small beaten zone; its a C-2 with a quick-change barrel. (and no one I knew ever carried enough ammo to need to change the barrel) The M-2 is amazing, never got to fire it enough (does anyone?)
The Viggen
[[…its a C-2 with a quick-change barrel. (and no one I knew ever carried enough ammo to need to change the barrel) The M-2 is amazing, never got to fire it enough (does anyone?)]]
SOP is to swap the barrel for a cool one during a lull after sending 2 mags down-range. Barrels last longer that way. Patrolling with a belt feed??? As practical as using a 50 on a ground mount.
Like I said the Bren inspires a fierce loyalty in it’s users. Sorta like the users of the old Hotchkiss prefered the strips over the later belt feed…..
When I was a student at the Royal Military College of Science in the UK, we did an experiment. We attached thermocouples to a Bren gun, and an MG42. We were then told to fire as much ammo as we could, but we had to keep the guns temperature below X degrees. This demonstrated that despite the Bren gun having a cyclic rate of fire of about 500 rounds per min, and the MG42 around 1200 RPM, the sustained rates for both guns are the same. Besides doing cool stuff like this I got to fire and play with an amazing assortment of hardware.
For the record, the Bren was the section weapon, Vickers was the coy wpn, replaced by FN C2 and Browning C5, replaced by C9 “minimi” and C6 “GPMG”. Although I think this is a purely theoretical orbat when a section has an armoured vehicle with a cannon and a coax machine gun and god knows what small arms available.
I didn’t forget about the add and drop, but sometimes you get a target round. Likelihood improves if you are using a laser and you have already fired a laser point or a laser registration.
I didn’t say the rounds always hit where I intended, but it’s a great feeling when they do 🙂
Several years ago our Liberal government had listed a bunch of M2’s for sale (to other governments, of course). The specs on the web site listed the guns as being of current manufacture, all working, with the quick-change barrels and auto-headspace.
I wrote to the then current Minister of Defense and to Jay Hill, (who was the Defense critic) and both wrote me back about how the guns were actually not really in that great a shape and besides, they really were surplus to our current requirements.
Of course I wrote back, explaining (uselessly) about how they were already paid-for and it would cost next to nothing to refurbish them (as any potential customer would have to do), pack them in grease and store them for a time when they would no longer be “surplus to our requirements”. I also pointed-out that according to the website they had been listed for a couple years and when they sold, we’d be getting pennies on the dollar for them.
Of course I never heard from either the minister or the Conservative critic again.
Sometimes reliability with simplicity of use, trumps elegance with its technology.
So much fun you can have with a belt of 50 cal and an open range.
So much fun.
Fred
So much fun you can have with a belt of 50 cal and an open range.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Depends…..Speak with the birds, cars with holes, trees missing trunks. Bet they don’t agree.
LOL (-:
Brings back memories of Korea . We had a Quad mount mobile 40 MM Bofors right beside our camp for some time.When they opened up on an aircraft it was just like music to our ears.I never saw a kill , but did see a couple smokers hightailing back north. Ahhh Dustoff…. there’s one in every crowd.
“Depends…..Speak with the birds, cars with holes, trees missing trunks. Bet they don’t agree.
Tree trunk missing tree 🙂
The .50 is about as much fun as you can have while standing and clothed.
The next best thing is being in the Port Breezeway on a Halifax class frigate when the port side bridge .50 is about to fire. You make sure you are looking in the direction of someone who has never experienced a .50 firing directly over their head while standing in a steel can. Pretty sure I have watched a dozen or so people have the experience of swallowing their heart back into their chest. 😉
One of the best feelings in life is calling in artillery over the radio and then hearing the thump, the long whistle, and then the boom as rounds hit the ground exactly where you intended. “Fire for effect, over.” “Fire for effect, out!”
…as rounds hit the ground exactly where you intended… ~ VancouverGuy
I guess you’ve forgotten about all the “add 400; drop 200” stuff.
“as rounds hit the ground exactly where you intended.”
So I am guessing you were never a Lieutenant ?
Almost as dangerous as an Officer Cadet with a map.
Please note, Ma Deuce is designed by quit possibly the greatest designer of firearm in the history of the world, John Browning.
Fred
[[[“as rounds hit the ground exactly where you intended.”
So I am guessing you were never a Lieutenant ?
Almost as dangerous as an Officer Cadet with a map.]]]
It really is gratifying when the smoke needs no adjustment….it happens….
Ma Deuce is a phenomina….even mounted without a shield…it seems like a shield when it barks. The newer units with quick change barrels and auto-headspacing will extend it’s useful life for a long time. The main complaint is it’s slow rate of fire and single feed….it seems the desk jockeys want instant selection of ammo—which dual feeds provide. My answer is mix the ammo in the belt and have a wee bit of patience….
The Bofors survives because there is nothing really magical about it….just good engineering.
The newer models fire a lot faster than the WW2 versions, are hotter loaded with longer barrels and ammo of increased lethality (minturized proximity fuses) to allow one gun to do the job of several older models. A while back, NATO came to the shocking discovery that although 40mm was a NATO standard the ammo was not very interchangeable at all. It seems all users had tweeked it a bit in many different ways.
However it is not just Ma Deuce and the Bofors which stolidly soldier on with a fierce loyalty from their users…..the venerable BREN….long discarded by Canada is still in reserve statis in the UK and many countries. The move to standardize on 308/7.62 NATO….spawned conversion from .303 to 76.2 and gave a new lease of life by eliminating one of the BREN’s few vices…occasional stoppages from feeding the rimmed 303….in originally a Czech gun designed for 8mm Mauser…a rimless round.
Designed as the main fire-power for a section of infantry…it still cannot be replaced in that role…..despite many serious attempts.
Our guys are currently finding themselves on the noisy end of BRENs, still in .303 mostly, in the hands of the Taliban….whose acceptance committees seem to have never got the memo.
Nothing more fun than a .50 and an open range?
Agreed. Although direct fire against tank hulks at 600 m with a 105 and an elbow telescope is a close second.
First round direct hits with indirect fire? It DOES happen. Personal experience, Ph IV Arty; I was required by an AIG (Assistant Instructor in Gunnery, typically a senior WO) to adjust a rusty car body in Lawfield Impact in Gagetown.
Conversation between the OP and the Battery command post went something like this:
Me (OP): [after all data given] Adjust fire, over.
Bty CP: (slight wait) Shot, over. (18 seconds later) Splash, over.
Me: Splash, out.
(car explodes)
Me: Hunh. End of mission, target destr-
AIG (in my left ear): You adjust that f**king target, sir!
Me (no longer having any target to adjust): Well, okay then. Right five-zero, drop two hundred, I guess…
Given all the built-in inaccuracies of howitzers that create probable errors in bearing and range (it is an area weapon after all, and dropping HE-Quick in the same hole over and over doesn’t get the job done), and the vagaries of weather, barrel wear, charge temperatures, projectile weight, Coriolis force and so on, even if you try to hit something on the first adjusting round, it’s almost impossible to do it. It’s dumb luck when it happens. But it DOES happen. Sooner or later, it happens to everybody.
Oh, and that was as a 2Lt. Never got lost in Gagetown, so long as there was a cemetary to triangulate from. Which doesn’t change the fact that the one thing officers fear more than anything else is a Sergeant Major looking at your map for a few minutes, then saying very politely, “So just where do YOU think we are, sir?”
BigFire
“Please note, Ma Deuce is designed by quit possibly the greatest designer of firearm in the history of the world, John Browning.”
Browning fit right in with other prolific inventors of the 19th century such as Gatling and Edison. These guys reflected the times and all designed agricultural devices which mechanized agriculture….a reflection of the importance of agriculture at that time.
While Gatling is remembered for his gun….he invented the plate-corn planter, the fluted grain drive feed and the KNOTTER (making binders and autobailers possible).
Browning’s talent was refinning Gatlings inventions….indeed his knotter patents were only abandoned with the introduction of plastic twine. Browning’s unique contribution was the trip hitch/trip plow beam for tractor drawn plows.
Edison’s milker transformed dairying.
Bad things happen to those who don’t head space a .50 properly..
Serious question for all you small arms heads. When are we going to have caseless ammunition?
Nothing more viscerally satisfying than watching the tracers from your “fifty” enveloping your target at the range. The hardest thing I found was firing the full three to six tracer rounds at a single burst since the power of the weapon was so awe inspiring as to make you want to pause to take a breath and savor the effect after only a few rounds.
The durability of Browning’s basic design speaks to its genius. It solved a problem by a mechanism which was, while perhaps not perfect, sufficiently close that there has been little to no improvement upon it in 80 years. Some designs simply represent the optimization of the technology, and such may be the Browning .50 cal.
As for indirect fire, one of my friends on Arty training reported a “winger” fired on his course in which the bagged charge was accidently doubled. The round landed well within the Gagetown training area but unfortunately hit one of the many cemeteries found there. The ultimate irony was that the original target description had been, “troops dug in”.
Dave: When it becomes necessary for shooting down the flying pigs.
Seriously. I used to think the same way. Then I realized that retaining the round and supporting storage and feeding requires a whole different set of characteristics than going *boom* does. Division of labor. It’s characteristic of an industrial economy.
Regards,
Ric
Dave in PA. Caseless ammo has been tried many times and it hasn’t proved a success. The closest we got was the H and K G11. I think they eventually gave up on it because they couldn’t develop a propellant that would not “cook off” in a hot chamber , and burnt clean enough to not overly foul the weapon to quickly. The big problem with caseless ammo is that in conventional ammo the cartridge case acts as a gas seal, so you have to design a system that will work without that.
I don’t know if we still have them, but I assume we do because we still have the MCDV (or whatever, the coastal defence vessels). The are equipted with 40mm Bofors guns that were taken of the army who used them for airfield defence in Germany who got them of the navy who had them mounted on our last aircraft carriers. They were probably built during WWII and they are still in service.
I have zero experience with the .50 cal, but another one of Browning’s designs, the 1911 pistol, is due for its 100th anniversary next year an is still going strong.
Browning was one of those rare people that could see to the heart of a problem and solve it the simplest possible way. In 100 years there have been many other pistol designs, none have been significantly superior to those of Browning. IMHO, anyway.
Although I must say I do like the Walther PPK. Not as powerful as the .45, but easy to carry inside your pants all day. Additionally a PPK is supposed to be what finally killed Hitler, so that’s a major plus too. Pity I had to sell mine. 🙁
minuteman, Dave: I had a chance once to chat briefly with one of the guys who helped develop the CIWS “R2D2” guns for ships. They seriously considered caseless ammo just to reduce the storage volume. Cookoff and gas sealing they could do, and fouling could be solved, but getting the etaoin shrdlu things to transport, feed, load, and obturate while still solving the other problems killed the notion dead, and quickly.
Regards,
Ric
I sorta disagree with you there, as I was fortunate enough to see ( no touching, only drooling) a G-11 being fired in Germany. I was told that it functioned well, and I saw it fire about 200 rds without incident; each individual (caseless) round cost 3x as much as a 5.56mm which pretty much killed it in post-war Germany. Fired a Bren in England, like the c-9 better. You can* fire the whole 200 rd belt with one trigger squeeze.
* sure it makes little sense; but it’s fun!
“The durability of Browning’s basic design speaks to its genius. It solved a problem by a mechanism which was, while perhaps not perfect, sufficiently close that there has been little to no improvement upon it in 80 years. Some designs simply represent the optimization of the technology, and such may be the Browning .50 cal.”
It’s not only the Gun design, it’s the gun design PLUS the .50 cal cartridge.
Bigger n’ that you have something too large to haul around without a waay serious mount, smaller than that you can armour against it. And it’s (mostly) ball ammo so it’s relatively speaking DIRT cheap comapred to the next step up. And it positvely outranges anything lighter and can destroy anything that’s not “seriously” armoured.
You know they’ve spent millions upon millions trying to come up with an improved model? Several times since WWII… The answer is is SURE we can build something wicked, but at 5-10x the cost + the cost of the new ammo is so high you can’t practice…and it’s 15% better.
Even the 4star generals and retard politicians can do the math on that.
Speaking of artillery, so why can modern Naval artillery drop a 6-8″ shell into a garbage can omnthe first shot ( or close enough) from 25 miles away from a moving platform in foggy darkness. ( And follow up at 30-60rounds per minute per tube)
I know they have wicked cool mounting that allows them to stabilize barrels and no (compred to an army mount) weight restriction, instant feedback from exit velocity, radars, computers, and so forth.
But heck you army guys are shooting from one known spot to another known spot. You’d think that by now, unless the mission calls for “hose down this area” that you could hit what you were aiming for with a little more panache than WWII era CEP’s?!
The guns may not have changed much, but I’ll bet the rounds and the gunners have!
Gunners some, Scripto. Rounds, erm, not so much.
Some things are just right. I reckon that a millenium or so from now, when the Galactic Empire’s shock troops land on a native pacification mission the weapons they carry will use a brass case containing propellant to drive a heavy pellet down range, and the crew-served weapon on the antigrav patrol skimmer will be recognizably a Ma Deuce. The methane-breathing spideroids that are the Empire’s main enemy will use the same system. Hell, the rounds might interchange.
Regards,
Ric
The M2 and 1911 are true testiments to the brilliance of the designer. One born just before WWI, and one just after. Both are equally useful on today’s battlefield, and often do the job better than their contemporary “replacements”.
Take note, the sidearm carried by most Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan is another mostly Browning creation, the High-Power. Also, not that long ago Canadian soldiers still relied on his Model 1919. Finally, any duck hunter worth his salt has probably heard of the Browning Auto-5, the first successful semi-auto shotgun, designed in 1898, production ended 1998. Now what other modern device can you think of with that kind of longevity?
John Browning; still my favorite morman 🙂
Caseless ammo, neat idea, but $$$….Maybe better to spend money upgrading all of our .223 to 6.8mm’s or something of the like.
Dave in Pa
[[ Serious question for all you small arms heads. When are we going to have caseless ammunition?]]
Besides sealing problems the main insoluable problem with caseless ammo is getting the heat away from the chamber. Repeating arms are not all that forgiving about dimensions changing from heat expansion.
Ma Deuce gets awful cranky with the idiots who blast through an entire belt(100rd approx). Having a round in a partly closed, overheated, seized breach is a traumatic experience….and a busted gun……when it inevitably cooks off….I just hate it when that happens…
BTW Ma Deuce is usually mounted on a vehicle….due to it’s weight and the ammo load.
Technically the boundary between small arms and artillery is 20mm but IMHO 50cal is the boundary…
the viggen
[[ Fired a Bren in England, like the c-9 better. You can* fire the whole 200 rd belt with one trigger squeeze.
* sure it makes little sense; but it’s fun! ]]]]
Congradulations…a MEDIUM company gun is superior to a LIGHT squad automatic. That’s like saying an el camino is inferior to a 3/4 ton…….
Mr. Browning was a genius. I wonder what he could come up with to get rid of our socialist problems.
Oh…
Nevermind. He’s already BTDT.
I’m not sure I understand; both the Bren and the Minimi are/were used as section support weapons. In the 80’s the medium company gun in Canada was the GPMG (not a fan). I like the Bren, but it’s weight of fire is poor, so at long range it has a small beaten zone; its a C-2 with a quick-change barrel. (and no one I knew ever carried enough ammo to need to change the barrel) The M-2 is amazing, never got to fire it enough (does anyone?)
The Viggen
[[…its a C-2 with a quick-change barrel. (and no one I knew ever carried enough ammo to need to change the barrel) The M-2 is amazing, never got to fire it enough (does anyone?)]]
SOP is to swap the barrel for a cool one during a lull after sending 2 mags down-range. Barrels last longer that way. Patrolling with a belt feed??? As practical as using a 50 on a ground mount.
Like I said the Bren inspires a fierce loyalty in it’s users. Sorta like the users of the old Hotchkiss prefered the strips over the later belt feed…..
When I was a student at the Royal Military College of Science in the UK, we did an experiment. We attached thermocouples to a Bren gun, and an MG42. We were then told to fire as much ammo as we could, but we had to keep the guns temperature below X degrees. This demonstrated that despite the Bren gun having a cyclic rate of fire of about 500 rounds per min, and the MG42 around 1200 RPM, the sustained rates for both guns are the same. Besides doing cool stuff like this I got to fire and play with an amazing assortment of hardware.
For the record, the Bren was the section weapon, Vickers was the coy wpn, replaced by FN C2 and Browning C5, replaced by C9 “minimi” and C6 “GPMG”. Although I think this is a purely theoretical orbat when a section has an armoured vehicle with a cannon and a coax machine gun and god knows what small arms available.
I didn’t forget about the add and drop, but sometimes you get a target round. Likelihood improves if you are using a laser and you have already fired a laser point or a laser registration.
I didn’t say the rounds always hit where I intended, but it’s a great feeling when they do 🙂
Several years ago our Liberal government had listed a bunch of M2’s for sale (to other governments, of course). The specs on the web site listed the guns as being of current manufacture, all working, with the quick-change barrels and auto-headspace.
I wrote to the then current Minister of Defense and to Jay Hill, (who was the Defense critic) and both wrote me back about how the guns were actually not really in that great a shape and besides, they really were surplus to our current requirements.
Of course I wrote back, explaining (uselessly) about how they were already paid-for and it would cost next to nothing to refurbish them (as any potential customer would have to do), pack them in grease and store them for a time when they would no longer be “surplus to our requirements”. I also pointed-out that according to the website they had been listed for a couple years and when they sold, we’d be getting pennies on the dollar for them.
Of course I never heard from either the minister or the Conservative critic again.