Don't mess with the Marine with the 30 caliber rifle!
7.62 cartridge at left, AK cartridge in center, M-16 cartridge at right:
Posted on 11/24/2008 6:41:23 PM PST by Bill Dupray
Looks like 250 terrorists picked the wrong day to screw with 30 U.S. Marines in Afghanistan. Frankly, is there ever a good day to screw with the Marines?
In the city of Shewan, approximately 250 insurgents ambushed 30 Marines and paid a heavy price for it. . . .“The day started out with a 10-kilometer patrol with elements mounted and dismounted, so by the time we got to Shewan, we were pretty beat,” said a designated marksman who requested to remain unidentified. “Our vehicles came under a barrage of enemy RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) and machine gun fire. One of our ‘humvees’ was disabled from RPG fire, and the Marines inside dismounted and laid down suppression fire so they could evacuate a Marine who was knocked unconscious from the blast.”
More . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at patriotroom.com ...
As the DI's would say ....
OUTSTANDING!!!
btt
Create an active link with text that directly attributes "Military.com" or whoever authored the article, per the way JDZ did at neveryetmelted.com:
http://neveryetmelted.com/index.php/afghanistan-marines-rout-nearly-ten-to-one-attack/
Criticism is warranted for the indirect and obscure way you posted. Let's give a hat tip to the Marine correspondants like Cpl. James M. Mercure, that are making and reporting history and not mentioned in your posting. Too many bloggers are just duplicating each other with cut and paste articles.
Dude (Murtha? LOL!), please get lost! Not what I said at all. I'm relying on information from the guys fighting them vs. creating stereotypes from one-star comedies (or wherever you get them).
20 shots, 20 kills, under those conditions is not routine - it's insanely superhuman. The “jihadis” were not walking in a rotating target line like a carnival game.
You have wrongly minimized the efficacy of enemy, and by doing so, diminished the amazing accomplishments of our Marines under the worst of conditions. You don't have the sense to recognize this (even though about a dozen people pointed this out to you).
By, by.
I've done nothing to diminish the accomplishments of our Armed Forces. I've simply pointed out the obvious ineptitude of our enemies. You can continue to suggest that I'm minimizing the efficacy of the Pashtuns, but it flies directly in the face of the fact that they were unable to inflict a single casualty in 8 hours despite the superlatives you use in describing them.
You can deny that you deify them, but I used your words, that you prescribed to them: "skilled", "courageous", "tacticians", and "vastly superior forces".
Since I routinely clear our troops on return from Afghanistan, I don't need to rely on "one star comedies" I have hundreds of first hand accounts as well as family, friends, and co-workers who've spent a year + in theater. The general opinion of the jihadis is that "They're not worth s**t." to quote numerous men returning from tours.
Owl_Eagle
“When the stock market crashed,
Franklin Roosevelt got on the television
and didn’t just talk about
the princes of greed, he said,
‘Look, here’s what happened.’"
-Slow Joe Biden
"Despite this constraint, paratroopers have set admirable records by holding out for great lengths of time even when surrounded by superior forces."
250 to 30 means the Marines were up against superior forces. And if they are in an ambush, the enemy invariably chooses the most advantageous position to attack, which coincides with the target being in the most vulnerable position to defend.
Now go back and read the 10 commentators, who at a rate of 100%, disagree with you.
Face it, you're trying to build up the abilities of a demonstrably inferior group.
The illiterati Pashtuns are not comparable in any way to ANY of our Armed Forces.
To argue otherwise diminishes our troops by even including the two together.
Now go back and read the 10 commentators, who at a rate of 100%, disagree with you.
To see if I can glean any startling insight from KMA and FU? Maybe I'll wait for them to learn to read before I bother to read what they've written.
Owl_Eagle
“When the stock market crashed,
Franklin Roosevelt got on the television
and didn’t just talk about
the princes of greed, he said,
‘Look, here’s what happened.’"
-Slow Joe Biden
And Owl_Eagle - KMA! I said "Implying that the insurgents are only slightly more intelligent than an ape and void of training, skill, courage, and reasonably well conceived tactics". Buy a dictionary. Void means "nothing", "none", "zero" - so the statement said that they had "some level" of those characteristics. This comment does not “deify” the enemy or attempt to elevate them to the level of our Marines and it REALLY pi$$es me off that you try to warp my words either through malice, or complete ignorance of my point.
But even with your asinine depiction of a "barely evolved" opponent who "are little more than an inept gaggle of man-chimps" and "not worth s**t" - with 250 of them opening up with RPG's, firing machinegun rounds, and probably AK-47's blazing - even if they were all standing still, out in the open - it's an amazing accomplishment of skill and courage for a single Marine to have a 20 for 20 kill ratio and for all 30 of our Marines to come out alive and victorious.
And I never said otherwise. Being able to record 20 kills in 20 shots has nothing to do with the skill or total ineptness of your opponent.
Owl_Eagle
“When the stock market crashed,
Franklin Roosevelt got on the television
and didn’t just talk about
the princes of greed, he said,
‘Look, here’s what happened.’"
-Slow Joe Biden
Don't mess with the Marine with the 30 caliber rifle!
7.62 cartridge at left, AK cartridge in center, M-16 cartridge at right:
God Bless our Marines.
Umm, could we get back to the thread about the Marines?
Thanks! This is what I was thinking. I figured the marksman was using a M-14. Does it hold 20? .223 is fine for supression but those windy canyons in Afghan probably need a heavier bullet. I have a Bushie AR Carbine but I get paranoid about stove piping. I want to check out a DSA STG58 or FAL FN.
These kids are so darn brave.
Their strict training pays off time in and time again. It was great to hear none of our Marines got seriously injured.
To the Cpl that never missed a kill; Navy Cross? You saved your brothers lives no matter what the military deems you may deserve. That is worth more than anything they hang on your uniform.
I believe the M-14 magazine typically holds 20 rounds. Any longer and things get in the way if you are shooting prone, etc.
If you look at the pic I posted earlier, you will see that the 7.62 cartridge is apparently about 1/3 larger in capacity than the AK round. What you don’t see is that the maximum chamber pressure is about 62,000 pounds per square inch, as opposed the the AK’s 45,000 PSI. HUGE difference in performance when you need to reach out and touch someone, like a feral Afghani.
My son did a great ballistic performance spreadsheet for the 7.62 x 51 mm round as an assignment in one of his engineering classes in college. It had an in-your-face Marine sniper background and was well done. He presented it in front of the class with an apology, essentially saying it wasn’t politically correct but in his job, his life might well depend on it. No one dared to take issue with that. My boy :) He has his ways ...
I stopped a Marine in Walmart today just to tell him this story. HE LEFT BEAMING! He said, “Well, fightin’s what we DO.” I made his day.
Thats a warriors liturgy!
Pops,
God Bless Our United States Marines.....
Karl must be smiling from heaven!
Darryl Sharratt
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