Posted on 05/25/2011 6:47:36 PM PDT by dynachrome
Had the bad luck to be between a duster and quad 50 taking on Charlie up at the Rock Pile once.You could see those 40mm shells impacting on that far hill easily
Got hearing loss from it today.
Always wondered how long those springs and barrels lasted
I have removed them from our water-cooled quad barrels when we put our ship in mothballs. (Water-cooled barrels had the barrel inside the external water jacket.) Now THAT was one dangerous job because of the spring load. We had to pull the barrels off the gun and you could not afford to allow a heavily-loaded spring to get free. We had a spring compressor to do the job — there were two collars that slid over the barrel to capture the spring, some draw bolts, and a big crank. Boy did things get hot from friction as we backed-off the spring tension.
I also worked with the same kinds of air-cooled guns you had on the Duster. On the air-cooled barrels, the springs were captive and stayed with the barrel as a complete unit.
The only ammo we ever used in our guns was HEIT-SD = high-explosive incendiary tracer — self-destroying. Red nose, wide white band, narrow black band, and green projectile body. HEIT-SD would really light-up anything or anyone who got in its path. That was one thing never to do — be on the receiving end of a 40mm Bofors (or several).
My favorite two guns during the former Southeast Asian War Games were the 40mm Bofors and the Ma Duce (.50 caliber Browning, M2). Bad guys respected those two guns with very good reason and they'd have to be hunkered down in some pretty substantial shelter to be safe. If they were hunkered down, they usually were not shooting at you — if they were, it was without much accuracy.
Yeah, I follow his YouTube channel. The dual wielding AA-12 video was classic.
In Soviet Russia, gun fires YOU!
LOL, that is one of the ones someone already linked to me here in this thread, and yes, it is.
ONTOS!
Now that was a mean little package!
We had an ONTOS and a tank at the little firebase at Namo Bridge get into a shooting match using a tree about a Click away. No contest! ONTOS hit the tree with the .50 cal spotter and cranked off the 106 asap.
I flew a Jet Ranger in Uganda 1979-82. The Tanzanian army had helped the Ugandan National Resistance Army push Idi Amin out and were a bit trigger happy. I had landed at Soroti and was hover taxiing when they cut loose with a ZU-23, Russian 23mm twin barreled AAA from about 125 meters.
Now THAT will get your attention! I melted my First Stage turbine wheel getting out of there. The guy bringing my fuel in by land Rover arrived about 20 minutes later. He said that my clearance was sitting on the airport commander’s desk. He’d just forgotten to tell the AAA gunners. He said that they had fired about 120 rounds at me.
“Oh, the joys of travel. It does so broaden one’s horizons!”
/sarc
Reminds me of the parody of the Russian poster responding to a guy looking for Tapco parts for his AK. I originally read the post on /k but it’s been all over the gun boards. Hilarious!
Outstanding MasterGunner! That was a wealth of info about the 40mm. Always though there was some synch between guns, know I know how it works..............
Buy American...quad fifties mounted on a old M3 half track...
That would do the trick.
Russia / USSR
Single air-cooled
70-K
Twin water-cooled
66-K
V-11
V-11M
V-47M
Quad water-cooled
46-K
PRC
Twin Water Cooled
Type 61
Type 76
Type 76A
Both Allies and Axis used the L56 and L60 guns in both water- and air-cooled versions during WW2. Americans had the Mk 1 (twin), Mk 2 (quad), Mk 3 (single), Mk 4 (quad), M1 (single), M2 (twin). The Brits used the gun in various single and twin configurations in 9 marks. The Germans produced Swedish M1936 Bofors in 4 cm as the Flak 28 and the Japanese called their 4cm guns Type 5.
Post-war the gun was improved to the L70 configuration that used a longer case and more aerodynamic projectile. The Bofors company also scaled-up the machine gun mechanics to 57mm caliber. At present the Bofors 57mm L70 Mk 3 gun (Mk 110 in the USN, USCG) is used by various armies in self-propelled mounts and by navies on small combatants.
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