Posted on 12/05/2020 12:59:31 PM PST by dynachrome
A big fat shotgun that fired a bomb... gotta love it!
Love that site!!! Bookmarked. Finally, fellow travellers 😁
The author’s blog is GOLD!
Bump
I was a rifle company commander. When I took command, we had already been issued the M203’s, so I made do. Every chance we had, I had the grenadiers practicing with their M-203’s with point targets. That made a difference, but with the M-79 you could see the target and see the end of the barrel which made it much easier to hit with a first round.
I was a recon platoon leader in an air cavalry squadron, in D Troop. 2 of our platoons were converted to ground recon when the 4th ID left the Highlands and we needed more ground recon. I spent many hours flying left seat in an OH-6. We usually had a M-79 on board. I also liked to fly with the Nighthawk UH-1, looking for camp fires. I liked the M-79 for those missions.
Agree. The problem with the safety was that it could shifted by the foliage in the jungle, especially if it was worn.
Never ran into that problem. Never saw an accidental discharge with an M79 with the Marines in Vietnam. The limitations I listed earlier were obvious and the arming distance kept it from being fired at close range.
My little brother served with the army in Vietnam and was shot at close range by his own staff sergeant with an M79 while my brother was firing the .50 on his M113. The impact of the round hitting him through his right butt cheek threw him out of the track and they drove on, leaving him unconscious by the road. The ARVN found him, evacuated him, and removed the round from his pelvis.
Apparently, the idiot Staff Sergeant had his finger on the trigger. Despite this, my brother served 20 years in the Army and retired a SFC.
When my battalion relieved the 5th Marine Regt in I Corps in 1971, their weapons were as worn out as were ours. Rode hard and put up wet, well beyond the capability of unit level maintenance. Some years later in Germany, I had an opportunity to fire a brand new M60 in a logistics unit that had never been fired. I couldn’s believe that it was the same model that I knew from infantry units.
In the Marines, the M60 was a mixed bag: good, controllable rate of fire, belt fed well, and you could hit far out when you needed to. It also ate bolt lugs and firing pins and if you fired it too long, it melted barrels. In the mid-90s, Major Jim Nelson got funding in the budget to fix the M60E3 which some genius at Picatinny developed for "walking fire" by using a vertical foregrip and a very skinny barrel. It was lighter, alright, but it really heated fast and we had a basket of barrels in an "S" shape with bullets exiting out of the side of the barrel.
Jim, on his own initiative, found FN-MAG machine guns stored at Anniston - they were for the M1 Tank but the army had folded to political pressure and didn't use these in favor of the US-made guns. Jim had them transferred to Marine Corps control and then bought all the stuff needed to convert them to ground guns and Voila, we had the 20 times more reliable M240G just in time for the next wars.
The army followed suit when they bought their M240Bs but boy, were they pissed to find out that the Marine Corps got all their machineguns from them for free!
The Ordnance Corps was not always the friend of the soldier. Had the Ordnance Corps accepted the FN FAL in the original .280 caliber round, we might still be using it and we never would have adopted the M14.
Bang
Still, I was attached to my M-14: it always worked, always hit what I was aiming at, always nailed what I hit.
I went home for a 30-day basket leave when I extended and when I came back, my company had converted to the M-16. Damn thing kept screwing up and the caliber wasn't anywhere nearly effective as the claims - so I went back to my tent and retrieved my M-14.
I was much envied dude for my rifle and when I finally was hit, my lieutenant crawled up to me (we were still being fired at) and said "Rick, I'm sorry you're hurt - but can I have your M-14?"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.