Posted on 04/27/2004 10:59:31 AM PDT by John Jorsett
Captured enemy weapons are often booby trapped. Soldiers either learn that the hard way, or pay attention when their more experienced leaders warn them, “not to pick up anything you didn’t drop.” But some captured enemy weapons are collected for study (of how they operate, how much use they have gotten, how well the enemy was taking care of them or for training.) In Iraq, U.S. Air Force special operations ordnance (weapons) experts collected a Russian made Dragunov SVD 7.62mm sniper rifle. The air force was planning to check out the weapon, and then use it for training. But first they test fired it in a safe manner (secured it to a work bench and pulled the trigger remotely with a wire attached to the trigger.) When fired, the rifle blew apart. It turned out that someone had taken the rifle apart (as you would for cleaning) and then drilled a three millimeter hole in the barrel just forward of the chamber (where the cartridge goes, and is fired from.) This allowed hot gasses to escape through the hole and blow apart the wooden stock. Anyone firing the weapon in that condition would have suffered severe damage to at least their hand, if not eye, face and head. Examination of other weapons found in Iraq revealed at least one other rifle with the same booby trap modification. Someone had probably drilled that three millimeter hole in many weapons. Since Iraqis have picked up a lot of the weapons left behind by the fleeing Iraqi army, Iraqis will most likely be the only ones injured by this particular tactic. American troops are forbidden to collect weapons from the battlefield as souvenirs.
Stay safe !
And Eaker thought I was just tightening up some screws!
LOL!
Take care Squantos!!!
I doubt they had the luxury of manufacturing deliberately smaller-bored rifles - exigencies of war and all that.
This is probably a mutation of what happened after the war. Many of these guns were rechambered for the 30-06, with no other modification. No problem, other than lousy accuracy since the bores were 7.7mm (.311 cal.). The basis of this story probably came from those idiots who rechambered the earlier 6.5mms to 30-06.
Some years back the American Rifleman has an article about this. A gunsmith sent in some pictures of a REALLY elongated bullet, along with this tale: "A guy came in and asked me if I could make his gun shoot with less recoil. He complained it 'kicked too hard'. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw this 6.5 Arisaka was rechambered to 30-06. I have heard the Arisaka was a weak action but after seeing this I had to change my mind - the gun was still in sound condition after squeezing a jacketed .30 cal. bullet through a 6.5 (.266 cal.)tube."
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