Marines carry six-pack attack (WOW!! Now that's a 6-PAK!)

Marine Corps News ^ | Gunnery Sgt. Mark Oliva

[SandRat]

CAMP MERCURY, Iraq (March 9, 2006) -- Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to want one.

Marines with Regimental Combat Team 5, based in Camp Fallujah, test-fired the latest in the Corps’ arsenal of weapons’ improvement, the M-32 Multiple shot Grenade Launcher. It’s a six-barreled, 40 mm beast of weapon that has just about enough attitude for Marines.

“I thought it was pretty bad the first time I saw it,” said Cpl. Jason H. Flanery, a 23-year-old mortarman from St. Louis, Mo., assigned to RCT-5’s Personnel Security Detachment.

The M-32 MGL looks like something straight out of an action movie or a weapon ginned up by designers of futuristic video combat games. It’s a bare-bones, shoulder-fired weapon with a bulging six-barreled cylinder. There’s no bones about it. This thing’s all business when the trade is knocking out bad-guys at a distance.

“You can put six rounds on target in under three seconds,” Flanery said. “I thought this thing was sick.”

Sick might be right for the insurgent on the other end of the sight. The M-32 MGL is step up from the M-203 grenade launcher Marines have used since post-Vietnam days. It fires similar 40 mm grenades and at similar distances. It just puts more rounds on the bad guys faster.

“The ‘203 has been around since the ‘60s,” explained CWO4 Gene A. Bridgman, the regiment’s gunner, or weapons expert. “It keeps improving. This is a progression in the weapons system.”

Flanery put the comparison of the two similar weapons in more simple terms.

“It makes it obsolete,” he said. “It’s that much better.”

The idea to bring M-32 was the brainchild of Marine gunners across the Corps, explained Bridgman, a 43-year-old from Garden City, Kan. During an annual symposium, they decided an improvement was needed over the M-203. One option was to bring back a rifle-grenade. The M-32, won out, however, and now each Marine battalion will field them as an experimental weapon.

Bridgman added the M-32 isn’t a new idea altogether, though. Brazilian, Italian and South African military have carried them in the field for years. Marines, though, took it one step further.

A fore-grip was added and a scope was mounted to the top, eliminating the old leaf sights like that of the M-203. The scope allows a Marine to follow the grenade to the target and immediately adjust and follow up with a lethal volley of indirect fire.

“The ‘203 was on shot at time,” Bridgman said. “The ‘203 became a signal weapon. This is more of an offensive weapon. With this, you shoot, adjust and fire for effect.”

The average Marine said it’s just about that easy to shoot. Lance Cpl. Alexandro R. Raymundo, a 20-year-old from Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., isn’t an infantryman. He’s a network administrator by trade. He shot the M-203 before during initial training, but this was his first time picking up the M-32 MGL.

“I thought it might be like the ‘203,” Raymundo said. “But is shoots more rounds, faster. It’s really simple. I had ‘hands-on’ once. I picked it up really quickly.”

As far as how it felt shooting it, Raymundo said the weapon was about as beefy as it looks.

“I felt like there’s more recoil than the ‘203 and the trigger’s a lot heavier” he explained. “It’s heftier than the ‘203.”

His likes about the weapon included the small scope added to the rail-mount system on top of the weapon.

“The optic was nice,” he added. “It’s a lot easier to sight in.”

Of course, there’s the part about lots of things going “boom” downrange too.

“My favorite part was being able to fire out so many grenades and not have to reload between each shot.”

Sgt. David G. Redford, a 35-year-old from Kennebunkport, Me., has more practical experience when it comes to what grunts like in the field. He’s an infantryman by trade and has logged in his own hours carrying the M-203.

“I didn’t know what to think about it before we came out here, but it’s nice,” Redford said. “It’s easier to shoot. You don’t have to constantly load. If you run into something, you’re already loaded.”

Redford predicted that most infantry Marines will welcome the addition of the six-pack attack weapon.

That’s exactly the reaction Bridgman wants to see. Adding the M-32 MGL could realign the way Marines operate at the small-team level. Fire teams could become more lethal, more mobile and more independent. The idea of a dedicated grenadier might just be reborn.

“Now you have your own indirect fire support right in the fire team,” Bridgman explained. “You have someone who can lay down (high explosive rounds) against someone in a trench. It would be used against enemy in fighting holes or behind cars, because of the indirect nature of the weapon. It’s the only weapon aside from mortars,” at the small team’s disposal.

Still, Bridgman stressed the weapon is only experimental. Marines will be gathering data about its’ effectiveness and durability from experiences on the streets of Fallujah.

For Flanery, though, the M-32 is already welcome.

“I think it’s one of the most simple and effective weapons systems,” he said. “I just want buckshot rounds.”

[Criminal Number 18F]

I hear ya. I'm in a run-out year of IRR and things are moving so fast my head spins. I remember when the BDU came in (and ticked us all off because we had cammies and the legs didn't; only elite forces had camouflage from Vietnam through 1982 or so). And now the BDU's on its way out! I might buy one of the new uniforms just in case I get reactivated.

I spent five years on a very active special forces team in the 1980s and we still had old XM16E1s from the first contract; when a new guy checked in his team sergeant gave him three lists. Stuff from Post Clothing Issue Facility, unit stuff (like those cammies) from Group CIF, and List #3 was about $750 worth of stuff you had to go buy, everything from a civilian passport if you didn't have one, to a rucksack and sleeping gear, because the issue gear was 30 years behind.

By the time I left active duty, much of the Army equipment, at least for SF, was up to speed. Gore-tex! Skis that didn't way 35 lb... each! A rucksack that would hold everything! We even got better parachutes, and better weapons, and literally 40 times the training ammo we had in 1980.

Then I went to the USAR SF and found I was a red-headed illegitimate stepchild again.

By the time my NG SF team went to Afghanistan, we had equipment that was almost indescribably good, and had had a lot of good hands-on and life-fire training so that we could use it effectively.

When I went to SOT (formerly "blue light") we had night vision goggles that would "bloom" when you fired your .45. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, and your grainy picture would fade back in. The new NVGs are not binocular so you have no depth perception to speak of, but in a colossal fight with mortars and JDAMS and more lasers than a Pink Floyd show, the gogs automagically adapt and you can see well enough to see the dismay on the guy's face when he realizes his wound is mortal. Sorry about that.

Also, the minuet of air and ground would make an old FAC weep with joy. Instead of B-52s blowing square miles of mahogany trees into kindling, you get one B-52, and he puts one bomb at a time exactly where you would like it... within about three yards. (They can finally hit that "pickle barrel" they were boasting about in 1940).

There were not many Marines in country when I was there. (They were taking a break before kicking hiney in Iraq). But those I dealt with (some were in the joint HQs) were guys who keep building that USMC reputation. We had two majors who had do-nothing jobs on the staff come out to our camp. A big beefy Army arty officer and a compact, wiry Marine infantry guy. "What do you guys want?" We were ready to throw them back on the copter that brought them.

Turned out they were playing hooky from HQ, looking for the war, leaving their do-nothing job's paperwork in the hands of trusted NCOs. "Just use us as riflemen." Unfortunately most of the war was over and hadji decided it was easier to sit and drink tea with us and then remember where his weapons cache was, than to try to use on us. We wound up with the weapons either way, and he had figured out a new sheriff was in town and it was time to change sides.

Weapons are something that doesn't change very much. I was comfortable with the weapons we used (M4A1, M9) but the replacement of the M9 with new-build .45s is a good idea. I went out into the people a lot with just my interpreter and my M9. I was going to bring and abandon my CZ but decided that there were too many memories in that to leave it behind (you can bring stuff into country no problem, but you are thoroughly shaken down on departure... like Vietnam).

I never fired nor heard a 40mm shot... RPG yes, 40mm no. Most explosive and AT weapons were no good against mud bunkers or houses. Ma Deuce was medicine for them.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Eaker]

Y'all ain't got one yet?

Damn!

[archy]

Bridgman added the M-32 isn’t a new idea altogether, though. Brazilian, Italian and South African military have carried them in the field for years. Marines, though, took it one step further.

A fore-grip was added and a scope was mounted to the top, eliminating the old leaf sights like that of the M-203. The scope allows a Marine to follow the grenade to the target and immediately adjust and follow up with a lethal volley of indirect fire.

The Columbians and Israelis have used them as well, likely via South African sources of supply, and Croatia manufacturing their own version. According to MGL Milkor Marketing, more than 20,000 of their unique weapon are now used in some 36 countries around the world. The very nice South African versions that first popped up around 1984 used a range-compensated Aimpoint Mk 2 oiptical sight; there've been some interesting innovations in combat optics since then, and it's nice to see that the *thump gun* has kept up with the times.

The Milkor MGL six-shot 40mm grenade launcher is the world's first mass-produced multi-shot 40mm hand-held weapon. Developed by the South-African company Milkor, it entered production in 1983, and served with South-African National Defense Forces for more than twenty years. Since the 1996, an improved version of the basic design entered the production, it has been designated MGL Mk.1. The Milkor MGL is also used by more that twenty other countries worldwide. Milkor MGL offers significant firepower increase, compared to US-made M79 single shot 40mm launcher. The rapid-fire capability (six shots in less that three seconds) is essential in ambush situations and in quick-pacing urban warfare. The Milkor Mk.1 is now offered for export, and an almost exact copy of Mk1, is manufactured in Croatia by the RH Alan company as RGB-6. The most recent modifications of the Mk.1 launcher, which are manufactured and offered in USA under license by the Milkor Marketing Inc., are the Milkor Mk.1S and Milkor MK-140. These two launchers differ from original Mk.1 by having stronger, stainless steel frame (as opposed to the original aluminium frame), as well as by having four Picatinny-type accessory rails around the barrel. The difference between Mk.1S and Mk-140 is the length of the cylinder - while Mk.1S retains the original cylinder, the Mk-140 has a longer cylinder, which can accommodate a wider variety of the less-lethal 40mm ammunition, which usually has longer warheads. Both types also an fire all standard 40x46mm 'lethal' ammunition, including HE, HE-FRAG, HEDP and others.

The Milkor Mk.1 is a revolver type, hand-held grenade launcher. The six-shot cylinder is rotated by the clockwork-type spring for each shot. Spring is wound manually during the reloading. For reloading, the rear part of the frame (along with the pistol grip) is unlocked and then rotated sideways around the top strut of the frame, until the chambers in the cylinder are exposed for reloading. Once cylinder is reloaded, the rear part of the frame is rotated back and locked into position. The double-action firing mechanism has a manual safety above the pistol grip. All Mk.1 launchers are fitted with the red-dot type sight, with range scale. Modern versions, M.1S and Mk.1L, also can be fitted with other types of sighting equipment, using Picatinny rail on the top of the barrel. The top folding shoulder stock has a rubber recoil pad.

*more here* and *here*.

[ArrogantBustard]

The gun was secured in the bottom of the the small boat (a "punt"?)

Correct ... and dozens per shot is about right. The way non-migrating Canada Geese are swarming some areas of the East Coast, we might need to bring back the punt guns ... or design a beehive round for this six-shooter thing.

[OB1kNOb]

Now, dat's DA BOMB(s) !!!!!

[archy]

Now if they could fill those 40MM rounds with willy pete......

There is a 40m WP smoke/mark WP round. At least there was last time I shot an M79, about 1982.

Around 1979-'80 I worked on a development project for a series of small arms similar in intent to the *Liberator* pistol of WWII [and the Vietnam-era *Deer gun*] meant for arming a conquered or subject population to drain away vast numbers of occupation forces. Among the weapons we looked at were a very low cost and simplified suppressed 9mm SMG with but 7 moving parts [including the trigger mechanism!] a 2-shot over-and-under barrel configuration 40mm grenade launcher with a trigger mechanism formed from sheet metal stampings and the barrels and stock of nylon tubing, and other novelties. [Anti-tank duties were to be handled by the M72 LAW, not the greatest weapon of its type, but sufficiently useful that the Soviets copied it for use by their own folks.]

Among the ammunition meant for the little over-under blooper was a load using magnesium and fine aluminum powder, ignited and dispersed via a blackpowder and zirconium prop charge, that sufficed to both discourage close encounters and illuminate the area forward of the user at night. It also served as a neat incendiary: point the muzzle into a cracked door or broken window, and pull trigger.

Though not fielded, I'm reasonably certain that the end users of the things were meant to be the 10 million members of Lech Walesa's Solidarnosc movement of Poland. In August 1980 Walesa led the Gdansk shipyard strike which gave rise to a wave of strikes over much of the country, ended by the Gdansk Agreement, signed on 31st August, 1980, which gave Polish workers the right to strike and to organise their own independent union.

In 1981 General Wojciech Jaruzelski replaced Edward Gierek as leader of the Communist Party in Poland. In December 1981, Jaruzelski imposed martial law and Solidarnosc was declared an illegal organization. Soon afterwards Walesa and other trade union leaders were arrested and imprisoned.

By that time our designs had been finalized, limited test shot runs produced, and were but waiting for mass production. In '86 Gorbachev chose to back away from interference in Poland and the other Eastern European Soviet client states, and by 1989 Poland held parliamentary elections that emplaced a noncommunist government and in Solidarnosc again became a legal organization. But if it had gone the other way....

[archy]

Has anyone seen how many 81mm rounds a well trained and scared to death M-29 mortar team can put out in 3 seconds?

Just by the way, if you've got one guy kneeling beneath a single-shot M203 grenade launcher feeding it ammo and you direct it by means of a very extended sling with the parent rifle's butt on the ground, you can get 15-18 40mm rounds in the air before the first one hits, firing at an angle just a bit above 45º. I have been told the record was 19, but I wasn't there to see it.

I haven't tried it with an 81mm mortar, though we went through a jeep trailer full of ammo with a 60mm M19 once.

[river rat]

Roger that!

But as Travis Mcgee pointed out....
The 6-pack is a ONE man pack and shoot weapon.
It can be fired horizonal line of sight through a window, or firing slit that is protected from above...

The 60mm and 81mm mortars can't fill that bill...

That being said..... I would still want my 81's within reach... And yes, you need a chopper or air drop to keep the bastards fed - when they're in use...

Semper Fi

[Travis McGee]

What took us so long to adopt this?

[archy]

What took us so long to adopt this?

Institutional preference for the M203, usable as an attachment to the rifle rather than use as a stand-alone weapon.

Previousle, it was thought that if a target deserved multiple rounds of 40mm, the squad leader should just have both his bloop gunners fire on it. Serious work in cities recently shows that there's a need for a little more than that.

I hope they don't eliminate the M203s, though, but add the new *sixgun* to the mix. A Marine fire team with two riflemen, [with or w/o M203s] a Squad Automatic Weapon, and a Sixgun would seem to be a very neat way to go.

Alternately, when serious punch is needed, a back-up fire team with a pair of sixguns, two SAWs, and all additional M16 or M4 rifles fitted with M203s....would seem to be a good start.

[vrwc0915]

I wish they would replace the 203 with the H&K version

[Skooz]

Dadfreakinggum! Look at that thing.

All the better to exterminate the terrorist vermin with.

[Sundog]

Thanks for your service.

I did two tours of combat duty in Vietnam.

I'm glad to see us win one.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Poland was very, very, very close.

Had Jaruzielski not seized power, the Russians would have done. There were no Russian troops in Poland; there were some HQ elements that would have formed, IIRC, the Northwestern Front Forward CP, but there were no Russian combat or logistical troops, unlike East Germany and Czechoslovakia that played host to 22 and 5 division respectively. Jaruzielski knew that if the Russians came, as they did to East Germany in '53, Hungary in '56, and Czechoslovakia in '68, they wouldn't be going. (Russians were in East Germany before '53, but not 22 divisions of the sonofabitches. There were over a quarter million Russians crammed into that little country).

In Saint Augustine, Florida in the 1970s I saw an OSS weapon I've never seen before or since. It was in the private collection of a Class III dealer there who had all kinds of groovy stuff like a working Colt Potato Digger, and yes, he had a Liberator (didn't see a Deer Gun there).

But this weapon was a shotgun that had 3 parts. The barrel was a simple 12 GA tube. The receiver/stock group was a wooden stock, with a receiver that was a slightly larger tube with a base in it containing a mortarish fixed firing pin. You loaded the shotshell into the barrel, then slammed the barrel into the receiver. BANG. There was a comic-strip instruction sheet (as both the Lib. and the Deer Gun had).

The third part of the gun? That was a hardwood dowel to knock the shell out of the barrel!

These were apparently made in massive quantities with a view to arming the Phillipine resistance. When MacArthur got over his high dudgeon over some guys disobeying his orders to surrender -- one gets the impression that the narcissistic old man was unused to being disobeyed -- he realised that he had something good.

One incongruity about the OSS shotgun (I never learnt a proper name for it) was the materials. While the metal was cheap mild steel, seamless tubing and welded sheet, with a half-assed job of parkerizing, the stock was American walnut! (The dowel was oak or something very like it).

Re the M72: it got its bad rap for three reasons. 1. The trigger design makes it inaccurate. And reusing the triggers in the subcaliber device makes it so stiff and inaccurate that the troops completely lose confidence. 2. It is what it is and 66mm shaped charge isn't going to kill any tank made after about 1943, just light tanks, armoured cars, and APCs.
3. They don't (or at least the earliest ones didn't) store well. Contrast the poor performance of the LAW at Lang Vei with the performance of the same weapon at Ben Het. Difference? Ben Het had fresh stocks when they got hit, Lang Vei had LAWs that had been in outdoor storage for 2+ years.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Criminal Number 18F]

Thanks for your service! You guys had it hard, coming back to a country that just did not give a damn.

My unit came back and we were met by a big crowd with party stuff and tons of food -- some family members but mostly people we didn't know at all. A sweet little old lady gave me an American flag and a hug (for some reason all the hot young chicks were chasing down the younger guys...!)

Total contrast from the reception that all my sergeants in the early part of my career told me they got after Vietnam.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[DocRock]

Looks like the "new, improved" Manville... (aka MM-1)

Link

[archy]

One incongruity about the OSS shotgun (I never learnt a proper name for it) was the materials. While the metal was cheap mild steel, seamless tubing and welded sheet, with a half-assed job of parkerizing, the stock was American walnut! (The dowel was oak or something very like it).

They predate the American involvement, but the US version was in response to the search for a weapon that could be easily transported by submarine; weight was not a consideration, but bulk was. And the simple tubing barrel assembly could be carried aboard even the cramped confines of a submarine by the hundreds.

The reason the stocks were so well-made was because the first ones, with a pine or maple buttstock frequently split and had to be replaced with locally-made replacements made from damaged M1917 Enfield [whose flat ejector springs routinely break or Jap rifles or from native Phillipine mahogany. Accordingly, later production was walnut shaped suspiciously like the back half of an M1 Garand buttstock less the buttplate and cleaning kit inletting woodwork, until eventually it dawned on someone that it was only necessary to ship barrels and brass shell cases with replacement primers and powder, and the guerrillo workshops could take care of the rest. The example of the Phillipine *Guerrilla Gun* owned by Mitch Werbell was one such, [with mahogany stock] but whether an early *replaced stock* version or one of the later ones built from components, I'm not at all certain. But it had 4 notches cut in the fairly crudely whittled-out stock, and I do not think they represented successful pig hunts.

The US manufacturer/contractor was Richardson Industries of East Haven, CT who tried to market a somewhat better-built version after the war, primarily in the agricultural South. They were marked *Richardson Industries Guerrila Gun* and *East Haven, Conn.*, branded into the stock and so far as a *proper* name for 'em, were variously known as the *slambang* or *zip gun* [ever wonder where the New York gang punks picked up that moniker for their home-built handguns!] or by the term paliantod in the Phillipines.

They're a useful bit of tool for an occupied people, but the price for series production of the WWII Sten Gun in quantity was around $9.00 each, and you might think that would be money better spent.

[Criminal Number 18F]

I'll be a monkey's uncle. Your post here is the first corroboration I have ever seen for that gun. Most of the people I have told about it -- including some heavy duty weapons nerds -- have given me the, "I'll humour you till you go back on your meds" look.

Mitch WerBell. There's a guy I haven't thought of in almost as long as he's been dead. His son (sons?) did alright taking the business in a new direction. I used to have a Sionics Hi-Standard in the arms room, years ago. Useful critter, I understand a subsequent custodian had to turn it in. They didn't know what we'd get up to with it :). The Mk IIs Sten was a different matter, cause you could disassemble it and soak the powder out of the innards and it would quiet back down. But that .22, when the wipes were gone, they were gone. And the valves tended to get clogged up.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[headstamp]

Nice Hi Res pics at that website! Links under pics.

[Lancey Howard]

Wow. I want one.