Posted on 12/15/2002 8:28:23 PM PST by Jacob Kell
Morazan, El Salvador -- Seventeen-year-old Odilia playfully pushed her tongue through her teeth as she recalled how she shot seven Salvadoran army soldiers in an ambush a few days before.
Odilia's under five feet tall, and her high-powered Soviet-made Dragunov rifle is almost as big as she is. No matter. The bashful Salvadoran teenager is a highly trained sharpshooter for the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).
Over the past several months, eastern-bloc and Chinese-made weapons have been distributed to FMLN guerrilla forces nationwide. The rebels say they bought the majority of the new arms, most of which are AK-47 assault rifles, from the U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua, who are now in decline. Officials at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador say the arms and ammunition have been supplied by the leftist governments of Nicaragua and Cuba, a charge those countries deny.
(Excerpt) Read more at franksmyth.com ...
Also
"The Contras' AK-47s had largely been of Chinses, Romanian, or Polish manufacture, while the FMLN's weapons were of Soviet, East German, North Korean, and Yugoslavian manufacture. There was little connection betweeen the Contras' weapons and those of the FMLN".
On the former...you are entirely incorrect. They've gotten rid of the Typhoon-class, and their proposed new SSBN class has had the misfortune of having its missile system cancelled.
It's clear that you've never been on the receiving end of 7,62x39mm M43 AK rounds from an RPK or RPD machinegun from 500 meters, trying to wish an extra 200 meters range from your M16A1...which was what the Salvadorians were using last time I was down that way. The Guatemalans, using Israeli Galils with 1:12 twist barrels and 55-grain M193 ammo, had it even worse.
The AK round was of course first used in the Siminov CKC/SKS carbine, with a 20.5"/520mm length barrel; the performance was a bit degraded with the adoption of the 16-inch barrelled AK47, but the squad's 24-inch barrelled RPK squad automatic weapons make up the difference just fine.
Meanwhile, we increased the weight of the M16 to almost that of the Garand and adopted the heavier bullet 5,56mm M855 ammunition to increase that rifle's range, only to then replace most of those heavy old things with cutdown M4 carbines with 16 inch barrels...while the Russians went to the AK74 with a 5,45mm cartridge designed to be used from that 16-inch barrel in the first place...and in those long-barrelled SAWs, still found in every squad, as well.
500-meter work, under harsh enviornmental conditions? Give me an RPK, every time....
You're correct about the TUL-1 using the AK milled receiver, but that's a stamped receiver on that particular RPK. And the RPK receivers are made stronger than those of the lighter AKM; they're built at the old Molot PPSh-41 *Shpagin* SMG factory in the Kirov district. Additionally, the Vietnamese didn't use the RPK stock on their TUL-1 guns, but rather the regular short but of the parent AK instead, probably a better fit for the average Vietnamese soldier.
-archy-/-
My dad was among other things a refinery engineer for CalTex/Texaco Refining, so my early life was that of a refinery brat, sort of like being a military brat except the towns smelled worse. And almost none of the kids I knew wanted to be firemen when/if they grew up....
There's a funny story about our family in Argentina when I was about 2 or 3 years old; but I think it'll keep till some other time. We were in Venezuelia and Chile for a while after that, but I remember little of that. In 1957 Dad was sent to the Texaco refinery at Santa Clara in Cuba's Oriente Province, and it was thought that my going along would be a swell *learning experience.* It was indeed that. The kids of the Marines, Hershey's Chocolate Plantation, Texaco and airport/dock facilities *helped* me along with additions to my Spanish-language vocabulary our teachers had somehow left out....
That's not the greatest of skills for dealing with those from Mexico or Central America, but it's gotten me around in jobs in Honduras and Guatemala. In Guatemala I was photographing most of the bridges used by FEGUA, the national narrowgauge railroad system, which are slated to be replaced by a U.S. and Mexican-system compatable Standard Gauge system one of these days- they may even be working on it now. But if any of their bridges had been lost, either to natural disasters [earthquake] or terrorism, the replacements would have been a little easier to build, ship and emplace with my photos for comparison.
Pretty thin stuff, so far as the James Bond types go. I'd have made a lousy spy, and took almost all of my photos in broad daylight.
When some U.S. military personnel tasked with suopport of a roadbuilding project in the Oso Grande area of Honduras got their warning orders for their operation, their commanding officer had me chat with 'em about life and conditions in Central America in general, with the understanding that I was no expert at all on the specific area where they'd be working. Unfortunately, they didn't believe the stuff I told 'em about all the folks around there living in igloos like the eskimos and making their living as whale and seal hunters, but I tried....and I did give them some idea about why to NOT use some of those pretty words those kids in Cuba had taught me years before....
Even better: I got to give some of 'em [424th Medical Detachment] a basic course in rappelling and abseiling/ ropework, since some would be working from helicopters and others would be in serious better-rope-up mountain country. This was more interesting than average since about a quarter of their personnel were female, and got pretty good at it pretty quick. And I also got some swell photos of their commanding officer hanging upsidedown when he was first getting the hang of things.
FEerrocarriles de GUAtemala- Villa Canales bridge [this'n needs a little work!]
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