[SAMWolf]

Thanks Cholerajoe.

Hard to tell, sounds like more US Military bashing. Were there "friendly fire" incidents? Sure. But I find it really hard to believe that troops were all issued real ammo and not one person caught it. Especially on the MGs, they're linked ammo and blanks are easy to tell from live rounds. Even if they had live, someone should have caught on before the casualties got that high in a training excercise. Besides it'd really be hard to cover something like this up for this long.

[CholeraJoe]

I know from personal experience that neither the M-1 Garand nor the M-14, in full auto, will cycle when firing blanks without a blank adaptor. Firing live ammo with a blank adaptor installed will, with the first shot, split the barrel and turn your Garand or M-14 into a nifty club. I strongly suspect the Browning .30 cal MG works the same. Never was trained on it. The Thompson and "Grease Gun" submachine guns worked on a spring-loaded bolt principle, rather than gas-operated. I've no knowledge whether the recoil of a blank is sufficient to cycle the action of these weapons.

Duh. These were supposedly trained soldiers, not raw recruits. They would know instinctively whether they were using live ammo. I always did and I was just an Air Force puke.