four of the M85s on fastfire
What would the effective range be?
What would the effective range be?***
About the same as any of the .50 x 99 caliber M2 .50s, around 3KM, though during WWII and Korea, M16 quad fifties were sometimes used for indirect H&I fires at night using the M1 gunner's quadrant, particularly around bridges and mountain pass chokepoints. Any tracers in the usual 1-5 mix burned out at the usual 1200-1500 meter distance, and all that the recipients noticed was a slight whirring in the air, and maybe the first few impacts of nearby incoming rounds hitting the ground before one with their name on it arrived.
But for direct fire, around 2.5-3 KM, again with tracer burnout at around 1200 meters. In tank gunnery school we were taught that 9 hits of .50 on a softskinned truck [deuce-and a half or thereabouts] was considered to be sufficiently likely to result in ruining something vital and resulting in a mobility kill.