Big Guns Open Thread
It’s not that material is short right now. I found a nice WWII restored tank video that I will post tomorrow, for the tankers out there in the Land of Cloistered Souls. But for those of you who are Gun Nutz, I have a few videos about Big Gunnz that you’ll probably like.
The first video is a US Navy training film on how the Big Guns on a battleship are prepped and loaded to fire shells at a target from a distance of up to 20 miles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OmOQs0ziSU
Then there’s this live fire exercise of the Navy getting practice with the MK38 Mod2 25mm gun system. Practice pays off.
There’s also this video: a History of the M1 Garand rifle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pL1D-4dFJ8
Can I assume that you know how to load the Garand properly, or do I have to drop in that instructional video, too?
Anyway, this is an Open Thread where you can natter on about your favorite firearms and how much you’re packing in the ammo belt, and so on. Just don’t make the internet crash. Oh, yeah – if anyone waltzes in here and tries to change the subject, I expect you all to correct such misbehavior without pity.
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", Guns
Great timing, Ex. Our own Poetrooper sent me a link to an All American icon, the Ma Deuce.
American Rifleman Link
He also made an arcane reference to an incident he had with one in Viet-of-the-Nam. Care to xmit a Red Amp 1 on that for the class, Poe?
*grin*
He’d better show up and it had better be good. That’s all I have to say.
Ex
All I have to say is when you push the E bloc down into the receiver to load the M 1, Make sure you pull out your thumb real fast before the bolt hits it. Take it from me. How come their isn’t an M 1 thumb ribbon to wear.????
There is an aftermarket device you can add to an M1 which holds the bolt long enough to avoid M1 thumb. Pretty unobtrusive, installs without tools, removable to return the weapon to original.
Didn’t I just read something (somewhere) about the release of a new model Ma Deuce, that DOESN’T need the Headspace & Timing”?
Yup.
The reason for the adjustability of the M-2 was the high variation in period ammunition. Adjustments were needed.
Ammo now is very consistent, so no need to whip gages around like Bruce Lee with Nunchuks.
I kept a .50 head space and timing gauge as a key ring for a long time.
As for ammo being consistent now, well, I don’t know how much is left in inventory, but I remember doing a alert drill over in Korea back in 95 and they brought up all the ammo from the AHA and handed it out. I saw a crate of .50 that had a manufacture date of 1953 I think, or that might have been one of the smoke pots they issued out as well.
Now that I think about that memory, I think that was only the second and final time I ever saw a smoke pot.
Anything post WW2 is as consistent as needed for fixed barrel guns, which is why we don’t do that adjusting thing on MGs anymore.
I saw that video of the battleship main gun system in Navy ROTC – almost 50 years ago! What struck me then was the big brass ones the guys down in the ammunition and powder handling rooms must have had. Go into combat in a confined space, surrounded by things that go boom in a big way, and have only a little teeny hatchway to get out if things don’t go well? I’d have been a screaming idiot if assigned down there.
Today I am struck by the complex engineering and metallurgy to construct such a system of huge metal parts. I don’t think American industry could build that today.
I watched that whole film and understand a lot better now how just one Japanese bomb dropped on the weather deck of the Arizona at Pearl Harbor could do as much damage as it did. The diagram of the system was very informative.
December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor Hawaii…
The entire USS Arizona Band was in the magazines as their battle stations because blowing a clarinet against an attacking plane wouldn’t work very well.
The entire band was annihilated when the magazines blew up.
The band competition later that year went to the USS Arizona because they had won most of the competitions against other up to that point in time.
Everything I have seen about the attack states that the band was in the magazines and that they were no doubt vaporized when the magazines exploded.
RIP and Godspeed to all of those from the USS Arizona and may they all rest in peace…
Forgotten weapons dot com is a nice place to hang too….
Indeed it is.
Forgotten Weapons Link
a good bookend to Gun Jesus at Forgotten Weapons is the youtube channel C&Rsenal, he’s done videos with them as well.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClq1dvO44aNovUUy0SiSDOQ
It would be better if the guy got a friggin’ haircut….
I just waiting to get a new gun today. TEEEEEEE HEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
Now I’m jumping on the bandwagon *hard* being a gun whore. Now I *GET IT*, how much *fun* it is.
I also took my HQL class last evening. That was a bit of an eye opener.
The guy who taught it was probably a 30/not 40? something that was 8 years Air Force EOD out of Eglin and other places, 2 tours in ‘Stan and very nice and knowledgeable. He too despises PRofMD rules but, hey, it is what it is.
Welcome to the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of the Gun Aficionados Chip!
That ammoseek-dot-com can help you feed your toys, too.
(Waiting on a new shipment of gun-munchies now…)
FIRST!
Much obliged, Ex! Porn is always appreciated in times like this!
I really need to get out and shoot again. Unfortunately ammo is difficult to replace of late, especially here in the SSRCa.
My favorite shotgun scene just starting on GRIT: “R. G. Armstrong’s ’16 thin dimes’ in “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kis”.
Kid
Only because I love you.
ammoseek.com
Try that. It will alert you when any ammo is available.
Yes, the prices are higher than normal everywhere BUT a little more expensive ammo ( these days now) is better than NO ammo.
It would be a lot easier to post new blog entries if you all didn’t decide to pretend “everything is fine, nothing to see here, totally normal” with respect to the Trump administration.
Four years and hardly ever a story about a Trump unless it is a fluff piece or some sort of spin to try to defend something he did that was blatantly hard to ignore.
I am confident that when Biden takes office you all will suddenly find the time to have something to say about the president again. We can expect several stories about how bad he is doing every week.
Holy hell, the guy might even wear a tan suit at a press conference.
I can already see it now; the absolute outrage and righteous indignation you all will feel about him not taking the job seriously because he wore a light colored suit which is too casual for his office.
OK…I’m extremely sorry if anyone is offended for this, but as I say with the HoI, if I’m not offending anyone, I’m not trying hard enough.
Oh and this is obviously, obligatory.
Don’t worry Commie, we won’t lose our collective CHUD minds until Ms Harris displaces Creepy Joe via the 25th.
Wrong thread again.
Why do you have this innate desire to hijack and/or derail a very pleasant thread? Is it lack of parental attention as a child? A traumatic event in your youth? PTS of the D? or are you just an insufferable obnoxious prick that needs constant attention?
I’ll take insufferable obnoxious prick that needs constant attention for $1000.
“PTS of the D?”
Hell SFC D, he never even earned a CAB.
The only cab he will ever get is one he needs a ride in. I’ll take “insufferable obnoxious prick that needs constant attention” for $2000, Ken.
I know it’s a bit early (or late) for this weeks Monday Recipe, but here’s one for cooking seagull.
How to Cook a Sea-Gull.
“The Chinese shot sea-gulls in large numbers, which added to their stock of food. A man was constantly engaged in the bay of San Francisco, California, shooting sea-gulls, which he sold to the Chinese at the rate of 25 cents each.”
Many people say that the flesh of sea-birds is nasty and oily and fishy, and the LACK of recipes suggests that in spite of their noisy numbers, they have been favored only in relative extreme situations; when a ship has been long becalmed or wartime has broaden the definition of game.
Sea Gulls, to Cook.
Take a sharp knife and put in under the skin at the back part of the neck, and carry down to the tail feathers; after which pull off the skin down to the middle of the legs, and next take out the intestines. Leave the birds in salt and water for eight hours, when their fishy taste will be found to be quite gone, and you can either cook them as you would pigeon pie or in any other way.
Soak the damn thing in brandy or really strong wine first, Skyjumper, or it will have the flavor of an outhouse in the summer.
I attended a briefing where I was told, “If you have to, kill a seagull and use it to catch something edible.”
Fuck off, shitbag troll
By all rights I should delete this off-topic comment. FFS, Lars, if you want an article posted, send it to me. I’ll give it the same due consideration I do for everyone else, and I’ll bet I surprise you. I’ll even tell you why it didn’t post, if that is the case.
That, or wait for the WOT or similar, again just like everyone else. I’m not going to tolerate any more of your thread jacks.
Lars is shitting all over another thread… give it a fucking rest and go over the the thread that is covering the issue, Commissar Cocksucker.
You know what scumbag, I for one, and I am sure others, will resist every single thing that senile socialist Biden tries to do in his limited time in office, before they dispose of him and put old Cameltoe Harris in place of him. You know, like you and your liberal asswipe comrades did to the legitimate president.
He is not now, nor will he ever be, legitimate.
Suck it liberal moron.
Had a 25mm fore and aft on my two PBs in Panama back in the day. Fun for target practice!
Not a big gun related thing, but since it’s an open thread – It’s kind of hard to believe that it was 30 years ago that our squadron was waiting for airlift to Saudi Arabia. The weeks leading up to our departure were largely spent on upgrades to our 5 HH-3 helicopters (FLIR, ECM) and a ton of training. Been reminiscing with some other former squadron members the last few days.
Glad you’re still here, Eggs.
Good to be here Ex.
Thank You
Yep. Some of us were already there. And had been for a while. And, yep, been doing a bit or reminiscing as well.
I got to watch a demonstration of the Phalanx while employed
by a certain defense contractor. Naval Arsenal gig.
My job was Army specific but that demonstration shook me.
Toss a worn out quarter in the air and it will find it.
It will find it and kill it with extreme prejudice.
I am surprised Somalia doesn’t have them on pickups.
Yet.
I presume you’re referring to this missile-hunting creature?
Watching those few minutes of my tax dollars at work was chilling.
Yes that is the beast. One is enough but
two of them in that video is quite a show.
And worth every penny.
Great videos Ex…always good to see floating artillery platforms in operation.
Thank you, KoB. Happy you’re here to celebrate your favorite subject matter with the others!
While not quite in the grins-and-giggles category of a Ma Duce, I have fun (at a much lower rate-of-fire) with a Kentucky .50, using 50g Pyrodex under a patched round ball.
Favorite story was when my sons and I were going to do some powder-burning at the back-meadow range. One of ’em had brought a gallon-milk-jug of water and set it up.
Everyone with their modern rifles was trying to get to it before I could load my Kentucky. They were sending a lot of rounds down-range.
I got my cap on the nipple, leveled down, and with a very satisfactory ka-BOOM and puff of smoke, the jug exploded.
snicker
Do it again and send us pictures, Graybeard. Pictures are ALWAYS welcome on these things.
I’ll have to re-create the scene. That was before Airborne Son’s first deployment, a long time ago.
But it ought to be fun.
Airborne Son now has a smoke stick of his own, we may just set up a competition…
From FPS – the 40mm Bofors:
He has more $ than I do.
Having one mounted on the roof might be a bit much, huh?
20mm Oerkilon: