Marines Ditch the M-16, What?

Marine Corps Times ^ | 7/29/2015 | James K Sanborn

[eartrumpet]

And now almost 50 years later that fingernail has still not grown in right.

For goodness sake, try to have a little patience!

[Lurker]

You just have to love the classics.

[MileHi]

I’ll be modestly attired with a minty 1952 K-Target in a same year tooled leather Hunter holster. Perfect for social settings. {:0)

[archy]

For goodness sake, try to have a little patience!

I've been nthinking about doing the other one the same way as a 50th anniversary commeration, so they'll match.

On second thought: NO!

[Squantos]

Agree agree agree ....... :o)

[Squantos]

Yeah that M85 messed me up .... different links . Whose idea was that FUBAR ? We had to seek out help on a sat phone from a EOD team in Germany to go get us some links off a gunnery range. A pallet full of 20mm cans full of german dirt and weeds and rocks showed up on a C130. We used a cement mixer we stole from Red Horse Engineers to “make a brass polisher” per se to clean the M85 links with all that free Saudi sand.

Then we made a ammo linker with a couple of 10x12 board that we made channels in with or K12 saw. Laid out the links and ammo we stripped from M2 resources, then laid another board on top, Eased the tire on the humvee on the board, click click click click..... perfect belts of M85 ammo.

We used M60A3’s with M9 engineering blades modified for clearing submunition off runways and roads ...... Our Ma Duce on the top worked fine yet when I got down to the M85 it was like WTF ?

I’m the best trained tanker in EOD .... one week of basing around Eglin AFB boonies, replaced the track ONCE.. Got issued a length of string and a wrench to adjust the tension on the track, a old Lincoln grease gun, 5 gallon can of grease and a 5 foot tall stack of manuals and enough “do not remove before use tags” to fill a king size mattress. We were in our element !!!

Pre-positioned ships, operated by the Army delivered 4 of em to my 8 man USAF EOD team on the docks in Saudi, Along with 4 M113’s .......:o) What could go wrong ...:o) We had more armor than we could drive.

USAF EOD using M60A3’s ...
US Army using Navy Ships...

Hell of a quick war....LOL !

[Squantos]

I’m betting there are some old 30-40 Krags laying around those mountains too....

[Squantos]

That is true ...:o) I’m guilty !

[MileHi]

I’m betting there are some old 30-40 Krags laying around those mountains too....

Been a while since I've seen one. M1 will have to do.

[archy]

I’m betting there are some old 30-40 Krags laying around those mountains too....

Not too long after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, I had a nice little sideline rebuilding Krag barreled receivers, which I was getting for $1.50 each, into sporter rifles. Ammo was provided after I swapped a couple of cases of .30-40 blanks from the local American Legion, which used '03 Springfields as salute rifles and had received .30-40 blanks by mistake, with M1909 blanks for the Springfield, on a one-for-one direct exchange basis. The guys were even nice enough to let me have their once-fired brass, .30 and .30-40 both.

About 1964-'65 I got some very polite queries from some folks with Miami connections making me a pretty good deal on Krag bolts and trigger guards, they being about the only things getting a little hard to find from the DCM or on the surplus market by then. I jumped at it and had enough components to finish up a couple of thousand more rifles. And it was very casually asked if I thought the Krag action and bolt could be reworked to handle the 7.62 NATO/.308 Winchester action. There's only one locking lug on a Krag bolt, and I thought it wasn't a real good idea. But there's only a single locking lug on the old small ring M93 7mmx57 Mauser carbine, and the Spanish did indeed rework some M93 and M95 carbines as police and reserve rifles when they were just starting to manufacture and issue the CETME autoloading rifle in 7,62 NATO that became the German H&K G3 and HK91.

And yeah, there are indeed old Krags and Spanish Mausers scattered here and there all over the world. But they're better used as what they were and what they are, rather than try to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. It's almost always more work than it's worth.

[archy]

I’m betting there are some old 30-40 Krags laying around those mountains too....

Been a while since I've seen one. M1 will have to do.

The last time I had to loan a rifle to a cop pal, it was at a traffic stop and the cop being a guy I sometimes shot with at the local range, asked if I had my Garand in the truck and if he could borrow it. Yes and yes, though he was carrying an AR15 [a long one- a fairly early Colt SP-1 semiauto] over his shoulder. I expect I could have wandered along with him, but it was chillyish and I didn't have a jacket on. BANG! I heard....and about five seconds later, BANG! again...and definitely not 5,56mm/.223 bangs.

A couple of minutes later he wanders back and returns my rifle. I didn't inquire, but he volunteered: *Some guy in a bobtail semi-tractor hit a buffalo....*

I was going to ask real nicely if he missed with his first shot and needle him a bit, but he wasn't having any fun at all. Personally, I think it would have been kind of interesting to find out how good a job the .223 would have done.

I was also hoping he'd ask to borrow a shovel; I had a little-bitty folding GI entrenching tool to offer, but no such luck. The county highway folks came out with a front-end loader and took care of it.

Yeah, I know it's *bison.* But he said *buffalo.* Yes, sometimes the M1 Garand will *have to do.* And if the shooter behind it holds up his part of the deal, it generally will.

Another guy's pretty M1 Garand *here.

[archy]

Yeah that M85 messed me up .... different links . Whose idea was that FUBAR ?

They weren't that bad, and were nowhere NEAR the piece of junk that the M73 7,62mm co-axial mg was. The lo-high rate of fire [for antiaircraft] was quite okay when you had a 10x scope and a 52-ton bipod to lay the thing with, and the chain-attached retracting handle assembly beat the petunias out of that on the M2 turret type, which used a cable that frequently broke and a belt holder with room for only 50 rounds. I liked the M73, though there's not much wrong with the M2 that close inspection of the parts won't catch.

It was unhandy in a headquarters company being a tank crewdog with three M60A1s with M73s, while all the other HQ CO vehicles with .50s had M2 guns. We could usually hedge a couple of boxes off a line company platoon, but the real joy came when I suggested a mod for the recon platoon M114 tracks that were supposed to mount a 20mm autocannon, but they had major ammo problems, so usually a relatively puny M2 .50 was mounted in its place. But that XM114A1E1 power mount was made to take all that weight...so why not mount a pair of .50s on the thing, and use a chopped-oped 5-gallon gas can for an ammo can [225 rounds instead of 100 in the usual .50 tin box] The M73 nicely fed from either right or left side, and a couple of GI duffel bags became brass catchers. And then it hit me: add a third M73 gun forward of the other two, and dead center in the middle of the mount; the combined three M73s on hi-rate actually put out more metal than the old M55 quad .50 of WWII and Korea. I wrote up my bright idea for our battalion CO, he had the motor maintenance officer build one of the setups to my specs, and HQ tank section *donated* its three M73s to the recon experiment. All the paperwork got submitted, and went exactly nowhere: a couple of years later the M114 was declared obsolete [mogas engine] and got replaced by Diesel-engine M113A1s. But in the meantime, 2/70 HQ tank section got to run M2 .50s for half a year...including through the tank gunnery *table 8* exercises. As usual, we waxed all the other tank outfits in USAREUR.

Below: M114 *scout pig* with an M2 .50 in the power gun mount.

[archy]

You just have to love the classics.

I do. Later this month I go qualify with the local sheriff's department. I've very much threatening to take a M1911A1, which would confound the Glock-equipped deputies enough, but I'm considering taking the 2" barreled S&W M10 that my uncle carried through most of his years as a Secret Service agent, from President Ike [Eisenhower, youngsters; look it up!] to President Ford.

Think I'll wear my *Quantico* blue shirt too. You know what happens to the guys on the away team in the red shirts....

[longtermmemmory]

civilian version? for those who don’t know.

[Vigilantcitizen]

At the old USN gunnery school building located at Great lakes, one block wall of the small arms lab had a hole blown through it because of an unattentive student not paying attention on ma duece day.

Since I got here in 2001, ive always enjoyed your posts. Thank you.

[archy]

Since I got here in 2001, ive always enjoyed your posts. Thank you.

Well, there are some posts of which I wasn't all that fond.

Ft Riley, Kansas was one. But happily, I missed Korea.

[archy]

civilian version? for those who don’t know.

Redshirts is a reference to the *security team* members from the original Star Trek TV series who wore red uniform shirts, and in which the guys on *away teams* with Captain Kirk and/or Mr. Spock frequently would up dead.

They're dead, Jim.

[archy]

At the old USN gunnery school building located at Great lakes, one block wall of the small arms lab had a hole blown through it because of an unattentive student not paying attention on ma duece day.

Glad for somebody that it was the Ma Duece .50 they were teaching in there, and not the 3" Fifty....

[archy]

Think I'll wear my *Quantico* blue shirt too. You know what happens to the guys on the away team in the red shirts....

[Squantos]

I’m gonna be a needing one of those in 3X......please.