Now if they could fill those 40MM rounds with willy pete...... There is a 40m WP smoke/mark WP round. At least there was last time I shot an M79, about 1982.
Around 1979-'80 I worked on a development project for a series of small arms similar in intent to the *Liberator* pistol of WWII [and the Vietnam-era *Deer gun*] meant for arming a conquered or subject population to drain away vast numbers of occupation forces. Among the weapons we looked at were a very low cost and simplified suppressed 9mm SMG with but 7 moving parts [including the trigger mechanism!] a 2-shot over-and-under barrel configuration 40mm grenade launcher with a trigger mechanism formed from sheet metal stampings and the barrels and stock of nylon tubing, and other novelties. [Anti-tank duties were to be handled by the M72 LAW, not the greatest weapon of its type, but sufficiently useful that the Soviets copied it for use by their own folks.]
Among the ammunition meant for the little over-under blooper was a load using magnesium and fine aluminum powder, ignited and dispersed via a blackpowder and zirconium prop charge, that sufficed to both discourage close encounters and illuminate the area forward of the user at night. It also served as a neat incendiary: point the muzzle into a cracked door or broken window, and pull trigger.
Though not fielded, I'm reasonably certain that the end users of the things were meant to be the 10 million members of Lech Walesa's Solidarnosc movement of Poland. In August 1980 Walesa led the Gdansk shipyard strike which gave rise to a wave of strikes over much of the country, ended by the Gdansk Agreement, signed on 31st August, 1980, which gave Polish workers the right to strike and to organise their own independent union.
In 1981 General Wojciech Jaruzelski replaced Edward Gierek as leader of the Communist Party in Poland. In December 1981, Jaruzelski imposed martial law and Solidarnosc was declared an illegal organization. Soon afterwards Walesa and other trade union leaders were arrested and imprisoned.
By that time our designs had been finalized, limited test shot runs produced, and were but waiting for mass production. In '86 Gorbachev chose to back away from interference in Poland and the other Eastern European Soviet client states, and by 1989 Poland held parliamentary elections that emplaced a noncommunist government and in Solidarnosc again became a legal organization. But if it had gone the other way....
Poland was very, very, very close.
Had Jaruzielski not seized power, the Russians would have done. There were no Russian troops in Poland; there were some HQ elements that would have formed, IIRC, the Northwestern Front Forward CP, but there were no Russian combat or logistical troops, unlike East Germany and Czechoslovakia that played host to 22 and 5 division respectively. Jaruzielski knew that if the Russians came, as they did to East Germany in '53, Hungary in '56, and Czechoslovakia in '68, they wouldn't be going. (Russians were in East Germany before '53, but not 22 divisions of the sonofabitches. There were over a quarter million Russians crammed into that little country).
In Saint Augustine, Florida in the 1970s I saw an OSS weapon I've never seen before or since. It was in the private collection of a Class III dealer there who had all kinds of groovy stuff like a working Colt Potato Digger, and yes, he had a Liberator (didn't see a Deer Gun there).
But this weapon was a shotgun that had 3 parts. The barrel was a simple 12 GA tube. The receiver/stock group was a wooden stock, with a receiver that was a slightly larger tube with a base in it containing a mortarish fixed firing pin. You loaded the shotshell into the barrel, then slammed the barrel into the receiver. BANG. There was a comic-strip instruction sheet (as both the Lib. and the Deer Gun had).
The third part of the gun? That was a hardwood dowel to knock the shell out of the barrel!
These were apparently made in massive quantities with a view to arming the Phillipine resistance. When MacArthur got over his high dudgeon over some guys disobeying his orders to surrender -- one gets the impression that the narcissistic old man was unused to being disobeyed -- he realised that he had something good.
One incongruity about the OSS shotgun (I never learnt a proper name for it) was the materials. While the metal was cheap mild steel, seamless tubing and welded sheet, with a half-assed job of parkerizing, the stock was American walnut! (The dowel was oak or something very like it).
Re the M72: it got its bad rap for three reasons. 1. The trigger design makes it inaccurate. And reusing the triggers in the subcaliber device makes it so stiff and inaccurate that the troops completely lose confidence. 2. It is what it is and 66mm shaped charge isn't going to kill any tank made after about 1943, just light tanks, armoured cars, and APCs.
3. They don't (or at least the earliest ones didn't) store well. Contrast the poor performance of the LAW at Lang Vei with the performance of the same weapon at Ben Het. Difference? Ben Het had fresh stocks when they got hit, Lang Vei had LAWs that had been in outdoor storage for 2+ years.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F