Posted on 12/05/2011 8:27:27 AM PST by Free Vulcan
Sergeant Winkowski says they didn’t have an ammo carrier to lug the extra bullets and there was a lull when they had to reload. He says they’d seen ammo carriers in movies and decided to gather up some spare parts to build their own. They took an old rucksack frame and stripped it down, welded together a couple of ammo cans and added a speed loading shoot.
“We took it out to the range and gave it some testing and it worked out pretty good for us,” Winkowski says, “And so we took it into combat, and we got into a big huge fight where we again were outnumbered, surrounded, and it worked out great for us. So right then we new we had something pretty special.”
Winkowski grew up in Bell Plaine and McNew in Reinbeck where both did some work on farms. The sergeant says that background led them to build something they could use in their jobs as soldiers. “You know, call it Iowa problem solving or whatever you want to call it, but absolutely that was kind of the drive behind this, we were constantly trying to make things better,” Winkowski said.
“Looks like they’ve been watching Predator...”
I thought that, too. Now if they’d put some thought into a man-portable minigun...
War is rough on clothing.
Not so far as I know, though Barrett has been product-improving both the M240 and the M249, and they may have come up with something along those lines. But what you're really looking for is the Navy Mark 48.
7.62 would make more sense in another way: The belt-chute for that caliber could readily be scavenged from minigun systems; I don't know of any such assembly for the smaller .5.56 round.
You must not be familiar with the XM124 *six-pack.*
That would be the Second Armored Division's Sgt. Curtis Grubb Culin, III, from New Jersey.
He got the Legion of Merit for the *Culin Hedgerow device*- not exactly a dozer blade- and lost a leg to a boobytrapped mine about four months after the Normandy landing. After the war, he went to work for Western Electric/ Bell Laboratories, where for a short period, my granddad was his supervisor.
I believe that it is a rare person in command who has the ability to recognize a good idea coming from persons of far lower rank and then seeing that the idea is brought to fruition.
I had the great privilege of working with one who did and it was the sidewinder, one of the greatest in-house developments of a game-changing idea ever. We have such ideas surfacing still. What is lacking is the gift of those in command to recognize the better, breakthrough ideas. Instead we have the likes of the One and Chu pushing the Solyndras of the world and the bullet trains to bannkruptcy, as Governor Palin has accurately termed them, a sure path to defeat in the present situation.
Better to lay on the hands rather than to lay on the words. Doing both can be effective too.
Which, of course, is what I had in mind.....:^).
Heck, my mother could out-swear (and outshoot) most lumberjacks. Five-foot nothing, elementary school teacher. Cross her at your own risk.
Do you mean the AIM 9-X Sidewinder missile?
Yes
Yes
Thanks, archy. As always, you are a fount of useful and very interesting information.
I'd say that a Mk 48 is what that fellow is carrying.
You can cuss the hell out of machinery without losing your temper. In fact, if you keep your cool, creative cussing can lubricate the brain......
In the original Predator movie, you'll notice that Jesse Ventura never fired the mini-gun and moved at the same time. That's because there was an electrical cable running down his leg inside his pants, to a power supply.
The power supply? 24-28 volts, at 58 amps. Reportedly, they used a pair of truck batteries in the movie.
At 1,000 rounds per minute, the mini-gun exerts about 24 points of continuous force. Crank up the rate of fire, and the force goes up at the same rate. Keep in mind that the MK-48 in the original article fires about 700 rpm. So, you would have to crank up the rate to make the mini-gun worthwhile. Of course, that means you have to carry more ammo.
But, what if someone were to build a completely new mini-gun? I think this is a bit beyond the "shade-tree mechanic", but how about:
Could you get enough ammo into the backpack to boost the rate of fire to something that is more effective than the Mk-48, at least against personnel?
For that matter, what if you replaced the ammo with something like 9mm, .40 S&W, or 10mm? It's a pistol round, but it packs a sufficient punch at short range. Maybe you don't need long range for this weapon, especially in an urban environment.
thankyou for clearing that up for us...
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