The History Channel

[pecunium]

Is starting to piss me off.

I understand that people will make mistakes, but the number of them which I am seeing is making me question the folks they have doing their fact-checking.

Take, for example, the armament of the Huey helicopters in Viet-nam. They say the arrived in theater with 2 x 30mm machine guns. Not.

The only aircraft we have with a 30mm is the A-10 Warthog, and the recoil from a single 25 rd burst slows it, a lot.

That was bad enough, but they then said, it was quickly upgraded to a pair of 60mm machine guns. They then showed them, and mentioned them by name... the M-60, a .30 caliber machine gun.

Which replaced the M-1 Browning, a different .30 caliber machine gun. The biggest change? The M-60 uses a shorter cartridge.


In the grand scheme of things this is meaningless. Most people don't care enough about things ancient (or modern, for that matter) to know that the context they are being given about whatever bit of infotainment the History Channel is peddling, but on the flip side, if they are this clumsy in the little things, what sorts of mistakes are they making in the bigger things? I know they are victim to the problem of a small number of people giving them "expert" commentary. The American who teaches at Sandhurst has been used to explain everything from the close combat tactics of the Greeks, to the logistical/tactical problems which caused the US Army to not be interested in helicopters.

It seems that his being at Sandhurst is enough "gravitas" to make him an expert on anything which involves an army.

This problem isn't limited to the realm of television history though, we are prone to allow pundits to weigh in, as if they had expertise on things which they aren't expert on, and we do it, often enough, even after they've been shown to be clueless to the point of actually being dangerous.

Comments

[lalouve.livejournal.com]

I recall the documentary which illustrated the sinking of a battleship in 1941, say (not remembering exactly) with the sinking of another battleship in 1943. A minor thing, probably because they didn't have any tape of the first one, but it's still sloppy, and I distrust sloppy.

[happyinmotion.livejournal.com]

Gosh (http://www.warthogpen.com/picture_files/pic106.jpg).

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

And the thing to ponder, each of those barrels only fired less than 300 rds.

Mind you, those are heavy (even the non-DU are tungsten carbide penetrators).

The thing is, to get the velocity they need for those, they aren't using gunpowder, but rather a class 1 high explosive.

And the action is such that none of the recoil energy is diverted, it all goes into the frame of the platform.

TK

[happyinmotion.livejournal.com]

Well, 300 rounds times 300 g powder equals ninety kilos of propellant burnt in each barrel. The metallurgist in me is whimpering.

Still, I'm thinking that stopping the bugger from melting is easier when its in a plane at numerous hundred knots.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Not really.

First, the Warthog (the only place in which that gun is used) only does a couple of hundred knots, and the weapon is in a more enclosd space than it was for that test-bed.

The real reason the wiring doesn't catch fire (as it does in that photo) is that a firing is 25 rds.

Even at that, the plane appears to stop... because it knoks a couple of dozen kts off it's speed.

And the casings fall down like heavy smoke.

TK

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the History Channel has been sucking rocks for a long time as far as I'm concerned. Poor research in all manner of things. The most egregious I've seen recently was someone using Carbon 14 dating techniques to assign an age to a rock. (C14 dating only works if (a) the object was once alive, or (b) the object is primordial, like a meteorite.)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Actually, speaking at a party last night with someone who used to work for them, they told her to put innaccuracies into some of the shows.

Sigh.

TK

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall a combat hellicopter with a rotting barrell (gatling type) gun on it, but I'm not sure what caliber it was

Also - this is what a light googling revealed

http://tri.army.mil/LC/CS/csa/aaarmsys.htm

Perhaps they meant 20MM. A big difference.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Mini-guns were put on Snake versions, and were organic to the Cobra (which got it's name, one of the few non-tribal, from the use of the word snake to describe Huey gunships, as opposed to Slicks and Dustoffs, but I digress).

But miniguns are .30 cal, not 30mm.

The were 20mm on Cobras, and on the Apache, but that's not what they said.

TK

Fact Checking

[iggyspawn.livejournal.com]

The Apache has an M230 30mm chain gun, single barrel.
http://tri.army.mil/LC/CS/csa/aptoc.htm

And not quite in the realm of fact, but my understanding of the term mini-gun has always run towards the concept of a motorized gatling. By that reasoning the three barrel 20mm on the AH-1 Cobra, the 30mm variant on the A-10 and the 20mm Vulcan 20mm the Air Force and Navy (CIWS), use would qualify as mini-gun.

Re: Fact Checking

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Mini-gun is a term of art, used to describe the use of multi-barrel chain guns with .30 cal ammunition.

The weapon on the Apache is a single barrel machine gun, with a moderate rate of fire (600, more or less, with a burst limit of 25 rounds).

It is mounted (as the weapons on Huey Slicks were) on a side door, which is why something as large as that can be used.

The mini-guns which were put onto Huey Snakes (and the Cobra) were six-barrelled, firing at a constant rate of 2,000 rds per minute.

There were variants firing a 40mm grenade launcher, at 220 rd per minute (cyclic). This is a low velocity weapon, with a, relatively, minor recoil. The Mk-19 Grenade Launder is much the same (in rate of fire, and effect on target). It carried either 150, or 300, rds. So the low rate of fire was a benefit (that an not needing all that many at a time; they were only useful against soft targets).

There were a few cases (in Naval helicopters) where a 7.62 minigun was door mounted, but again, the recoil, even at the 2,000 rds per minute rate of fire, isn't that much.

The Cobra was given 1 (or 2) mini-guns, in a chin turret. There were variants with 1(or 2) 40mm grenade launchers, as well as one with one of each. The twin-weapon chin turret (in any configuration) had feed problems, and was short lived.

Side mounts include more grenade launchers, as well as smoke, rockets, and a 20mm cannon (three barred, "chain gun, with a 750 rd per minute rate of fire). The cannon was (so far as I know) never mounted on more than one side, at a time.

TK

Re: Fact Checking

[iggyspawn.livejournal.com]

I'm somewhat confused by your reply, are you refering to the mounting of the M230 on the AH64 Apache as being on a side door? I'm not aware that the Apache has a side door and I'm quite certain the M230 is "chin" mounted. It's not quite as far forward as the AH-1, sitting roughly under the gunner.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/ah-1.htm

Regarding the UH-1 Huey I've seen a few with door mounted mini-gun, and I think I recall seeing the occasional pod/pylon mounted fixed mini-gun.

As for the Cobra, I've never seen one with a six barrel gun, not that I'd rule out the possibility among the many variants.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/ah-1.htm

The idea of replacing the chin mount with a grenade launcher strikes me as highly counterintuitive considering those nice modular pylons....

Regardless of my own nit picking I forgot to mention on last reply that I agree with the point from which I've divert our attention. I'd assume better, given the high cost of production why would they skimp on fact checking. If they can't even catch errors that require 10 seconds to verify online I certainly wouldn't trust anything else they had to offer.

Re: Fact Checking

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I seem to have been unclear.

The Apache has a chin mounted, organic, single barrelled chain gun with a moderate rate of fire, the two systems in place are the M230, as well as the M242 (25mm chain gun, the same system as used in the Bradley and the LAV/Stryker).

The Cobra had a three barrelled 20mm cannon, and mounted, on the stub-wing, a number of systems, to include a the classic M-134 mini-gun.

The issue (with the variations on chin-mounted weapons) was the control element. The chin mounted weapons had a built in aiming device (joystick, and pipper in the HUD). When you put something on the stub-wing, the parralax is a factor, and the interface varied.

This was worked out, but the idea was to have a few versions, for specific roles. As it came to pass, they standardised the load-out so as to make (generally) the controls standard.

The 40mm grenade launcher is an amazing weapon, put half-a-dozen rds on target and you can wipe out a platoon in the open. Because of how they work they could be used in places where the cover was too think to put cannon rounds on target, and they cover area in a way which machine gun fire can't. Even when the canopy is too dense for the rounds to penetrate to the ground, the airbursts would cause inhuries, as well as flush/disperse troops in light cover.

The plan was to have different versions working in concert (much the way one has mixed weapons in a rifle squad) and so be able to provide flexible support, to meet the needs of the troops on the ground.

Have I muddied the waters some more?

TK

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

You can, just about, see a scriptwriter seeing the 30 and 60, but sloppy is sloppy.

But how much of it is The History Channel and how much is it individual production companies? Some of the military history stuff I catch has well-known names involved, people with some history in the study of the subject. But you can avoid the dumb mistakes and still get critical details wrong.

After all, there is a difference between .30 and 7.62mm NATO, not that it's significant in this context.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Well, there were those B-25 Mitchell bomber variant models with the low-velocity 75mm gun in the nose so I guess a 60mm cannon isn't completely unreasonable... just completely ahistorical, which indeed grates when airing on the History Channel.

-- Steve's willing to see the "30mm" as a gaffe on "thirty caliber", though the mistake certainly should've been caught in editing.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I was willing to ascibe it to stupid editing, until the 60mm comment following it, with a picture of the M-60, and its ammo cans being loaded.

TK

[quercus.livejournal.com]

That same 75mm low-recoil force cannon ended up as a light tank gun in the Chaffee at the end of WW2.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I remember a New York Times article about shotguns and the law, which had the word "rifle" in the headline. I'm not exactly a firearms expert, but I'm reasonably sure shotguns don't have rifled barrels.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

There are shotguns with rifled chokes, they are meant to be more accurate when firing slugs.

But it's not common, and I'd never use that word as a generic descriptor.

TK

[moropus.livejournal.com]

Journalism is not what it used to be. when I was in the USAF, dealing with them was my responsibility. I would tell them over and over what the story was, give them a typed copy and a disk, email it to them and they would still make mistakes. I don't know how or why they could make mistakes because I never used jargon or baffling acronyms. I used plain English and as small words as possible.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

My mind boggled for a moment. Surely Spitfires, Hurricanes, Mustangs, Jugs etc carried up to eight 30 calibre machine guns in WW2.

Yes, .303 inch calibre machine guns (in Spits and Hurries certainly) Not 30mm cannon (and a machine gun is not a cannon, and confusing them is like confusing a violin with a guitar), which is an altogether bigger weapon - 4 times the size, with the associated weight, recoil and ammunition differences.

Any news story I have ever seen that I have had any personal knowledge of have been riddled with basic, easily verifiable factual errors.

Would anyone believe Woodstein today?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Some (like the Spitfire Mk. IX) had a pair of Hispano-Suiza 20mm, and 4 x .303.

The Bf. 109 had a single 20mm, through the prop.

The Typhoon had a 4x20mm variant.

US planes tended to have 6-8x.50 cal, though there was an F4UF Corsair variant with 4x20mm.

The other thing which just croggles the mind is these were door mounted, and the gunner was explaining how nice the M-60 was because it had a higher rate of fire 900 rds per minute; cyclic, compared to the Browning M1.

Imagine a 60mm "machine gun" firing 40 rds, at right angles to the birds line of flight.

TK

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

I rant about them all the time, particularly the amount of fact free Bible based programming on that channel.