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pecuniumOk, the rugburn is poetic license. I spent the weekend (Thurs., to Sat.) working a rifle range in San Luis Obispo. Not only do I not wear an LBE (web gear) every day, the new uniforms have a stiff collar, so I am more than a little chafed.
The range was dull, mostly. I was the armorer, responsible for checking out alleged malfunctions, and clearing jams which aren't fixable with immediate action (those drills the soldier is expected to perform when the weapon doesn't work).
Which makes it a NASCAR sort of job. I get to wait around, until something breaks. I can't do anything else. If I'm acting as a line safety, and someone has a problem, I have to leave that stretch of the line.
Thursday we issued rifles, grabbed some gear from the supply room, climbed on a bus and headed off. Got to Cp. SLO, drew ranges, zeroed the company, and got a string qualified; or not. Seems the new standards meant the grading of the targets was done wrong, and we had to re-shoot those guys on Fri. Since the first part of the rest of the Bn wasn't supposed to arrive until 1300, we had time. We even got to sleep in. So at 0730 we were on the range, and the company was done before noon.
I didn't do as well as I'd like. I injured my shoulder before I went to BCNCOC, and it seems to have moved my unsupported, and kneeling, point of aim. So the zero wasn't accurate for the second 20 rounds. At least the rain had ended, so I wasn't wet, merely chill.
I didn't, however, bolo. Had it been on the pop-up, not paper, range, I'd have managed to shoot at least five more hits, because there would have been visual feedback. C'est la guerre.
There was a fun jam. A bolt under-ride. The cartridge managed pop out of the magazine (technically a clip, but the nomenclature is changing; and the Army/Marines/Air Force, insist it's a magazine. For the M-14 it is, for the M-16 family, it isn't), and got out of line, so that the base was jammed between the top of the receiver, and the bolt-face.
It's not dangerous (more on danger later; there were some moments of excitment, which might have bordered on fear, if I wasn't working hard on analysing what was going on), just a nuisance. Because the upper-receiver isn't designed to have a casing above the bolt, there's not much room. A bit of brute force, to drag the whole thing back to where a tool (Gerber Multi-tool, don't work a range without one) can be used to pry it loose.
Brass doesn't spark, so even in the worst of outcomes (the case splits, and powder spills all over the lower receiver/into the magazine) not much is going to happen.
Saturday was more of the same, but we were running the range for another unit (we were supposed to be at Cp. Roberts, but other units needed it more than we did, so we convinced this other unit to let us have the range, in exchange for our running it, which meant they didn't have to provide safeties, draw the range, get the training, find an armorer, combat life saver, etc. It saved them man-days of work. Since they do nice things for us... month in, month out, it seemed a reasonable trade).
The weather was better (Fri. had been cold, drizzle [to a level that seemed non-existent to me, a veteran of Ft. Lewis, where falling mist is, "dry" weather] the usual breeze/wind of the central coast, and occasional sun. It was a beautiful day, if one wasn't standing still, running a cleaning rod down the barrel of every rifle that went on, or off the range; waiting for something to go wrong).
When Q called me over, saying a double-feed (where two rounds try to enter the chamber at once. It's usually caused by bent lips on the magazine. As the bolt comes to full-recoil a round pops out; resting above the magazine. When the bolt comes forward, it strips a round out of the clip, and they are both forced into the chamber), had led to a failure to extract (the cartridge fails to come out of the chamber).
I pulled the charging handle, and it moved back maybe a quarter inch. So I moved down to the empty part of the range. This is where thinking about things could lead to being scared.
The trigger had been pulled. Nothing had happened. Q insisted there was a live round in the chamber.
When a round fails to fire, there's a drill.
1: Hammer falls, nothing happens.
1.1: Freeze
1.2 Wait.
2. If possible, drop the hammer on the cartridge again.
3: If the cartridge fails to go off, repeat part 1.
4: Remove the cartridge.
Removing the cartridge is semi-dangerous. If it's not contained, the powder will force the bullet free, and then just vent into space. It's loud, and burns/cuts, and perhaps a broken finger are about the worst that can happen. If, however, the round goes off when it's half out of the chamber, bits of brass can fly away with a fair bit of speed. It's why one wears eye-protection. The blast can also rip away flesh, but it's not common.
But the M-16 can't be cocked, onto a loaded chamber. The act of cocking it extracts the round. There is a way to do it, but it's not as safe as I'd like.
The weapon can be opened, like a break action shotgun, and the hammer moved down. While that's going on, there's nothing keeping the bolt carrier (about 1 lb of milled steel) from leaving the weapon. If the round goes off... that piece of steel is going to fly backwards, at a fair rate of speed (For every action there is an equal, and opposite, reaction: 67 grain bullet doing 3,000 fps = 7,000 grain bolt carrier, you do the math).
So I cocked it, aimed at a convenient piece of dirt, and fired. Nothing happened.
I waited, and did it again.
At this point I was pretty sure the round in the chamber had been fired. My best guess was something kept the cartridge from clearing the chamber, and it was returned to battery. When that happened, a new round tried to feed.
Had the soldier, or Q, pulled the proper immdiate action, it would never have come to my being involved.
Since they didn't, and assumed it was a normal double-feed, they put an expended (and expanded) case into the chamber, and it froze.
Having decided all of this, I still had a problem. The cartridge was still jammed in the chamber. I laid the rifle down on a piece of wood (the lane marker, firmly attached to the ground), and slammed it with the heel of my hand. pop I have an empty cartridge.
The rifle was, apart from some lube slopping around the ejection port, bone dry. So I lube it, and gave it back. It did the same trick about 30 rounds later. Proper sports prevented it from jamming again.
Later in the afternoon, that was the real excitement.
Rifles are very simple things. They may be put together in complicated ways (the M-16 has some of that), but the basic function is straightforward. Despite this lots of shooters blame the weapon for missing the target.
Usually it's operator error, even when the rifle is missing the target. The last is usually because some aspect of the sights have been grossly misaligned.
But I got called over because a rifle was reportly firing more than one round at a time, even though it was impossible to place it on burst.
I had it left behind when we cleared the range, and loaded up 20 rounds.
Aimed at a chunk of dirt.
Pow.
Pow.
Pow,pow.
Pow
Pow..pow.
p-pow
About one time in three it went off more than once. Worse, it didn't do this with regularity, nor yet with any clear time lag between shots.
The only consistent thing was that it didn't happen if I was quick off the trigger. If I held the trigger back (which is proper practice) it might go off. It didn't ever go off three times, but....
When a semi-automatic weapon is fired the sear (the binding faces on the hammer and trigger; to be oversimple) is engaged by a spur. The spur arrests the bolt, preventing the rifle from going off again) That spur was worn.
I told the sodier the weapon was deadlined; and wrote up a note to hand her supply sergeant (or armorer, if they have one; most units don't). Then Joe came up and told me the rifle was known to be deadlined when it was issued.
To say I was annoyed to find this out... understates the case.
There were at least four failures here.
1: The rifle wasn't tagged.
2: It was stored with good weapons (this isn't, ispso facto a failure... I keep deadlined weapons in the rack with good ones... but the are tagged; a big read tag, right on the front sight assembly).
3) When the weapons were being issued no one mentioned the deadline.
4: When the weapon was issued out, no one reclaimed it.
5: No one told the soldier the weapon was unsafe.
The spur might have failed completly. At that point the weapon could have runaway, i.e. fired until it was out of ammo.
It probably wouldn't, releasing the trigger ought to have caused the sear proper to engage; but the sear on the M-16A2 has some defects in design (mostly related to the burst function, which has a stepped sear; which clicks across three steps. If the trigger is released before the burst is completed, the spring which holds the sear closed is held by a reduced pressure. It can be as little as 2 lbs.).
If I were to make that many failures (esp. the last), I'd count myself lucky to only lose a 1/2 months pay, and keep my rank. It's gross negligence; and it put the lives of every soldier on the range at risk.
But we got 93 percent of the Bn qualified, as well as about 2/3rds of the other unit, and no one got hurt. There was one heat casualty (minor dehydration. Claimed to have been drinking all day. I believe that, but said troop was also drinking all night, draw your own conclusion.
The range was dull, mostly. I was the armorer, responsible for checking out alleged malfunctions, and clearing jams which aren't fixable with immediate action (those drills the soldier is expected to perform when the weapon doesn't work).
Which makes it a NASCAR sort of job. I get to wait around, until something breaks. I can't do anything else. If I'm acting as a line safety, and someone has a problem, I have to leave that stretch of the line.
Thursday we issued rifles, grabbed some gear from the supply room, climbed on a bus and headed off. Got to Cp. SLO, drew ranges, zeroed the company, and got a string qualified; or not. Seems the new standards meant the grading of the targets was done wrong, and we had to re-shoot those guys on Fri. Since the first part of the rest of the Bn wasn't supposed to arrive until 1300, we had time. We even got to sleep in. So at 0730 we were on the range, and the company was done before noon.
I didn't do as well as I'd like. I injured my shoulder before I went to BCNCOC, and it seems to have moved my unsupported, and kneeling, point of aim. So the zero wasn't accurate for the second 20 rounds. At least the rain had ended, so I wasn't wet, merely chill.
I didn't, however, bolo. Had it been on the pop-up, not paper, range, I'd have managed to shoot at least five more hits, because there would have been visual feedback. C'est la guerre.
There was a fun jam. A bolt under-ride. The cartridge managed pop out of the magazine (technically a clip, but the nomenclature is changing; and the Army/Marines/Air Force, insist it's a magazine. For the M-14 it is, for the M-16 family, it isn't), and got out of line, so that the base was jammed between the top of the receiver, and the bolt-face.
It's not dangerous (more on danger later; there were some moments of excitment, which might have bordered on fear, if I wasn't working hard on analysing what was going on), just a nuisance. Because the upper-receiver isn't designed to have a casing above the bolt, there's not much room. A bit of brute force, to drag the whole thing back to where a tool (Gerber Multi-tool, don't work a range without one) can be used to pry it loose.
Brass doesn't spark, so even in the worst of outcomes (the case splits, and powder spills all over the lower receiver/into the magazine) not much is going to happen.
Saturday was more of the same, but we were running the range for another unit (we were supposed to be at Cp. Roberts, but other units needed it more than we did, so we convinced this other unit to let us have the range, in exchange for our running it, which meant they didn't have to provide safeties, draw the range, get the training, find an armorer, combat life saver, etc. It saved them man-days of work. Since they do nice things for us... month in, month out, it seemed a reasonable trade).
The weather was better (Fri. had been cold, drizzle [to a level that seemed non-existent to me, a veteran of Ft. Lewis, where falling mist is, "dry" weather] the usual breeze/wind of the central coast, and occasional sun. It was a beautiful day, if one wasn't standing still, running a cleaning rod down the barrel of every rifle that went on, or off the range; waiting for something to go wrong).
When Q called me over, saying a double-feed (where two rounds try to enter the chamber at once. It's usually caused by bent lips on the magazine. As the bolt comes to full-recoil a round pops out; resting above the magazine. When the bolt comes forward, it strips a round out of the clip, and they are both forced into the chamber), had led to a failure to extract (the cartridge fails to come out of the chamber).
I pulled the charging handle, and it moved back maybe a quarter inch. So I moved down to the empty part of the range. This is where thinking about things could lead to being scared.
The trigger had been pulled. Nothing had happened. Q insisted there was a live round in the chamber.
When a round fails to fire, there's a drill.
1: Hammer falls, nothing happens.
1.1: Freeze
1.2 Wait.
2. If possible, drop the hammer on the cartridge again.
3: If the cartridge fails to go off, repeat part 1.
4: Remove the cartridge.
Removing the cartridge is semi-dangerous. If it's not contained, the powder will force the bullet free, and then just vent into space. It's loud, and burns/cuts, and perhaps a broken finger are about the worst that can happen. If, however, the round goes off when it's half out of the chamber, bits of brass can fly away with a fair bit of speed. It's why one wears eye-protection. The blast can also rip away flesh, but it's not common.
But the M-16 can't be cocked, onto a loaded chamber. The act of cocking it extracts the round. There is a way to do it, but it's not as safe as I'd like.
The weapon can be opened, like a break action shotgun, and the hammer moved down. While that's going on, there's nothing keeping the bolt carrier (about 1 lb of milled steel) from leaving the weapon. If the round goes off... that piece of steel is going to fly backwards, at a fair rate of speed (For every action there is an equal, and opposite, reaction: 67 grain bullet doing 3,000 fps = 7,000 grain bolt carrier, you do the math).
So I cocked it, aimed at a convenient piece of dirt, and fired. Nothing happened.
I waited, and did it again.
At this point I was pretty sure the round in the chamber had been fired. My best guess was something kept the cartridge from clearing the chamber, and it was returned to battery. When that happened, a new round tried to feed.
Had the soldier, or Q, pulled the proper immdiate action, it would never have come to my being involved.
Since they didn't, and assumed it was a normal double-feed, they put an expended (and expanded) case into the chamber, and it froze.
Having decided all of this, I still had a problem. The cartridge was still jammed in the chamber. I laid the rifle down on a piece of wood (the lane marker, firmly attached to the ground), and slammed it with the heel of my hand. pop I have an empty cartridge.
The rifle was, apart from some lube slopping around the ejection port, bone dry. So I lube it, and gave it back. It did the same trick about 30 rounds later. Proper sports prevented it from jamming again.
Later in the afternoon, that was the real excitement.
Rifles are very simple things. They may be put together in complicated ways (the M-16 has some of that), but the basic function is straightforward. Despite this lots of shooters blame the weapon for missing the target.
Usually it's operator error, even when the rifle is missing the target. The last is usually because some aspect of the sights have been grossly misaligned.
But I got called over because a rifle was reportly firing more than one round at a time, even though it was impossible to place it on burst.
I had it left behind when we cleared the range, and loaded up 20 rounds.
Aimed at a chunk of dirt.
Pow.
Pow.
Pow,pow.
Pow
Pow..pow.
p-pow
About one time in three it went off more than once. Worse, it didn't do this with regularity, nor yet with any clear time lag between shots.
The only consistent thing was that it didn't happen if I was quick off the trigger. If I held the trigger back (which is proper practice) it might go off. It didn't ever go off three times, but....
When a semi-automatic weapon is fired the sear (the binding faces on the hammer and trigger; to be oversimple) is engaged by a spur. The spur arrests the bolt, preventing the rifle from going off again) That spur was worn.
I told the sodier the weapon was deadlined; and wrote up a note to hand her supply sergeant (or armorer, if they have one; most units don't). Then Joe came up and told me the rifle was known to be deadlined when it was issued.
To say I was annoyed to find this out... understates the case.
There were at least four failures here.
1: The rifle wasn't tagged.
2: It was stored with good weapons (this isn't, ispso facto a failure... I keep deadlined weapons in the rack with good ones... but the are tagged; a big read tag, right on the front sight assembly).
3) When the weapons were being issued no one mentioned the deadline.
4: When the weapon was issued out, no one reclaimed it.
5: No one told the soldier the weapon was unsafe.
The spur might have failed completly. At that point the weapon could have runaway, i.e. fired until it was out of ammo.
It probably wouldn't, releasing the trigger ought to have caused the sear proper to engage; but the sear on the M-16A2 has some defects in design (mostly related to the burst function, which has a stepped sear; which clicks across three steps. If the trigger is released before the burst is completed, the spring which holds the sear closed is held by a reduced pressure. It can be as little as 2 lbs.).
If I were to make that many failures (esp. the last), I'd count myself lucky to only lose a 1/2 months pay, and keep my rank. It's gross negligence; and it put the lives of every soldier on the range at risk.
But we got 93 percent of the Bn qualified, as well as about 2/3rds of the other unit, and no one got hurt. There was one heat casualty (minor dehydration. Claimed to have been drinking all day. I believe that, but said troop was also drinking all night, draw your own conclusion.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 08:04 am (UTC)The Bren has a magazine.
But that is the British Army.
(And what some people would call a clip, originally for loading the SMLE-family, is named a "charger".)
no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 08:07 am (UTC)The Mauser, the M-14 and the SMLE have cut outs, designed to make the stripper clip stay in line when the magazine is being loaded.
TK