Quote:
Originally Posted by WallShadow
I was under the impression that the longer 40mm grenade casings were of substantially higher power and designed for the automatic grenade launchers. Use by small-arms launchers was ostensibly dangerous and therefore prohibited due to severe recoil forces.
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You're referring to the 40x53 round. That is correct, that's the high velocity round used for automatic grenade launchers like the Mk19. The low velocity rounds used by handheld launchers such as the M79 and M203 is the 40x46.
The problem, as far as I know, is that some new specialized 40x46 ammunition use particular shells that are a little longer than the "standard" and hence it's a bit more difficult to load them into a traditional M203 that has the breach/barrel slide forward only to a certain point in order to load the entire shell(though I've read of some improved variants that allow the breach/barrel to slide forward further, may be wrong on this). The M79's break-open action allows easier loading of rounds of varying length, though as stated one probably shouldn't try it with a 40x53...