Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
It's been known to happen. Thinking specifically of the Battle of Long Tan.
My understanding from reading a number of accounts, and actually talking with a couple of the men who were on the ground, was that out of the 9 M60's, most had seized up by the end of it. This was due almost entirely because of the massively high rate of fire required to fend off the thousands (estimated at somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000) of Vietnamese coming in waves at the Company.
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From personal experience I know that you can fire a hell of a lot of rounds through a GPMG but at some point you cross a line of no return and it becomes a "keep firing or come to a complete stop" situation.
I did a Sustained Fire Machine Gun (SFMG) course in 1991 (if I remember the year correctly) and we had a live fire exercise from late afternoon to mid-evening where the guys doing the mortar course were firing Illum for us.
Quick & dirty explanation of SFMG for those not in British Commonwealth countries (because it seems to only be British Commonwealth armies that still use SFMG) - essentially it's a line of machine guns on tripods using mortar sighting systems so as to be used in the same manner as artillery or mortars except that instead of explosive shells, you're filling a grid with 7.62 (or whatever calibre of gun you're using).
For this reason, it's nicknamed poor man's artillery or the infantryman's artillery.
We had a gun line of six guns but because all the guns we had were M60s with at least 25 years of use & abuse on them, all of them except mine broke down due to wear & tear issues. I had just swapped from No1 Gunner to No2 so my No2 could get his time as No1 when two of the other guns went offline and we got the order to fire Double Rapid. Then the other guns started to fail and we were told to keep firing, non-stop.
The other gun crews started delivering their link to us because we were the only gun firing.
We put about 3000 rounds through the gun without the luxury of a barrel change. The barrel was glowing white-orange and the gun continued to function fine, so long as we never stopped firing.
As soon as we did, we broke the gun. My No2 who was pulling the trigger just sat back after the last round and didn't think to pull the bolt back after the last round was gone and the bolt welded itself to the barrel. The receiver had one significant crack just in front of the bolt handle and if I recall, the gas piston was jammed from all the fouling.
Now okay, it was a training exercise but we were using the guns assigned to SFMG Platoons at the time and at the time, these were all well used M60s. If we had deployed as SFMG to East Timor for sake of argument, we could have faced the same situation of guns breaking down while in operational use.
The one benefit we would have had as SFMG, is that the gun line, like arty or mortars is normally located behind the frontline, typically a klick (because SFMG with 7.62 has an indirect fire range of 3000m if I remember correctly - was 25+ years ago so my memory ain't what it used to be!) so immediate risk of death by enemy action isn't as much of a concern as someone on the frontline!
