Small arms ammo ?

[kato13]

weswood 05-28-2008, 09:35 PM I've read that in Vietnam SEALs would have tricked up ammo made up to leave as booby traps for the VC. A cartridge would be taken apart, the powder dumped, a small ampount of plastique explosive loaded into the brass, and the bullet replaced. The SEALs would load the tricked out round about halfway into a magazine, and drop it on a battlefield. When the VC recovered it, and fired the weapon, boom in thier face.


My question is why would the plastique blow up the weapon? It seems to me that it would push the bullet down the barrel like gunpowder. The principle is the same, a fast burning propelant causing expanding gas, gas has nowhere to go but to push the bullet out of the way.

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copeab 05-28-2008, 09:55 PM My question is why would the plastique blow up the weapon? It seems to me that it would push the bullet down the barrel like gunpowder. The principle is the same, a fast burning propelant causing expanding gas, gas has nowhere to go but to push the bullet out of the way.


My guess is that the pressure is too high for the chamber to contain, thus blowing out the chamber.


Brandon

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Grimace 05-28-2008, 09:59 PM Yeah, it would simply be the case of too much propellant. Sure, it would still shoot the round, but it would also burst the barrel due to the sheer explosive force of the material. Plastic explosives have much greater explosive potential than gunpowder, and it can't all just go down the barrel. So....kablooey!

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Targan 05-28-2008, 11:49 PM Cool *puts powder monkey hat on*. Gunpowder, be it modern smokeless powder or black powder, is technically a low explosive. Plastique is a high explosive. Not only do high explosives give you more "bang for your buck" but the shock wave they cause acts quite differently to the gentler pressure wave of a low explosive.

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copeab 05-29-2008, 02:42 AM I was Googling to see if any idiot^E^E^E^genius had tried to make a gun using C-4 to throw the projectile and I came acoss this:


http://www.thegunzone.com/glock/alex.html


The boxed part is slightly on topic.


I want to see the second part tested on Mythbusters.


(Dynamite has been used to put out oil well fires), so theoretically the story *might* be possible)


Brandon

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Raellus 05-29-2008, 06:24 PM For those interested in the historical background related to Wes' question...


In Vietnam, SOG recon teams planted booby-trapped AK and 82mm mortar ammo into NVA weapons caches along the Ho-Chi-Minh trail as part of a black ops program code named "Eldest Son".


The idea was not only to kill and maim NVA troops unwittingly using the rigged ammo but to cast doubts about Soviet and Chicom manufactured ammunition in the minds of North Vietnamese soldiers and commanders.


According to annectdotal evidence, the program was fairly effective. So much of this Eldest Son ammo was covertly circulated that, for their own safety, SOG stopped issuing captured NVA AK ammo and instead had their own AK ammo manufactured in Taiwan, Thailand, and elsewhere. Cool beans.

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sladethesniper 05-29-2008, 07:35 PM Raellus, you are correct. The ammo was manufactured that way, so it wasn't some motivated joes out in the field doing it (not discounting that there were instances of that...), since it was a fairly large scale and successful program.


-STS

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weswood 05-29-2008, 09:16 PM I thought it might be something like a difference in the gas pressure, I just wasn't real sure. I know just about enough about explosives to not want to mess with them (too much )


I think I read the doctored rounds were made in White Sands, NM.

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