Machineguns fire mode.

[leonpoi]

Originally Posted by Targan

After watching that video I watched several more which were similar. Fascinating.

There is a video on you-tube that shows some nut-job shooting a mg, taking off the barrel, cooling it in water, and repeating over and over again - I just can't find it.

[Legbreaker]

While it's definately going to cool the barrel down, immersing it in water is certainly causing damage as I mentioned before.
Chances are it'll still be useable for that battle, but don't count on it after that. It may even screw it up so badly that it cracks when fired (and that's definately something in the BAD THINGS category).

As for sniping, why bother wasting the ammo on poor, hapless cadets, even if they are only blanks. I found waving a handaxe, or, better yet, charging with a SMLE bayonet on the end of my F88 did the trick quite nicely. (Yes, a hundred year old bayonet will fit after judicious application of no more than an allen key)

There's something to be said for cold steel.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

As for sniping, why bother wasting the ammo on poor, hapless cadets, even if they are only blanks. I found waving a handaxe, or, better yet, charging with a SMLE bayonet on the end of my F88 did the trick quite nicely. (Yes, a hundred year old bayonet will fit after judicious application of no more than an allen key)

There's something to be said for cold steel.

Well, it was fun to watch the cadets scatter, freeze, or drop to the ground, heedless of finding any cover or listening to the cadets that were in charge.

Charging them with an axe sounds like it might have been fun -- but I don't think LTC Shimmick would have let us do it...

LTC Shimmick didn't let us throw CS grenades at them either, but that would have been REALLY fun!

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

LTC Shimmick didn't let us throw CS grenades at them either, but that would have been REALLY fun!

Things he did let us use were artillery and grenade simulators, smoke grenades, and hand-launched flares at night.

I remember soon after I went on active duty and we had an overhead flare pop at night without warning. The SOP is to hug the ground fast and don't move. My cheek got impaled on rusty barbed wire, and it was a few days before I even had a medic look at it, though I cleaned it out as best as possible. By the time we got back to garrison, the cut was huge, warm, and festering. A doctor at the hospital had to clean it out. And that's why I have a scar on my cheek to this day. Adds character.

[leonpoi]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

While it's definately going to cool the barrel down, immersing it in water is certainly causing damage as I mentioned before.
Chances are it'll still be useable for that battle, but don't count on it after that. It may even screw it up so badly that it cracks when fired (and that's definately something in the BAD THINGS category).

As for sniping, why bother wasting the ammo on poor, hapless cadets, even if they are only blanks. I found waving a handaxe, or, better yet, charging with a SMLE bayonet on the end of my F88 did the trick quite nicely. (Yes, a hundred year old bayonet will fit after judicious application of no more than an allen key)

There's something to be said for cold steel.

are there really bayonets in a MILES training?

I've got a friend whose army career so far goes:
(Australia) Infantry -> sniper -> (Iraq) -> (Afghanistan) -> Commandos -> (Afghanistan)
when he was still training for the sniper course his group was the opposing force for a bunch of cadets. In one fight he snuck through long grass to pretty close (maybe 50m), popped up and shot, ducked down and moved, popped up and shot - repeat. He took out 16 guys before withdrawing back out of view. He said he could hardly contain himself from laughing because they just had no idea where he was.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by leonpoi

are there really bayonets in a MILES training?

I think Leggie likes to keep it real.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by leonpoi

are there really bayonets in a MILES training?

I've got a friend whose army career so far goes:
(Australia) Infantry -> sniper -> (Iraq) -> (Afghanistan) -> Commandos -> (Afghanistan)
when he was still training for the sniper course his group was the opposing force for a bunch of cadets. In one fight he snuck through long grass to pretty close (maybe 50m), popped up and shot, ducked down and moved, popped up and shot - repeat. He took out 16 guys before withdrawing back out of view. He said he could hardly contain himself from laughing because they just had no idea where he was.

I remember one such exercise. The cadets were to demonstrate their proficiency at crossing a minefield under fire. We had one M-60 atop the hill at the other end of the minefield. The cadets never even got to the minefield...

[Legbreaker]

When I was acting as enemy, one of our favourite "tactics" was to sneak up in the middle of the night with a camera and take a picture from just a few metres away. The flash would blind anyone with their eyes open, and I don't recall a single photo (once developed - this was pre digital cameras) showing the sentries to be awake.

Amazing what the various plattoon sergeants responses were after the photos were posted on the notice boards.



On another "enemy" exercise we had to walk through an ambush site three times before it was initiated. Each time making more and more noise to the point where we were actually banging on anything we could just to wake them up!
Poor trainees not getting enough sleep....

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

When I was acting as enemy, one of our favourite "tactics" was to sneak up in the middle of the night with a camera and take a picture from just a few metres away. The flash would blind anyone with their eyes open, and I don't recall a single photo (once developed - this was pre digital cameras) showing the sentries to be awake.

Sad, pathetic losers. While I was an infantryman I NEVER, not once, fell asleep while on sentry duty. I accept however that on a couple of occassions, after a week or more in the bush and only a few hours of sleep per night, I was pitifully un-alert

[Legbreaker]

All I'll say on that note is that the feed cover of the M60 makes a relatively comfortable pillow on those long, cold night ambushes.



I will add though that I have been so utterly exhausted while on sentry that I was halucinating. Saw vehicles, houses, trees, elephants and more moving about in front of me, but not one single enemy infantryman...
Good thing the expected attack didn't come until about an hour after I was relieved.

[jester]

The SAW makes a good backrest too, and its feedtray also is a decent pillow I must say.

[TiggerCCW UK]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

I will add though that I have been so utterly exhausted while on sentry that I was halucinating. Saw vehicles, houses, trees, elephants and more moving about in front of me, but not one single enemy infantryman...
Good thing the expected attack didn't come until about an hour after I was relieved.

When I was a sprog cadet we were carrying out an ambush towards the end of a week of field excercises. We were positioned in deep ditch beside a road waiting for the enemy (The Fantasian Freedom Fighters that some other Brits on here may recall from excercise?) to bimble along the road. I was part of the cutoff group at one end of the ambush and was so completely exhausted that a leprechaun appearing floating in front of the bush I was hiding in didn't seem at all wierd On a similar excercise in Otterburn training area we had to stop another cadet from blowing the ambush by wandering over to a coke machine that he could see on the far side of the track we were positioned along

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

All I'll say on that note is that the feed cover of the M60 makes a relatively comfortable pillow on those long, cold night ambushes.

My LT caught me doing that on one drill when I was humping both an M-60 and a Dragon, and when we got to the objective, we were ordered into MOPP IV. I flat fell asleep, which was uncharacteristic of me. The LT showed a flash of intelligence and sent me to the medics, where I was diagnosed with the flu and had a fever of 104 degrees F. I think I would have been comfortable on a bed of nails, I was so out of it.

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

When I was acting as enemy, one of our favourite "tactics" was to sneak up in the middle of the night with a camera and take a picture from just a few metres away. The flash would blind anyone with their eyes open, and I don't recall a single photo (once developed - this was pre digital cameras) showing the sentries to be awake.

It's beyond infuriating how unwilling to govern themselves so many soldiers are. It's not just the enlisted men, either. At the MI school, I'd go out as OPFOR when one of the classes of new MI lieutenants was in the field. The only time I failed to walk into the perimeter unchallenged was December '95 when the West Point graduates stayed up all night singing Christmas carols. In the field.

Can't say how many times during training I woke up for my shift more-or-less after it was supposed to start. No one had awakened me. No one was awake. It's a bad feeling when you know the unit has its pants down in the field.

The most serious incident of this sort happened in Iraq. One of our guys, whom we nicknamed the Narcoleptic Ranger, fell asleep behind the machine gun in a watch tower overlooking Checkpoint 12 in the Green Zone. How often this had happened in the past, I can't say. However, a staff sergeant working for the battalion staff sergeant major had been making the rounds to check on the sentries and discovered the Narcoleptic Ranger and his supervisor asleep. The Narcoleptic Ranger was asleep on his feet. He had the gall to express dissatisfaction with receiving an Article 15. I'd have put him in jail, and I actually liked the guy (he had been in my fire team when we started training). I also never would have gone down with him on the gun.

My first line duty NCO said to me that the Rangers were nothing more than what the infantry ought to be. I asked why every unit wasn't more like the Rangers, then. He told me that getting grown men to live up to their commitments and responsibilities is very, very difficult--even in an all-volunteer Army. The years since then have only served to prove him right.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by leonpoi

are there really bayonets in a MILES training?

I wish, but unless the cadets were specifically training in Combatives, things like that were forbidden. But imagine the look on the faces of a college kid when someone charges at them, with a camouflage-painted face, a wild look on his face, and wielding a big axe.

The cadets had an exercise where they had to negotiate with a local. I decided to speak in German (I was pretty good at it at the time), while throwing in a little Korean and Spanish, and a few phrases I learned in Turkey and some words I learned during a training exercise in southern Israel. I loved it when ROTC had Advanced Camp at Bragg!

[Legbreaker]

Ah, there's nothing like screwing with the minds of recruits/cadets/trainees.

[Medic]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Ah, there's nothing like screwing with the minds of recruits/cadets/trainees.

One of the classics, I've used against fellow reservists who have NVG (not very common in the reserve units), is to light up a IR chemlight in some bush a bit further away and then disappear from that location. Shows up pretty well through the NVG, but when you look with the naked eye, nothing. A rather useful distraction...