The Armory - Guns, Knives, and Axes

[Smitty-48]

It's amazing what a successful weapon the .50 cal HMG has been. Came into service in 1933 and still going strong. The .50 BMG round will be 100 yo in 2021. One of the best ever. John Browning was one of the great American inventors.

I'm not actually a fan, it's a pretty underwhelming weapon on the battlefields of today, they just kept them around because they were cheap, but with the tech available for crew served now, .50 cal is meh, and it's a huge pain in the ass to haul around dismounted, and as a mounted weapon, it's way underpowed, it's all about defilade now, if I have to use three men to haul it around, it better have fuckin' airburst, given a choice between 40mm GMG and .50 cal, I'm taking the 40 mike-mike, fuck the Ma Duce, that ain't doing much for me, considering the weight.

I'll go GPMG, and/or GMG, but never even bother to take the .50 out of the box. People always talk about it like it is some sort of super weapon which will go through anything, but I was always struck by how little it actually went through, its bark is worse than its bite. Quite frankly, I find 25x137mm to be kind of underwhelming, and that makes 12.7x99mm look like a pop gun.

Sure, .50 cal is 10,000 lb ft or whatever, but most would be suprised how little sand it takes to dissipate that energy, .50 cal vs. sandbags, sandbags win every time. One time we built this bunker, and we had 25mm left over, so they decide that we will "dimantle" the bunker with the chain gun, so we're all excited like oh this things gonna fly apart, but after we shot all the rounds, basically all we would have killed was sandbags, we jumped into the bunker afterwards, and nobody in that bunker would have gotten a scratch, 25mm chain gun; didn't do shit. Oh, they built bunkers? Yeah, OK, bring up the Leopard tanks, because that 25mm Bushmaster ain't gonna get it done.

That's what happened to TF Orion in Zahri Panjawai, they went against the Taliban dug in, with 25mm Bushmasters, and the Taliban just laughed it off, next thing you know, the emails are coming back to Canada; "ZOMG we need tanks!"

You can blast away with a 25mm, fire hundreds of rounds, but all it takes is a few sandbags between you and the enemy, and suddenly you ain't killing shit, meanwhile, one 40x53mm airburst, kills that guy dead, on the first shot. It's all about defilade, if he's in defile, the .50 cal is useless, if he's not in defile, then .338 is more than enough to get the job done and you needn't even have bothered to hump that M2 bitch around.

Same thing with a sniper rifle, you're really going to hump the .50 cal, when you have .338 armor piercing? Why? If .338 AP wont penetrate it, it's probably going to need an anti-armor weapon anyways, so just cut straight to the TOW missile, or even better, call in the 155mm Excaliber PGM, let the taxpayer take care of that shit for yeas.

[C-Mag]

A 7.62 is going to maybe penetrate one sandbag, a .50 cal maybe 2 sandbags. That why we use sandbags to harden fixed positions and sometimes vehicles.

[heydaralon]

How safe were the guns of the American Revolutionary war era? I was reading that many of those muskets were .76 caliber which is pretty awesome. Did they often explode in the user's hand?

[The Conservative]

How safe were the guns of the American Revolutionary war era? I was reading that many of those muskets were .76 caliber which is pretty awesome. Did they often explode in the user's hand?

Rare if any. I have a 50 cal musket. You got to overstuff it pretty well to even put a dent into the barrel. They did discharge accidentally if not swabbed and cleaned properly though.

[C-Mag]

How safe were the guns of the American Revolutionary war era? I was reading that many of those muskets were .76 caliber which is pretty awesome. Did they often explode in the user's hand?

Safety probably relied half manufacture and half operator.
Those guns were made of iron, not steel, some had damascaus barrels with long welds. So the manufacture process and materials definitely would affect the amount of chamber pressure that could be withstood before critical failure.

Second, loading too much powder or loading your rifle multiple times could cause a musket to blow up. Which was not uncommon for Soldiers under fire to make these mistakes. Black Powder generates a chamber pressure of up to maybe 25,000 psi. To give you an idea, I believe a standard 12 gauge generates around 10,000 psi. Modern firearms with smokeless powder, say the 300 win Mag generate around 60,000 psi chamber pressure.

Most modern blackpowder catastrophic failure are due to knuckleheads loading smokeless powder into a black powder rifle.

If you want to 'blow your mind'
Understand that by the time Gas Law mathematics was only theorized into a workable mathematical formula after Smokeless Powder was invented and being used.

Modern firearms were created by trial and error, they had no means to mathematically say a gun wouldn't blow up, and no historical experience to rest on either.

[heydaralon]

How safe were the guns of the American Revolutionary war era? I was reading that many of those muskets were .76 caliber which is pretty awesome. Did they often explode in the user's hand?

Safety probably relied half manufacture and half operator.
Those guns were made of iron, not steel, some had damascaus barrels with long welds. So the manufacture process and materials definitely would affect the amount of chamber pressure that could be withstood before critical failure.

Second, loading too much powder or loading your rifle multiple times could cause a musket to blow up. Which was not uncommon for Soldiers under fire to make these mistakes. Black Powder generates a chamber pressure of up to maybe 25,000 psi. To give you an idea, I believe a standard 12 gauge generates around 10,000 psi. Modern firearms with smokeless powder, say the 300 win Mag generate around 60,000 psi chamber pressure.

Most modern blackpowder catastrophic failure are due to knuckleheads loading smokeless powder into a black powder rifle.

If you want to 'blow your mind'
Understand that by the time Gas Law mathematics was only theorized into a workable mathematical formula after Smokeless Powder was invented and being used.

Modern firearms were created by trial and error, they had no means to mathematically say a gun wouldn't blow up, and no historical experience to rest on either.

That must have been terrifying for the soldiers and farmers who first used the new guns...

[TheReal_ND]

Nah. By the 18th century they had it mostly figured out. Like has been said, black powder burns slow and doesn't create enormous chamber pressure. Muskets were solid as fuck and not a lot of moving parts. What was perhaps more terrifying was the gun not firing at all.

[Smitty-48]

The Continental Army standard was the 1763 Long Land Pattern smoothbore flintlock musket "Brown Bess", not very accurate, but designed to be employed massed at close quarters, and none the less "sturdy and reliable" by the accounts of the day.

The British were mostly issued with the slightly newer 1768 Short Land Pattern "Brown Bess", basically the same gun, with a shorter barrel, which didn't effect the performance, just made it easier to handle.

The weapons were all manufactured to a standardized "Pattern", hence the name, all were made in England, mostly by either the Tower Armories or H.W. Mortimer & Co.

The basic design dated to the 1690's, the "Brown Bess" first issued to the British Army in 1722, suffice to say, a mature and proven platform by 1776.

[C-Mag]

Yep, the Brown Bess was the AR 15 of the day, the AKM of the day was the French Charleville Musket.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleville_musket
There was a good blackmarket of French Muskets to the colonies. Believe it or not, having a bayonet and bayonet lug on your musket was a big deal in the day.

[TheReal_ND]

Interesting how bayonet charges took a while to catch on. At least it seems like it. I never really heard of any before the civil war.