NA - For all the shooters here

[Kenny Phillips]

Lightweight...

Actually, I was only noting the number that shouldn't raise eyebrows. I haven't a clue how much I have.

 

[Sac Arrow]

I remember the armor folks at summer camp not being impressed with the folks who thought a 106 mm recoilless rifle was great. They claimed they could see it fired at them, turn the turret, fire a HEAT round and take out the recoilless rifle before its round hit them. I don't know, the experiment sounded a bit nasty to me. Given how few M-1 Abrams tanks have been lost due to enemy action, my money would probably be on the tankers. Now, there are those who would go along with Bill Mauldin's strip, "Up Front" from Stars and Stripes during WWII. Willie and Joe are digging a foxhole as a Sherman goes by. One says to the other, "I'd ruther dig. A moving foxhole tends to attract the eye!"

I don't know how well the Abrams would fare today. The only real test of the Abrams was in the Gulf war, where they faced mostly T54/55's and some T72's. The Abrams had a greater range. They could engage Iraqi tanks and score hits while the Iraqi's rounds were falling short. The newer Russian tanks are more closely matched in performance.

The 106mm RCLR's were before my time, but the guys that swore by them claimed they were great as an antipersonnel weapon using flechette rounds.

 

[Sac Arrow]

Sadly, the LAW training we did was with a subcaliber rocket. The "real" LAW was too expensive to bust out 40+ for each platoon for training, so they had a training rocket that was loaded into an empty LAW tube and fired. Similar noise, trajectory, etc. but a whole lot cheaper. They were able to re-use the tubes indefinitely, from what I understood.

I was really hoping we'd get to fire the M79 and/or M203 also, but no joy there. Only the guys who went on to a combat arm AIT were able to do that. My compensation was getting classified briefings on Soviet equipment and order of battle stuff. Well, that and co-ed barracks.

I was able to shoot a lot of cool stuff including various AK's and SMG's. We also got to qualify for the German army marksmanship badge. They did things a little differently. You had to qualify with a rifle, pistol and machine gun for a single qualification badge. The MG1 (rebranded MG42 of WWII vintage was a real handful to control, given a cyclic rate of fire of over 1,000 rpm vs. the M60's 550 rpm. More accurately we got to try to qualify for the badge. Since we didn't get the benefit of range familiarization or even sighting shots, getting a properly sighted rifle was the luck of the draw. Mine was several inches off and I was a couple rounds short of getting their equivalent of an expert badge.

I didn't have a lot of interaction with MI, but the special agent in a suit would show up to give a briefing to the entire company on spotting and reporting Soviet liaison missions, and how to avoid getting caught up in East German spy ring traps. When I was stationed stateside, I worked in Battalion HQ in an ops sergeant slot working S2 and S3. It was kind of cool how the intel guys would be able to piece together which part of the advancing Soviet battle formation was being reported in a field exercise, and do a map overlay of the rest of the unit accurate enough to call for fire on it.

 

[sferguson524]

I'm not saying, either, but a while back SWMBO asked me, "How many guns do you need, anyway?" and I replied, "One of each. I'm collecting the entire set."

That conversation happens around here, usually around the time I acquire a new gun/gun part..

 

[Ghery]

The 106mm RCLR's were before my time, but the guys that swore by them claimed they were great as an antipersonnel weapon using flechette rounds.

No doubt about the flechette rounds. The Marines had the Ontos, which was a lightly armored vehicle packing 6 of them. The downside was that you had to be outside the vehicle to re-load them. Not the greatest deal if you were in a fight.