The content ranges far beyond the title, but this thread is an excellent read.

http://smith-wessonforum.com/concealed-carry-self-defense/638212-snubby-vietnam.html

That was outstanding

Great thread dirt. Thanks.

Glad you enjoyed it fellas. Mesmerizing. That one doc has had a full life. His documentary photos and accompanying stories are something else. How he dealt with his wife leaving him while he was in the bush was a story in itself.

Tour 1 for me and chopper jockeys were issued S&W .38s with a shoulder holster. One of my classmates got shot down and was ejected from the bird when the hit dirt. Woke up face down with NVA poking him in the ass with bayonets. His hand was by a quirk of fate holding the butt of the pistol. He said later that he preferred death to POW status, so he rolled over, drew his piece and killed his 3 tormentors.

He liked his .38 quite a bit.

I'll bet he did. Incredible.

Can't be. Everyone knows those 130gr FMJs are useless.

That's some good stuff right there! Thank you.

Good writer and fantastic photos.

Great read.

Excellent post, LD

Thanks

Tag

Thanks for the link, L D, been working my way through it this evening.

True. He had to shoot 3 times.

Great link - thanks!

My dad was a young Marine in Korea, went there at 18 yrs old, In a Marine Long Range Recon Unit...

His 1Sgt told him and everyone else to go over to the PX there in Japan and buy a couple of side arms to carry with them in Korea..
Told them a 22 Revolver and a small, but larger caliber...

My dad picked up a 9 shot 22 Revolver and then some sort of 32 Caliber, 5 shot revolver...

1 Sgt had used the 22 Revolver in WW 2, doing a lot of behind enemy lines missions...

he told the troops, he's seen Japanese soldiers get run thru with a K bar, and then shoot a Marine in the back, when the Marine thought he was dead..

A 22 behind the ear, left them on the ground shaking profusely as they died... but they wouldn't shoot any one in the back....
and the 22 didn't make much if any noise to be heard...

he gave me both when I turned 18... he had tears in his eyes and told me he never wanted to see them again...

coming up behind enemy sentries, he'd throw a hand over their mouth, while he shoved the 22 behind their ear and pulled the trigger...
then let them drop.....he was doing this as an 18, 19 and 20 year old Marine Sgt.... the Korean War ended on his 21st birthday... July 27, 1953....

Seafire, great story, thanks for sharing.

Outstanding read.......

Indeed outstanding. The pictures are great. I don't know if it's just my impression but there is a special hue/color/tint in the pictures I only know from Vietnam era pictures.

BTW, has anyone of you been watching Ken Burn's Vietnam War documentation? I haven't yet but I would like to buy it. In Germany I can get a cut/shortend version, "Cut in Germany" or from the UK (same regional code) the complete series. But before I spend 65 Euros I'd like to know it it's worth. The German cut version will never find its way to my home.

Back in the 1960's, a friend of the family married a soldier that was stationed at nearby Ft. Campbell KY. He was sent to Vietnam, and wrote back to his wife and told her to buy him a pistol and send it to him. His wife's father knew my dad was always trading guns, so he asked him to find a pistol for them. Dad found a 38 snubby, the make I do not know, and they sent it to the soldier.

That was all of the story that I knew at the time. Fast forward a number of years, and this guy is out of the army, and he and his wife are attending our church, where he later becomes the pastor. I asked him about the story, and he said what happened was that his platoon had been attacked and overrun, and that the gooks had shot a number of the wounded Americans, and he then decided he wanted a concealable gun.............just in case. Thankfully he never had to use it.

Thanks Greg, great read !

I reckon a few strokes of a file would make them even better.

Great read Greg, while looking at the replies the one that hit home for my timeline 1969 had to do with the .223 vs 7.62 .Our weapons shack not only re-barreled mini guns, gun pods etc but had piles of M16's with feed/jamb issues..The transition frrom M14 wasn't accepted well especially with frontline grunts...The ROK detachment we had for perimeter security all carried M14.s and rarely were checking them in for repairs..

What always amazed me the most with regards to handguns were the numbers of GI's actually toting captured Russian/Chicom 7.62 semi auto loading pistolas..Maybe they preferred them to issue 1911's then just never asked..

Our carry was the Smith model 12 which was better than nothing if we had to fight it out on the ground until the cavalry arrived main reason I chose my 45 .

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I was hoping you'd post up that gun, Woody. I know it's "been around".

Saw some pics eh76 sent of your Winter Wonderland. Lol.

Hope you and fam are doing ok.

Dan I had a friend ( also a Dan) that flew choppers in Viet Nam and hes a gun guy. He wanted to go one better that the Model 10 that was issued and brought his own Model 15...along with 1K rounds of HP. Needed it one day on a hot extraction, hovering the bird just above the stumps so wounded could be loaded on, he saw Charlier emerge from a shell crater with his AK about 25 yards away. Too far forward for the door gunner to swing on, and couldn't move the bird while Charlie drew a bead on him. Million dollar shot coming up! A quick one with the Model 15 landed on Charlies forehead and averted what would have been a VERY bad day.

The pic of the Loach with a mini gun mounted was interesting. I've done some reading on the Loach pilots and from what I've heard, they truly were Cowboys.

Their job was to swoop around in those little helicopters and locate the enemy,...then bring in the bigger stuff. Initially, they weren't intended to carry arms. But that got over with pretty quick. A lot of them had Browning 30s mounted on them. But if you really wanted to be serious you'd stick a mini gun on it.

Seems to me that that main problem with a mini gun on a Loach would be where to put the ammunition. Those things like to eat. Also, it seems to me that you would have to learn to fly against the recoil in a little helicopter like that.

great stuff

I remember you telling that story years ago.

[quote]

I'll bet that VC was thinking, "Hey, my comrades brag about killing a soldier but now I'll be able to brag about killing an entire American helicopter full of running dog capitalist pigs! ha ha ....." BANG!

Lights out.

L.W.

Poobs, your buddy merely demonstrated the point that rotor heads were prone to multitasking. 😁

Minigun recoil on LOH wasn’t difficult to control, and after a few introductory brrrrrts it was not an issue. What most fail to recognize is that a door gunner with a M60 was far more deadly as well as protective. Scouts that had been around awhile mostly preferred gunners over miniguns.

Makes sense.

I've seen mini guns being fired on a couple of occasions at the Knob Creek machine gun shoot. They don't sound like a firearm. They sound like a big block V10 with open headers running at about 5000 rpms.

They have a big night shoot at Knob Creek which is pretty much the grand finale' of the machine gun shoot. They start it off with about a 20 second burst from a mini gun with tracers every 6 rounds or so. It looks like a big hose spewing fire.

It's something to experience.

Some other guys had a twin MG42 anti aircraft set up. A pair of MG42s can put some lead downrange too.

Interesting thread.

Why was the door gunner more effective?

We are all fine just sick of winter and this latest record setting Arctic blast..My 4 ft pile of snow by my driveway was diminished somewhat yesterday via mid 40 temps..

We need a gradual thaw to prevent a repeat of the flood disaster we had a couple years ago..

Geez o Pete. Hope you don't get a repeat, Wood.

-------- I saw a few grunts on and off in CRB that had .38's ---- I was interested in getting one but never got a straight answer from them where I could get one---- Still a little green incountry.
So I found one of these. Had 300 rounds but also got plenty of ammo from my Montagnard buddies

My understanding is that very few loaches had mini-guns, and those that did were pirated by hot shot pilots.

But you wouldn't know anything about that type, would you?

Lot of 'em where hotshots. For a short while. I suspect the survivors learned a couple of things and maybe got a little more thoughtful about how they behaved when wearing a mini on their hip.

Note the pistol on my waist...


And here's an answer to Bristoe's puzzle about where we kept the food trough for the mini-pigs. 2K rounds, good for 10 3 second bursts at 4,000 RPM.

Cool pictures, do you have a picture of the mini rigged with ammo? Interesting that it could process that many rounds that fast and not have a stoppage.

Steve Gardipee was a Loach pilot. Silver Star and three Distinguished Flying Crosses. (scroll to the side to read accounts for each decoration)

https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/84632

He also had a rather interesting experience during the action which resulted in earning his third Distinguished Flying Cross.

They don't get any more rigged than the one in the picture.

We had an option of 2K or 4K RPM with the trigger. They had a propensity to jam more often in the 2K mode so it was seldom used.

FWIW, we tended to put minis on the birds that were getting tired and fly with pilot and observer only whereas the more spirited birds got pilot/gunner/observer. The latter is what I flew for most of my first tour. Towards the end we were short crew and started flying with the mini and a gunner in the back. Lateral fire suppression was the key to escape and evasion more often than not. Also contrary to popular perception, our M60 gunners did not generally just spray and pray. They were inclined to shoot at specific enemy targets and fire 3-6 round bursts. Their box of ammo (~1,500 rds) lasted a whole lot longer than the minigun supply. Another thing the minis interfered with was our penchant for dropping satchel charges on bunkers. We could carry a lot more if we didn't have a mini on board. Little birds made big booms sometimes.

Never had anything compact as that XM27.. The first part of my tour was nurse mating the 3 early static mounted SUU-11 gun pods [ pic below] from shaking themselv'es apart or preventing the loading area to be shelled by hot 7.62 spent empties.. We rotated tail numbers between Pleiku and were lucky enough to fly several retrofitted with MXU-470 modules a welcome breath of fresh air from the ratting gun pods...VNAF inherited all AC47 aircraft after I left in 1970..

tag

Coooool read

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