M240 vs. M60

[aerod1]

What are the advantages / disadvantages of the M240 vs. the M60 machine guns? Differences?
Thanks.

 

[Superlite27]

Pro's: Weight of the gun, weight of the ammo, rate of fire.

Possibly length.

Con's: effective range, round damage.

I would think the M249 would be more comparible.

The M-60 was a good gun. The German version it was based on was much better (higher cyclic rate, better barrel shroud that protected better, easier barrel swap), but leave it to engineers to fix something that works well. The SAW isn't really comparible. Since it uses smaller rounds, there's an advantage of wieght in both weapon and ammo. But it comes with disadvantages as well. Less power, shorter effective range.

It would be a better comparison with the infantry version of the M249. The only 249 I've fired was mounted to a vehicle, whereas the M-60 and SAW's I packed were not. I'd choose the SAW there. Much easier to hump. I would think the 249 would be closer in comparison where the only advantage would be in age. Something irrellevant if both firearms were working. I'm not sure of any reliability issues, as the M-60 was very reliable, and the M249 sems to be as well.

 

[joeshmoe12]

The 240 is supposed to be more reliable and easier to take apart and clean. I've never used a 60 but can say that in my experience the 240 is an extremely reliable weapon. We had a choice between the 249, 240, 50, and MK-19 and almost everyone chose a 240. Of course this is in Iraq where the enemy does not have armored vehicles and rarely uses anything other than an AK.

 

[Dan Crocker]

Uh, Superlite...the M249 and the SAW are the same gun.

 

[Acera]

Pro's: Weight of the gun, weight of the ammo, rate of fire.

Possibly length.

Con's: effective range, round damage.

Uh Superlite27,

The M-60 and the M240 shoot exactly the same round. So there is no difference in that area. You have it confused with the M249.

Read this if you are unfamiliar. http://www.fnmfg.com/products/m240fam/


M240 are newer, and most are in better shape.

M240 faster cyclic rate.

Reliability is better.

Adopted by many of our allies.

Better adaptability for mounted uses (coaxial on Bradley).

Currently in production.

etc.

 

[chuckusaret]

Used the M60 as helicopter door gun during several tours in Vietnam. My M60 never failed to fire.

 

[Deanimator]

The M-60 was a good gun. The German version it was based on was much better (higher cyclic rate, better barrel shroud that protected better, easier barrel swap), but leave it to engineers to fix something that works well.

There is no "German version". The M-60 is a mishmash of design features, including the Lewis light machinegun and the German FG-42 paratroop rifle.

I can't stand the damned things. I remember running through a field of tall grass, carrying one during ROTC. The next thing I knew, I had the pistol grip in my right hand and the rest of the gun in my left. The crappy leaf spring that's SUPPOSED to hold the takedown pin in place was constantly allowing the pin to fall out.

It's also the only firearm I've ever used where you HAVE to jerk the trigger, otherwise it's almost guaranteed to jam.

I've never fired an M-240, but by almost all accounts, it's a far better gun. I'd take it, an MG-3(MG-42) or a PKM to it any day.

 

[Nom de Forum]

The M60 was a heavily flawed design from he beginning and adopted for many reasons other than what should have been used in the decision making process.

The M60 has far more Direct Support and General Support maintenance requirements than the M240 due to its parts breakage and misalignment.

Ease of troop use and feeding reliability are far much better with the M240.

When 18B students go to the range to fire weapons from everywhere, at the end of the day it is the Browning 30s and 50s, and the MAG58/M240s which are the most reliable machineguns. A M240 is in many ways just a bigger, heavier, upside down, belt fed Browning Automatic Rife.

For every extra pound of weight the M240 makes you hump you avoid a ton of problems with the M60.

I'll bet the helicopter gunner in Nam needed a soup can to make his M60 feed reliably.

 

[johncantiusgarand]

The M60 is lighter, but it is less robust than the M240. To be fair, I never had an M60 jam with live ammo, but it was notorious among others for doing so. I did hate training with the M60 using blanks. It jammed terribly then, probably because its blank adapter was a poorly designed stamping that clamped onto the front sight. The M240's blank adapter replaces the flash suppressor and is screwed onto the muzzle threads.

The M60 has a rotating bolt which, though that feature is shared by many very reliable weapons, seemed to require more lubrication to operate reliably due to the large surface areas that are sliding against each other. The M240 uses a tilting bolt which is lifted out of its engagement with the receiver by the toggle links attaching it to the bolt carrier and gas piston. It is very much like an upside-down BAR action. There seems to be more of a mechanical advantage there, making it smoother and more reliable. The M240 also has a three-position adjustable gas system that lets you compensate for carbon and copper fouling buildup that would otherwise cause the action to become sluggish unless cleaned.

The biggest M240 advantages: More robust and reliable than the M60. The only disadvantage I know of is that it is slightly heavier.

 

[gripper]

Can right over the feed tray...ah! the memories...
I used the '60 a lot during my service.More often than not, I was a grenadier ( when not a regular 11b10 riflemen/19D10),so SOP was for the guy with the 203 to pair up with th e60 gunner( cover his dead space),act as an AG and heavily cross train. When it worked-fine.BUt I DID get to run a lot of Eastern Bloc stuff-PKMs are probably considered obsolete compared to the 240,but back then I had a serious case of the "Me WANT!" when I found just how bone deep reliable it was compared to the 60.

 

[Jeff White]

The M-60 was a good gun.

You never used one did you? The M60 was the machine gun in Infantry units for most of my career. They suffered from a multitude of design problems including many parts that could be assembled wrong by the soldier.

They never could get the gas system to hold together so the final solution to that problem was to safety wire it closed with aircraft grade safety wire. One of the big problems with that was it is possible to insert the gas piston backwards. When that happens you have a single shot machine gun. It's an easy fix, except with the gas system parts wired together to keep them from vibrating apart it takes a lot of time. All you can do is hope your gunner didn't get the piston in backwards on the spare barrel. Even if it is assembled correctly, you've got a machine gun with one barrel. So you either take the gun out of action every couple hundred rounds to cool the working barrel you have, or you watch it heat up to the point you can see the projectiles as they move down the barrel.

The pistol grip is held on by a spring clip and two pins. The problem with this is it's possible to put the spring clip on upside down and then it will fall off as the gun is banged around while moving through the brush and you lose the pistol grip. I had this happen one time while taking my machine guns to the support by fire position on a night attack. We move into the SBF position and I hear "SGT White, SGT White...I lost pistol grip on my machine gun somewhere back there in the brush."

The receiver is lighter then it needs to be and it stretches, rivets break out of it and you have a NMC gun. Before I retired, you could actually get a receiver as a repair part.

The bipod is overly complicated and easily filled with sand, dirt and other grit which can make it hard to adjust. It's also fragile and easily broken if a gunner hits the ground with it too hard.

The steel in the operating rod is soft and the notch that catches the sear wears making runaway guns a common problem. You have to teach your gunners to jerk the trigger rather then squeeze it like you would shooting a rifle and that helps keep the sear notch from wearing so fast.

We should have dumped the M60 for the M240 15 years before we did.

 

[JWJacobVT]

Hey Jeff I sort of agree, but We should have never bothered with the 249. Should have gotten the HK 21 for Squad Auto Weapon. I carried and used the M60 for about 15 years, loved it over the m16 and then the 249. I like reaching out with the 762. I played with both M60s and 240b in Afghanistan, still liked the m60 for dismounted, yes it had problems but you could fix it with a rock. For mounted I still prefer the M2. Having metioned the HK21 which was in the running years ago for the SAW spot, I would have prefered a m14/BAR over the 556 entrys, but I just prefer the 762 cal. WE had an informal test in AR a few years ago IE hitting popups at 300 to 1500 meters, had 249, m60, m14, guess who won.. the m14.

 

[rcmodel]

I never had an M60 jam with live ammo,

Me neither.

But then again, they were almost new guns in 1968-69-70 when I was using them.

And they were certainly easier to hump all day then a Browning M1919A4!

I still think most of the poor reputation they have now is because they haven't made any new ones in 30 years.

And there was apparently a lack of proper training on how to take them apart and put them back together in later years training programs.

rc

 

[Nom de Forum]

In addition to Jeff's list of defects I would add chronic problems with loose flash suppressors, leaky buffers, malfunctions from misaligned feed pawls, and chipping bolt lugs.

 

[Jeff White]

Me neither.

But then again, they were almost new guns in 1968-69-70 when I was using them.

They were wearing out by 1974 when I started using them.

And there was apparently a lack of proper training on how to take them apart and put them back together in later years training programs.

Proper training isn't the issue. The issue is that if something can be assembled wrong, sooner or later some soldier will. Being in a hurry and fatigue can cause mistakes.

 

[Steve in PA]

I do not remember our unit (E Co 2/6) ever having a problem with the M60.

While my original MOS wasn't 0331, I did cross train as a '31 and even carried the M60 while on patrol in Beirut in early 1983.

I have no experience with the M240 so I can't compare the two but the M60 was a good gun.

 

[lawson4]

The Navy has adopted the MK48. It's 7.62 version of the SAW.

lawson4

 

[jeff-10]

I was in the US Army infantry in the mid to late 90s when we made the transisiton. Big thing back then was that the M240s weighed a few pounds more. Also the M60s so were so old and beat up the belonged in a museum.

 

[Quiet]

IMO...
The US military should have adopted the FN MAG (M240) back in the late-1950s, instead of the M60.

 

[BullfrogKen]

I hated the M-60. We used the E3's by the time I enlisted. Jeff's right about all the problems he highlighted with it.

The others were the thin receiver would often have links fall in it, or fail to eject a piece of brass, or just get any matter of debris inside it. It was so thin you couldn't even get your pinky finger down in to swipe it out.

Down in Cuba the sailors that volunteered to round out our defense force had the old Delta models. We had all three of our 60's go down during a field shoot, with somewhere near 1,000 rounds of ammo left to send downrange. We walked over to their position with the ammo and put it through their gun.

Theirs worked. The E3 variant was just too trimmed down to stay in action. It was just a piss poor design from the beginning, and the redesign produced an even suckier field grade machine gun.


I loved the 60 when we had to hump it. But I loved my Browning .50 cal when I needed something that would actually shoot.

I got out before the 240G was adopted. It was still under evaluation for the infantry, but the tankers had their version of the 240 already and they much preferred that gun to the 60.

 

[Nom de Forum]

The E3 is a classic example of "you can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear".

Perhaps the most important thing about the M60 is not how it compares to the M240, but what the process was in adopting it and other inferior or insufficiently developed weapons. A process that ultimately costs lives and contributes to mission failure. Much of that process is flawed by politics and personal egos and prejudices. The process is better today than half a century ago, but it is still far from being free of the above mentioned characteristics. Anyone having influence in making weapon procurement decisions should be thoroughly scrutinized by independent entities.

 

[Rockwell1]

First let me say that the only time I ever fired a crew served weapon was in BCT during U.S. weapons. So, I'm by no means an expert but I always thought that one of the advantages of the M-240 was supposed to be the ammunition compatability. But I've not even seen that mentioned in this thread. Am I mistaken ?

PS I ETS'd in early 89 ( think pre-kevlar) and I've never seen a M-240

 

[swgunner]

Never had a problem with a 60 from 2002-2005 many many rounds downrange in a saltwater environment. 240 is too heavy and can break some the pintle mounts used shipboard. Navy doent really use 5.56 at sea either.

 

[Jeff White]

Rockwell1,
Both the M60 and M240 use the same 7.62x51 ammunition loaded on disintegrating metal link belts. There is no set capacity.

 

[peyton]

Oh yes I remember the pins and stupid bent spring holding the handle to the receiver. As the unit armorer I always had a stash of those and took them to the field and firing line.