Noise o' the guns

[Kamicosmos]

First gun was my .44 Mag, and first round fired was without hearing protection at an indoor range. I've never made that mistake since!

My dad (and my grandfathers too) tell me all kinds of war stories.

Dad, while in Vietnam, talks about how the 60 gunner would lite up next to his head. He got a kick out of the BHD scene that was very similar to his experience, 'cept he didn't go deaf. He also talks about the howitzer's firing at the firebases, and the concussions would lift him off the ground. He said that made aiming his M16 pretty hard!

One grandfather was a Sherman tank driver, and he mentioned how loud the tank was just operating it, let alone firing any of it's guns.


It's amazing that combat vets don't have more hearing problems. My dad and grandfathers hearing were all still really good.

 

[Quartus]

I never got very close to one, but I'm told the 106mm recoiless rifle was merciless. Maintenance on the jeeps was a constant battle - they just got shaken apart.


duckfoot, being a cannon cocker type, are you ready to 'fess up on behalf of your brother cannon cockers? That battery opening up just as we passed in front of them wasn't coincidence, was it? Can you say, "target of opportunity"?


Yeah, I knew you could!

 

[cameroneod]

I fired off our Barret with no hearing protection on my first go. I was mostly deaf for about an hour, with ringing for the rest of the day. If anyone ever has the chance to go to a pop up range with a .50, DO IT! Such a blast.

 

[SB1]

My first time

many many years ago. ( I am just starting again with guns ) a bunch of us went shooting upstate on a friends property. We went a secluded field that had hills on three sides so nobody was coming and we kind of had berms around us. Anyhow, we are all shooting. I had a .22 rifle and another had a S&W 357 revo. ANother had a beretta 92fs. Someone had a Ruger mini14. And the guy who we were visiting had a whole assortment. I remember this big rifle he pulls out of his bag. This thing was huge. It was from Daiwoo, that much I remember. He starts cracking off rounds and I swear it took the air away. Deafening.

Don't see this guy much anymore since he got married and moved away. But when all of us get together who were there that day, one of us says Daiwoo and we all start laughing.

OK I looked it up and I found it

It was a Daewoo DR300. prolly 7.62 but I have no way of knowing. I didn't get to fire it but I remember being pretty awed by this rifle so it was probably a good thing.

Another one a friend had was a Calico semiauto rifle/pistol in a .22 COOL.

 

[Abominable No-Man]

I can sympathize real well with you, DorgunR.

The Chinook is a LOUD helipeter
(you're talking TWO Lycoming T55-GA-714 engines pushing over 4000 HP each, along with rotors, ICS/Radio talk/noise, talking APR-39's, AND the fairly regular occurance of dumping about 100 or so rounds of 7.62 out of an M60 when some fedayeen/taliban decides to take a pot shot at you......)

The HGU-56P is the flight helmet we use now, and in the past year or so they've developed a really nifty mod to them. It's a combination of earplug AND earpiece. Plug it into your helmet, stick the things in your ears, and you can actually turn the volume on your ICS box down when you fly. You can still communicate and your ears don't start bleeding after an 8 or 10 hour flight!

ANM

 

[bogie]

When I go to Knob Creek, I usually just wear muffs.

When I'm at a benchrest match, on the line with 60 other folks who are usually loading as hot at they can handle, I wear plugs and muffs.

Mike Walker, the fellow who invented the Remington 700 and the .222 is darn near deaf as a post. He still wears muffs.

 

[shermacman]

Ya gotta love Hollyweird with the way shooting scenes are done. One of my favorites was in The Sopranos when Bad Guy One shoots Bad Guy Two in a men's room. The walls were all tile, the floor was all tile and BG #2 opens up with multiple hits from a 9 mm hand gun...
OUCH!
Must have taken a week for the echo to die down...

 

[Double Maduro]

Was it the old movie, "Freebie and The Bean" that had the two heroes (James Caan and someone else) going into a public toilet to arrest some guy? They put in earplugs and were chewing gum before they went in.

DM

 

[DorGunR]

Abominable No-Man
The HGU-56P is the flight helmet we use now

Yeah, I've got a lot of hours in the Chinook, all back in the 60s.....I believe they were B models........ancient times, huh.
Wish we had that kind of flight helment back then.......when things got hot (flying on Chinook) and all three 60s lit up plus the noise from blades and engines and both Pilot and Co-Pilot and all three gunners and sometimes loadmaster trying to talk (yell) at the same time............ahhh, interesting times. Thanks for posting about this new (to me) helment. Take care my friend.

 

[STW]

You see evidence of movie learnin' elsewhere.
In the last year or so one of those looking at history type shows investigated the fracas at the Little Big Horn, where Custer went calling too early on a Sunday morning.
One thing they looked at was Reno's claim that he was unaware of Custer's bigger problem. As part of the test the program stationed people on Reno hill and fired some guns from Custer's position. Sure enough, they said, Reno could have heard the gun fire. However, those doing the listening did not spend the few hours preceding shooting .45-70 Springfield's at their hosts. They looked solemn, though, as they condemed Reno. :banghead:

(Incidently, I believe Reno is the only veteren of the fight to be buried in the cemetery there that didn't die on that June day.)

 

[jrhead75]

Yep...helicopters and machine guns makes for a noisy combo! I had the good fortune to be instructed on the importance of hearing protection at a young age by my grandfather, a WWI vet who was all but deaf from the experience.

Kinda what made me think of this. Went to see "Underworld" yesterday (good movie), and there's a scene where a car is totally submerged in water and one charachter shoots out the window to get free. Now I don't claim to know much, but if I shot a handgun in a totally enclosed car with no hearing protection, I figure I would at least be deaf for a while, if not permanently.

I'm thinkin' that deafness would be the least of the joker's problems...the concussion would do a number on his internals.

 

[Nightfall]

Plugs AND muffs for me...

 

[MaterDei]

I'm not a flyer but I am a jumper! The sensation of being one instant in a loud as hell helicopter and then 10 seconds later being under a fully deployed canopy floating in the breeze is quite cool , especially at night.

Blue Skies,

MaterDei

 

[MeekandMild]

I used to know an old man who'd been a loader on a 5 inch AAA rifle during the Battle of the Coral Sea and several other invitation-only sporting events hosted by the Imperial Japanese Navy. He could read lips really well, hated to talk to guys with beards.

 

[gun-fucious]

i like the "Lethal Weapon" scenes wherein the one cop leans across the second cop in the cruiser and fires a handgun thru the open side window

huh?