"The Finger of God".......

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PvtPyle

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Well, thats what the guys have taken to calling it anyway. This week we had the pleasure of shooting the ZU-1. That would be the 14.5 heavy machinegun left behind by the Russians. They usually use them in an anti-aircraft roll, but we like to use them to pepper the hillsides when the bad guys shoot rockets at our good guys. We have four of them on the original ground mount tripods, and one that we call Frankenstien that is the gun in the BPM mount welded to a cut down DShK mount. It is not the most stable thing, but man it rocks!

We mounted two of the ground mounts, Frankie, and a DShK on the back of two LMTVs and went to the range. Knowing that we would be short on worthy targets, we got with the airwingers to sling load a former poop-sucker truck that was in the bone yard out to the range. (That latter turned into a big ole mess -no pun intended- when the big dog got wind of it. His biggest concern was that we did not do an environmental impact study before taking the decontaminated truck out to the range. An EIS in Afghanistan!) So they dropped the truck about 1200m out and we commenced to test firing the weapons. They all worked well, and we got to demill a bunch of ammo. But the best part was the way the rounds tore the heck out of the truck. Loading API, AP, and tracer we got to see what this thing could do. The tradjectory was amazingly flat and the API rounds make a HUGE flash. They claim that the nearly 1000gr round flys out at just under 3300fps, and can engage ground targets out to 2000m. I think that is a bit of an understatement. In the end we had to put the truck out of it's missery with 82lbs of demo.

I will be sending Corriea the pics and hopefully he can get them posted for me. It was a truely amazing experience. Anyone else ever worked with one of these? We have a few bugs that we need to work out so we can get them down range and they dont teach these in the armorers course.
 
Dude, I am in hog heaven over here. I have seen stuff that I thought I would NEVER get to see, let alone shoot. If this were an accompanied deployment we would never come home.

That siad I cant wait to get home! I have lots of pics and video for you guys. How are things with you?
 
Same old same old. Buying a house in West Jordan, though.
Not enough shooting. Barely enough bike riding. Too much work.

keep yer head down,
 
They claim that the nearly 1000gr round flys out at just under 3300fps, and can engage ground targets out to 2000m. I think that is a bit of an understatement. In the end we had to put the truck out of it's missery with 82lbs of demo.
Click to expand...
Did you guys have alcohol, tobacco and chips to go along with the firearms and explosives party?

Kharn
 
Beats my 1911!!!!

The closest I have to something similar was watching a couple of tests using the Vulcan 30mm cannon upon it's arrival in VN

Test#1 : Mount 4 (four) of those on a big 5 ton truck and let it rip, my guess is at 1000 yds or so. The test only lasted about 10 secs as the truck was being pushed on locked tires and was starting to flip over. Everything vibrated for 100 yds or so raising dust. I think that's when they decided that a quad Vaulcan was better suited for a carrier at sea.

Test# 2, A week later, a Vulcan was mounted on a Cobra chopper in place of its Mini-gun. In several bursts, the Cobra was stopped and driven backwards from the recoil. The solid rock waterfall used as a target was trned into a small pile of rubble

I almost miss that kinda stuff PvtPyle. Very very cool! Thanks for sharing.
Just goes to show, the military has great creativity when it comes to blowing up stuff.

BOB

:D
 
Hey Pvt. Pyle! Good to hear from you. Glad to hear you're getting to expriement with all sorts of neat stuff. We've been doing OK here and things haven't changed all that much. Same old stuff as when you left. Hope you and the boys are rotated home soon.
 
The closest I have to something similar was watching a couple of tests using the Vulcan 30mm cannon upon it's arrival in VN
Click to expand...

Uh.. 30mm yeah.. Quad-mount... Cobra chopper... Sure.

The GAU-8 system weighs around 4000 lbs. when loaded.

Here's a rather well known size comparison.

a10arm-3.jpg


I suppose the one mounted in the Cobra was the special "snub nose prototype" slated for the SEELS... It only wieghd 2000 lbs... :D
 
The Cannon you show there AJ is the GAU-8 found on the A-10. The cannon mounted on the Cobra Helocopter is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT 30mm cannon that isn't even campatable with the same ammo (although it is also a single barrel cannon i believe).

I believe that the system BOB was reffering to was the practice of mounting vulcans (20mm?) to cobra's on either Chin Turrets or pylons on the "wings". It was common practice in the VN era. Here is a link that talks about it.

Just for the record, to MY knowledge the GAU-8 has NEVER been mounted to anything but the A10. The Apache uses a DIFFERENT 30mm rotary barreled cannon.

http://world.guns.ru/machine/minigun-e.htm

Right near the top of the page they are talking about it.
 
I just want to know who's local police chief would sign a demo letter for a 30mm cannon. :what:

Kharn
 
I agree that the GAU8 was never put in anything but the A-10 as well. The only reason that's monster is airborne at all was that Fairchild designed the plane from the ground up around the gun... (A design philosiphy I like :D )

But all the refernces I've ever seen for a 30mm cannon that may have been mounted in a Cobra, or any other production helicopter were all strictly single barrel affairs. Such as the experimental XM140 cannon that was mounted in several choppers, and retrofitted to the movable Cobra chin turret. No mention of a "30mm Vulcan" anywhere.

The Apache has it's famous "chain gun" in it's chin turret, but that's also a single barrel design. The "chain" refers to the method of operation of power transfer from it's electric motor and it's feed mechanisim. "Chain gun" is often misidentified as referring to a multi-barrel gatling style gun, and that misuse of the term seems to have been popularized by first person shooter video games, perhaps going all the way back to the great grandpappy of the genera, Wolfenstien 3D.

The distinctive three-barreled gatling that's associated with the Cobra was the 20mm M197 which was a prominent feature on the "modernized" Cobra. There were six-barreled 20mm gatlings in use, but they were all fixed forward on the hardpoints on the stub wings, and not used in the chin turret.

The only 30mm multi-barrel cannon I can find a reference for on a helicopter was a three barrel experimental model for the Bell YAH-63 project and was never persued beyond the prototype stage.
 
Whats up Bro? :D

If it was an accompanied deployment you would never come home? You would probably need to run that past your wife first!

After seeing your last batch of pictures I can see that you have almost reached gunnut nirvana. Are there any weapons out there that you haven't shot yet?
 
Interestingly, South Africa chose the 14.5mm. round in preference to the .50 BMG as the basis for its sniper rifle. The MTW-20 comes in two calibers, and can be converted from one to the other in about a minute: a 20mm. cannon barrel for demolition duty, and a 14.5mm. barrel for anti-personnel long-range sniping. The 14.5mm. has a rather longer effective range than the 20mm.! I've fired one of these rifles, and they're very accurate and easy to use.

For further details, see here.


ntw20_2.jpg
 
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