Anarchist Bomb?

[Sgt_Tropo]

I used the M79 and the M16 in 'Nam. You asked about how does them79 operator get experience. the same as the rifleman, you practise, practise, practise. Actually, the M79 was pretty easy to get used to.
The M79 is a single-shot, breech-loaded unit. This means that you have to "break" open the piece after every shot, like a shotgun, remove the spent cartridge shell by hand, manually load another round, close the breech, shoulder the weapon, aim and fire. It's pretty time consuming, but I've heard of other M-79er's that could get three rounds in the air before the first one hit. I could only manage two, but then wasn't shooting the max distance either.
What does HE stand for ? It stands for High Explosive. Although I've never heard of "low" explosive ! Anyway, there are several different types of rounds for the M-79. There's HE, and White Phospherous (known as Willey Pete), flare rounds (good for illumination or starting fires!) and the every popular anti-personnel round (AP), or shotgun round.
The anti-personel round was, in my opinion rather weak. THe reason being that you only have 12 or 14 lead pellets (double 00+ size) being pushed out of the barrel. since the barrel is approximately 2" in diameter, you can see how a lot of muzzle pressure is lost. I used a "special" load in my AP rounds to help overcome the short-comings.
I would pry the cover off the center of the AP rouns and dump out the lead pellets. Then I would take the steel shot from a claymore mine (smaller, but more deadly) and fill the center hole and replace the cap. Next, I would place the steel shot in the expansion slots around the outter parimeter and drop hot wax over these to hold them in place. This wa an extremely effective AP round, but required a through cleaning of the weapon after firing several of these, before firing any of the "solid" projectiles again.
The improvement of the AP round was awesome ! The normal AP round was only good for VERY close engagements and the lead pellets were easily defected by folage, or stopped altogether by minimal cover. The steel shot modified rounds I fired were good for more than twice the range and the killing / stopping power was almost as good as the 12 gauge shotguns some guys carried for close support. Of course, within 25 feet to 25 yards (close engagement) either one would put a huge hole in a body. The main difference was that my AP round dispersed a little wider and therefore had a broader killing swath.
The very sound difference between a standard AP round and mine was also quite noticable. The standard round had more of a hollow "pop" sound, as opposed to mine sounding more like a old M-80 (cherry bomb) going off.
The first time I fired one of these on the practise range, EVERYBODY stopped firing ! I looked around to see if someone was going to chew me out, but then when I sawn that the target was completely destroyed, I started laughing out loud. I must have made over a hundred of those rounds. Seems like everyone with an M79 wanted some and wanted to know how I made them. I guess it was a good thing we didn't have any Geneva convention observers around !!
As far as carrying rounds, I carried two 12 round bandoliers. I also had a sidearm with 5 clips total and the M16 with 10 clips. The typical "stroll through the woods" was only a day or two at the most for us, so we could get resupplied or extracted pretty quick. Units that were operating on longer range patrols probably had extra rounds being carried by one or two other squad members. I would have liked to have had one of the newer "over-under" M16/M79 combos. It would have been a lot easier to carry in the bush and I would have felt a lot more secure having the M16 fire power immediately available with the M79 explosive power.

[sfga6970]

http://www.diddybop.demon.co.uk/blooper.htm

[sfga6970]

Sgt_Tropo thanks for answering for me. To add to what you said, everyone on our recon teams carried extra rounds for the 79, just like we all carried extra radio batteries. The "thump" sounded good in a firefight.

This site gives some technical info about the M79.

http://www.diddybop.demon.co.uk/blooper.htm

[BLUEHAWK]

Guys -
Thanks again...
So, the Coehorn mortar has a subchamber which gets powder itself, the fuse is lit on the grenade and dropped into it, and then the chamber is lit and that fires the grenade out?

I am still unclear how, now with 3 types of rounds for the old M-79, they get fired out. I guess each round type is struck with some kind of firing pin, like a regular rifle?

Tropo, how in heaven did you not kill yourself taking pellets out of a Claymore mine!!! I thought they go off if you just touch them?

And, I am guessing, if one guy carries up to 24 M-79 rounds they must not be all that heavy or large? Its hard to tell the scale of the weapon, and so the scale of the rounds.

Does the Willey Pete explode in the air sometimes or only on impact?

Did the gunner also carry other firearms, sidearms or something, or were you the designated large shell operators? In a firefight if you ran out of ammo and supply what did you do? Throw rocks or something :-) The guys bringing you ammo supply, was the box very heavy for just one person to run around with all over the place?

Also, I think I asked, but is a mortar man thought of as artillery or infantry?

This is absolutely fascinating...

[Sgt_Tropo]

You questions,
"I am still unclear how, now with 3 types of rounds for the old M-79, they get fired out. I guess each round type is struck with some kind of firing pin, like a regular rifle?

Tropo, how in heaven did you not kill yourself taking pellets out of a Claymore mine!!! I thought they go off if you just touch them?

And, I am guessing, if one guy carries up to 24 M-79 rounds they must not be all that heavy or large? Its hard to tell the scale of the weapon, and so the scale of the rounds.

Does the Willey Pete explode in the air sometimes or only on impact? "

[Sgt_Tropo]

You questions,
"I am still unclear how, now with 3 types of rounds for the old M-79, they get fired out. I guess each round type is struck with some kind of firing pin, like a regular rifle?

Tropo, how in heaven did you not kill yourself taking pellets out of a Claymore mine!!! I thought they go off if you just touch them?

And, I am guessing, if one guy carries up to 24 M-79 rounds they must not be all that heavy or large? Its hard to tell the scale of the weapon, and so the scale of the rounds.

Does the Willey Pete explode in the air sometimes or only on impact? "
________________
Let me try and answer these for you.
1) All the M-79 rounds were made in the same fashion as a typical round for a riflr. you have a projectile, which is fitted to a casing, which is filled with smokeless powder and the primer. The round fires off just like a rifle round.

2) Claymore mines are not touch sensitive". They have to be denotated with a electromechanical plunger-type trigger mechanism. This can also be attached to a trip-wire denotator, which acts to trip a reverse action trigger mechanism, but basically accomplishes the same thing.
Dismantling a claymore is fairly straightforward and easy. Many of these mines were disassembled to get the c-4 out for use as cooking fires, etc. Once the case was open, the sheet of sheet balls could be readily accessed and removed. Once I had it removed, it was easily broken apart and the steel shot used as I described.

3) The M-79 round is ap[proximately 2" in diameter, approximately 4" long and the weight varies between roughly 6-8 oz (AP round) to about 1.2 pounds for the HE round. Carrying up to 24 rounds meant that you had a preety good "mix" of round types. Other squad members would typically carry a bandolier of mixed rounds for you, too.
The weapon itself was about 6-7 pounds, unloaded. Its length was approximately 26" (give or take).
A typical day-pack (ammo, water, mre's, etc. for 24-48 hours) would weigh in at around 40 pounds. I've heard guys tell that the rucksacks used for longer deployments could weigh as much 85 pounds or more! I'm just glad I only had to do close-in patrols.

4) The M-79 rounds were designed to primarily explode upon impact, but the round was fully "armed" after it traveled a specific distance and had completed a set number of revolutions or spins. This delay in arming was to protect the operator / marksman from being too close to the exploding round, such as if it hit a close-in tree branch. Minimum distance to arm was approximately 25 yards and that could be too close if you were standing up in the open ! If the enemy was that close, I'd be using the M16 and the modified AP rounds in the M-79!
The only air-burst rounds I know of were the arial flare rounds. These rounds would fire a flare (these came in different colors for illumination, identification and signaling), usually at a very high trajectory. The round would ignite after a set number of revolutions and the flare (if it were an illumionation round) would parachute slowly back down. The decent usually lasted for approximatel two minutes, which can be an eternity when you caugth out in the open ! Signal flare rounds did not use a parachute and thus were designed for a much shorter burn time.
These types of flares were also good for starting fires behind or within the enemy positions and providing good good sighting or silohettes (especially effective between dusk and dawn).

I hope've sufficiently answered your questions. Sounds like you Air Force types didn't get much, if any, weapons training. That's OK though, because I didn't get much training on the use of a Phantom !

[BLUEHAWK]

Thanks Tropo, for your patience...I learned a lot.

Nope, in the ice age the USAF handed us an M-1 carbine and clip of ten rounds, one time, on a range...never saw one again or anything resembling a rifle or sidearm. My weapons were wrenches and a lot of dirty smelly oil.

They sure did shoot at our 123s though, lots of holes.

Were M-79 gunners considered infantry or artillery unit members, or what? Are mortar operators infantry or artillery?

They also did not teach us much about the army, obviously. I think there is a kind of service pride thing goin' on with that.

[MORTARDUDE]

As it happens I was a mortar crewman and was assigned an M-79.

Each infantry company had 4 platoons. Three are 11B ( MOS ) infantrymen. The 4th platoon is know as the weapons platoon and are 11C ( MOS ). In our time, this was where the 81mm responsibility was. Since we were mechanized, we had APCs equipped with .50 cal and M-60 machine guns and were an integrated part of all of the infantry missions. At night, the line tracks set up in a circle and we were in the middle to provide fire support. Our tracks were loaded with illumination, white phosporus, and high explosive rounds. They also had a big white square on the side which symbolized the 4th, or mortar, platoon. Thank God none of them got hit with an RPG. I enjoyed firing and working with the 81mm mortars. As I recall, we used the white phosporus rounds as the first round fired to make sure we were in the right area and it seemed they exploded in the air. We were always in the the thick of the action. When I got back to the states I worked with the 4.2" mortars. The rounds were about the same size as a 105mm artillery round and the range was quite a bit more than the 81mm. As for the M-79, I had HE, illum, fleshette, CS gas, shotgun, and maybe more kind of rounds. I didn't use it much in the jungle because of the all the limbs in the way. It had a sight on top and when you learned how to use it, was very accurate. I qualified expert on this in AIT. Hope this helps.

Larry

[BLUEHAWK]

Thanks Larry -

From all I can gather, an M-79 gunner would, then, be assigned to an infantry unit in a weapons platoon (this is difficult for an airman to understand, since ALL infantry have "weapons")... but I have an impression that infantry units are not just all riflemen, that there are e.g. radiomen, sappers probably and maybe other MOS (air force AFSC?)? Like what others?

Is there such a thing as a unit which is ALL mortar "dudes" In that case would they be artillery or something else?

[MORTARDUDE]

Anyone could have an M-79 in the infantry. Only the 4th platoon in each infantry company ( 4 plattons make up a company ) had mortars and mortar crewman.

Larry