"M79 grenadier from Gringos40" Topic

Amongst the recent releases from Gringos40 is this chap firing an M79 grenade launcher. Nicely painted here by Andy Singleton

I think this is a great guide to highlighting on the arms and utilities. If you think the barrel is oversized in this image (I did at first…a common error) I compared it to my painted figure (nothing like that standard) but it is a camera thing. The highlighting on the barrel somehow magnifies it in the photo. The real thing works very well

Woops posted four times! God knows how that happened…

Now if this chap was facing Tomrommel's chap on the trail, as below, not sure who would do better

TMP link

Clever. It has been fixed! My thanks to someone at HQ who was monitoring this…….

"Blooop!"

I have a couple of blooper stories, if anyone is interested.
I ask because I don't want to hijack this thread of a nicely painted figure. The faded boot sides, heck, everything is well done.

Do tell !

thanks very much Liam..legion4 and d88mm1940
look forward to d88mm1940 blooper related stories

cheers
Ged
gringo40s.com
gringo40s.blogspot.com

Well, if everyone insists…
These are mostly 'bunker scuttlebutt', used by the old vets (been in country for a month or so) to scare newbies (in country less then a month). One morning after a firing incident, a group of volunteers ("You, you and you. Come with me") went on a perimeter sweep. Whenever there was an incident, a sweep was required to check out if anyone or anything was hit (poor water buffaloes). Well, these two guys found an unexploded blooper round and decided that a game of catch would pass the time a little faster. After a few tosses, the round had rotated enough to arm itself and BOOM. Two guys in the hospital. Story varied with two dead, one dead, the other with no hands. You get the drift.
Story #2 A newbie was on bunker duty late one night when the Sgt of the Guard decided to sneak up on him. Well, the nervous newbie was awake and watching this dark shadow sneak up on his bunker. He whispered "who goes there" three times then fires his M-79. Bloop! Wham! Hit's the sneaky Sgt right in the flak jacket. Breaks a couple of ribs but does not explode! Too close, as the story goes, didn't rotate enough to arm itself. Supposedly, this cured the Sgt from sneaking up on bunkers.
#3. This one isn't "heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who was Actually there". This one is all mine…
In the mornings it wasn't uncommon to let off a few rounds, just to let everyone know we had live ammo here. I had a couple of blooper rounds left including a shotgun round. I was used to firing H.E. and kind of liked it. Had the kick of a .22 with a satisfying explosion at the end. So I got down to the shotgun round, lazily put the stock, kind of, against my shoulder and BLAM. Yeeyow! Kicked like a mule. I could barely move my arm after that. Had a huge bruise for a week. Last shotgun round I ever fired.
Bonus bunker tale…
I had bunker duty near the M.P. bunker on Q.L.1 (the main highway running north south) facing south. Toward dusk, one of the M.P.'s asked us to pop a flare towards the ville. These were metal cylinders, about a foot long and an inch or so diameter with a colored disk on the launch end to indicate it's color. Illumination rounds were white. Well I quickly volunteered because I had never fired one before and it looked kind of cool. I had been in country less then a month…
So I took off the cap (which also had the firing pin) put it on the bottom and single handed banged it against the sandbags. My wrist 'broke', meaning it went forward instead of straight up, and whoosh! Out shot the flare maybe 5 feet above the ground and popped open about 50 yards out. The little parachute guided the brightly burning flare the remaining couple of feet to the ground where it started a nice fire in some poor farmers haystack.
My face was still blushing when the M.P. hollered over,"Fire another one, a little higher".

Yeah, I have fired a Parachute Flare or Star Cluster with my wrist "braking" and the ordinance was very short or way off. Almost took out an M113 with one accidently ! The crew was not amused !

Along with a mysterious amount of very old dynamite our ammo dump in Danang also sported a pile of bridge pin bags (1/2 the size of a sandbag, more or less) filled with dud M79 HE rounds. Just before we pulled out in June 1972, we were told to give the dynamite and duds to the local ARVN engineer battalion.

The ARVNs sent a single deuce and a half; we loaded the dynamite* but tried to explain to them the danger of carrying over 200 M79 duds in the back of a truck over some very rough roads. Unfortunately, our American translator was relaxing at China Beach and our Vietnamese translator had decided to rejoin his buddies in the VC, so in the end we let them take the duds.

The inevitable explosion didn't happen until they were almost 10k away but we still heard it.

*I don't know if it's used these days but back in the day military dynamite was made with RDX, TNT, motor, and cornstarch(!), not nitro, and wouldn't have been detonated by a rough road.

LT

RDX, TNT, motor, and cornstarch(!)

that's motor oil

LT

I guess that Deuce & 1/2 and it's crew were totally gone. With all that HE, etc. in it's bed … BOOOOOOoooooooM!

Great stories. I had wondered if the blooper could fire a shotgun style round. Cannot imagine what the receiving end would be like…sounds as though the user's end was bad enough though. Not exactly a recoilless weapon.

link

Wikipedia link on M79 ammunition covers it.

Legion 4 and brass1: good tales!
deadhead: thanks. I'm just glad it wasn't that flechette round!
Good link, Skarper. I guess the Sneaky Sgt tale may hold water! I never really tried to validate it.
Quote from Wikipedia:
This round incorporated a spin-activation safety feature which prevents the grenade from arming while still within range of the shooter; it armed itself after traveling a distance of about 14-27 meters[12]. The round would not arm at point blank ranges and it usually did not have enough kinetic energy to kill, although it sometimes penetrated the abdomen or caused large hematomas.

yes indeed, it would be a tough face off :)

great input thanks Chaps!

cheers
Ged
gringo40s.com
gringo40s.blogspot.com

I had wondered if the blooper could fire a shotgun style round

Missed this one. The answer, of course, is yes. When a buckshot round was fired at night you could track the red-hot projectiles for a surprising distance after they left the barrel, the muzzle velocity being quite low. I often wondered if this would reveal the position of the shooter but, fortunately, never had the opportunity to find out.

LT

Yes, we had those for the M203 as well. We called it a fleshette rd., IIRC. But never saw one issued/fired.

link