Tag Archives: M14

PI Marines rake in interesting finds on the Southern Islands

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The Philippine Marines have been busy doing hearts and minds type missions in the Sulu area for the past several months and have managed to get 246 weapons turned over (with a little help from martial law.)

About half are vintage M1 Garands, followed by a decent haul of M14s and M16s, as well as a smattering of other hardware to include M79 bloop tubes, 81mm mortars and 90mm recoilless rifles.

Dig the M79s, with one using a boot top as a pad…also the fifth gun up is a suppressed M1 Carbine with a homemade wooden pistol grip…

Yes, that is a Vietnam-vintage Colt XM177 in the foreground, followed by (likely Manila-made Eslico) M16s. You never know what you are going to come up with in the PI

More in my column at Guns.com.

Let’s go down to the Dominican Republic, we’ll get together, have a few laughs…

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DEFENSE DEPT. PHOTO (MARINE CORPS) A4503022. May 8 1965, Sgt R.O. Shaw.

Caption: Locating a Sniper—A rifle squad from Company “D,” 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, searches for a sniper firing at the position inside the International Safety Zone in Santo Domingo. Note the M1 helmets, Korean War style flak vests and M-14.

The action in the Dominican Republic was not the pushover some often chalk it up to. In the end, Johnson lamented ordering troops into action there. The below doc from the invasion is surprisingly gritty, and directly addresses the sniper problem in the above photo.

When it comes to captured enemy weapons, the Army never throws anything away

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I recently had the chance to tour U.S. Army’s Museum Support Center at Anniston Army Depot, the keepers of the flame for military history in the country.

The 15,200-acre installation in North Alabama was established in World War II and overhauls both small arms and vehicles for the Army. A longstanding tenant on the sprawling base, based out of Building 201, is the Museum Support Center, operated by the Center of Military History. The CMH maintains an immense collection of 650,000 historic items across 228 sites including 57 large museums that are a part of the Army Museum Enterprise. Items not yet on display, waiting for a public home, or are excess to current museum needs are stored in the “Army’s attic” in Anniston.

In secured storage at the MSC are 13,000 live weapons of all sorts, ranging from 13th Century Ottoman gear to guns captured recently in Afghanistan…and they were gracious enough to roll out the red carpet for me:

More in my column at Guns.com

Kwajalein calling

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Rock Island Auction House has released some teaser information about their upcoming Premier Auction in May, and it has just about one of every full-auto or select-fire offering on your fave list.

While they do not have the full item descriptions listed yet, they have released some highlight images and what they show– besides the regular fare of 19th Century collectible lever guns and 18th Century dueling pistols– is a cornucopia of Title II/Class 3 items. Outside of the full Call of Duty collection, you aren’t going to find these guns in one place. There is even a Heckler & Koch HK21, a type I haven’t seen since I worked with NASA.

Among the neater pieces I saw was a Japanese Type 11 light machine gun– Kijirō Nambu’s take on the French 8mm Hotchkiss chambered in 6.5x50mm Arisaka. This particular piece was captured on Kwajalein Atoll in 1944 by the Recon troop of the 7th Cav.

captured-by-7th-cav-rcn-trp-kwaj-5-feb-1944-hotchkiss-machine-gun-japanese-ria
More (including a lot more photos) in my column at Guns.com

The sick 40 round M14 mag that held 30 rounds

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larry hilton and his 40 round magazined m14 made from two mags and three springs would only hold 30rounds however

I saw an AK-47 while in Vietnam and it had a 30 round magazine. So I cut the top and bottom off of a couple of M-14 Magazines and welded them together and made a “40” Round magazine for my M-14. It really didn’t work very well when test firing it, several of the last rounds would not chamber with only two springs. So I put “three” springs into the magazine, but then I could only load a little over 30 rounds. There just wasn’t enough room for three springs and 40 Full Metal Jacket rounds in that magazine. I sure received some strange looks while walking around with my 40 round magazine. Semper Fi, Larry Hilton via Grunt.com 

How many Devils can you cram in a boat?

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U.S. Marines, grouped in fours and fives in outboard motor boats, approach the beach in an amphibious assault in the Rung Sat Zone, 35 miles from Saigon. Rung Sat, infested with Viet Cong, is the target of Operation Jackstay, involving 1,200 Marines. Photo taken 03/26/1966.

U.S. Marines, grouped in fours and fives in outboard motor boats, approach the beach in an amphibious assault in the Rung Sat Zone, 35 miles from Saigon. Rung Sat, infested with Viet Cong, is the target of Operation Jackstay, involving 1,200 Marines. Photo taken 03/26/1966.

P.S. Dig those M14’s, baby.

Nostalgia Trip: 5 Classic 50s Battle Rifles

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In the 1950s cars were made out of steel, cigarettes were a food group, and men scraped the hair from their face with a straight razor. That decade where Elvis was thin and everybody liked Ike was also the golden age of the battle rifle.

In 1953, the infant NATO military alliance adopted the US-developed 7.62×51mm T65E3 cartridge as its standard rifle round. This round was destined to replace the US .30-06 fired by the M1 Garand, the British .303 of the Commonwealth Armies, the 8mm Mauser of the West German Army and others. It brought to the table a shorter length round that still had the power of the cartridges it replaced—but with less recoil. This led to a number of so-called battle rifle designs, ending the 70-year reign of the bolt-action rifle in military service. and Guns.com is looking at five classics, many of which are still around today:

Read the rest at GUNs.com

m14 ebr seeing hard service afghanistan 2013

(The m14 in the hands of the soldier above in Afghanistan is likely as old as his father, but is still trucking. Classics are like that)

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