The M60 Machine gun: It’s ‘The Pig’, man!
Using a mash up of technology garnered from WWII, the US military selected a compromise general-purpose machine gun in 1957 that remains in limited service to this day. This gun, officially known as the M60, has been carried my many, loved by most, and hated by some. No matter which one of these categories a soldier fell into though, they all called it ‘the pig’.
In the late 1950s, the US Army was in the process of converting their arsenal from the tried and true .30-06 round (that had gotten it through both World Wars and Korea) to the shorter and more controllable 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge. The first step? Replace its WWII era small-arms with more modern equipment to shoot this new round. The vaunted M1 Garand and M1 Carbine were to be replaced by the M14 battle rifle. Then there was the 19-pound Browning M1918 BAR, a myriad of submachine guns, and the 31-pound M1919 Browning Light Machine gun that needed a replacement. The 1950s replacement for all of them was to be the M60.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
The M60, and a puppy.