I have not been overly impressed with the civilian model of the Beretta pistol, I will stick to my old trusty M1911A1. I am shocked and awed that the internet could be so wrong about two different weapons (the M60 and the BAR).

I am now wondering if they are just as wrong about the Kalashnikov, the Bren, the G3 (actually know several German vets who claim the G3 is the biggest most unreliable POS on the planet), etc, etc.

ASS_CLOWN

Have you ever noticed how easily confused you get?

What you are seeing on this forum and other places are varying opinions on the merits, or lack of same, of certain weapons based on a variety of sources of information and highly influenced by personal opinions and experiences. The operative word in that sentance is OPINION.

The world I live in has a huge amount of both pluses and minuses attached to just about everything. Your world seems to have either one or the other and nothing in between the two. A weapon is either flawless or its a piece of shit to hear you talk.

M60's and BAR's are "good" weapons. No one said they are without any negative factors...and no one claimed they were better than the other weapons mentioned.

Like the other people on here all I have done is express my OPINION and tried to justify that opinion by stating personal experience and examples from the real world.

I was always taught that everyone is entitled to their own opinion...just not their own set of facts to back it up.

Lighten up and quit trying to make things more difficult or confusing than they really are.

Rick

This is really rather pointless...

Because I was big I got to hump the pig quite a bit in Ranger school...that or the PRC-77. Like most military small arms the 60 was only as good as the people behind it. It had its weak points and a few good points. Its cyclic rate was slow enough you could control it and you didn't need an ammo truck to follow you around. Its weight was good especially compared to what it replaced. But a 60 doesn't cook off ammo...it can, however, runaway. And dirt can cause malfunctions. But cook off ain't happening. It also had mechanical weaknesses usually centered on some of the feed mechanisim parts in the cover. But if YOU KNEW YOUR BUSINESS and KNEW HOW TO MAINTAIN THE WEAPON it was as good and reliable as anything out there. If you were a goober who didn't understand how it worked and what parts were prone to wear and malfunction you could get in trouble in a hurry...A good armorer and regular frequent visits from the BDE small arms maintenance team all help IF YOU HAD THE SENSE TO USE EM!
Its like the M2 Machine gun. Great gun...but there are some very critical things that must be constantly watched or the thing can get very unreliable very fast...
The M240 and M2 machine guns fire from closed bolts and are capable of cook offs. Just as mortars, artillery tubes and M16 rifles can cook off rounds.
I never personally humped a 60 in combat but I have fired thousands of rounds in a M240 coax gun and perhaps several hundred in a .50 cal M2 MG in anger. Cook offs require a considerable burst of sustained fire. And in ten years of active army experience I have only seen a few...usually on coax machine guns that have 500 or more rounds fired in a less than a few minutes time. That's quite a bit ammo in a short time unless you are laying down sustained suppressive direct fire and even then its alot. And in all honesty, that hasn't been an tactic since WW I and that's what mortars are for...
Cook offs are more an issue in artillery where tubes can heat up fast.

I think too, ASS CLOWN, you may be mistaking preferences and minor differences, for major "show stoppers". I am an experienced M60 gunner as a grunt, and have operated the M240 as a tanker. I NEVER had serious problems with the M60, but found lots of folks who couldn't get the thing to work to save their lives.

(As an aside, I am 5'9" and have always been around 200-210 lbs, and I swear, some dumbass looey would always take the gun from me and give it to some 6'5" fumble-thumbs, "because he was bigger", and of course, this fine individual is one of the ones that couldn't get the pig to work.) That ticked me off for a couple reasons.

The M60s I've known and loved have always worked very well, once I learned their individual preferences: In general, they were sensitive to tension on the belt. Some more than others. I've had a few with cracked feed tray covers, but that could be repaired/replaced.

Not surprisingly, the guys who had "lots" of problems getting the M60 to work, had "lots" of problems with other mechanical devices.

I don't know what I was doing wrong, but I could never get any of the M60s I shot to give me reliable 3-6 round bursts without getting a misfeed after a while.

I agree that many (if not most) problems with weapons center more on the operator than they do with the weapon.

Most malfunctions with M60's I witnessed in Vietnam were due to dirty ammo and dinged up links from guys hauling the belts around Pancho-Villa style instead of carrying them in bags or boxes.

ALL air cooled machine guns have the "potential" to heat the barrel to a temperature that will detonate a live round sitting in close proximity to the heat source. That is why air cooled machine guns use an open bolt mechanism that allows the heat to escape between firings.

I recall allot of guys being scared to carry LAWS in Vietnam because somebody had told them that they would go off if they got heated up in the sun. I suppose that could happen but I certainly never heard of one doing so. In fact, we had more problems with them never going off sun or no sun.

All in all the US military has very good infantry level weapons and they are getting better all the time due to input from the guys that actually use them in combat.

When you consider the mechanical functions that must take place in thousandths of a second in a machine gun its amazing that any of them work.

You want to read some funny stuff take a look in Hatchers Notebook where he talks about cook-offs and hang fires in machine guns being tested at the arsenal he worked at. He tells a story about a hang fire going off in the air after the gunner ejected it, scattering all the officers watching the demonstration.

Rick

Getting back to the original question...

I struggle to see how a belt feed MG could cook off. Even it a round on the feed tray exploded due to the heat of the metalwork around it then it is surly an impossibility for a second round to pop as the chances are the top cover will have been blown off/open and the belt have fallen out of the gun...

On closed bolt systems it is a diffrent matter. I have witnessed cook-offs in the SA80 system (similar to M16 system) in the hot parts of Kenya and Central America after sustained firing - say 4 x mags of 30 fired over a couple of minutes. Not that this was what the weapon was designed for in the first place.

KentuckyNimrod,

Your post confuses me.

You said:

Quote:

---

The M240 and M2 machine guns fire from closed bolts and are capable of cook offs. Just as mortars, artillery tubes and M16 rifles can cook off rounds

---

I researched this a little and found:

M240 from Herstal website:

The M240 fires from the open bolt position with a locked breech. So it is an open bolt weapon, Herstal also claims it is highly improbable that it would ever cook-off. Essentially, the M240 is a belt fed BAR with the buffer and recoil springs integrated and housed in the buttstock. Thus a modernized FN BAR type D.

My internet research also claims the M2 HB (50 caliber machine gun) fires from an open bolt and is recoil operated. Head spacing is a MAJOR issue with barrel changes.

Now the M2 (selective fire M1 Carbine) does in fact fire from a closed bolt.

So which is correct? I only want to know who/what the trust, and what the facts are.

ASS_CLOWN

No claim to being a M2 expert, but didn't they run a twin trigger arrangment? One to cycle the bolt and one to trip the hammer.

I seem to recall Hathcock using one in just that fashion for sniping purposes (trip one trigger to chamber a round, trip the other to fire the shot. As both were not being held down the weapon would fire, extract and lock the bolt back). Depending on which trigger was released first, the gun would stop with the bolt open or closed.

All,

I found a USMC up on the web. It has answered all my questions with regard to safe handling of these machine guns. According to both the manufacture US Ordnance (M60) and FN (M240) as well as teh USMC, a cook off can only occur if FIRST THERE WAS A MISFIRE which left a round in the hot barrel. Ammunition in the belt WILL NOT cook-off.

So to get a cook-off one must first have a misfire (due most likely to bad primer). Makes me wonder about some of the statements made on this and other threads.

Follow the link: USMC Weapons Fundamentals

Scroll down to your weapon of choice. The M60 ain't on this list, though.

ASS_CLOWN

"WARNING: If The Cover Is Opened On A Hot Cartridge (Hot Barrel), An Open-Cover Cookoff Could Occur And Result In Serious Injury Or Death. Close The Cover And Wait Until The Barrel Cools, At Least 15 Minutes.

(b) If nothing is ejected and the barrel is hot enough to cause a COOKOFF (200 rounds fired within 2 minutes), wait at least 15 minutes then apply immediate action. Ensure the cocking handle is forward. Aim the weapon at the target and attempt to fire the weapon. If the weapon fires, continue firing. If the weapon does not fire, take remedial action."

If a round is actually chambered and fails to fire there is a problem with either the weapon (broken or dirty, stuck firing pin assembly) or the primer, since open bolt guns are designed to have the firing pin strike the primer and fire the round when the bolt locks on closing.

The immediate action procedure for an air cooled machine gun that doesn't fire when the trigger is pulled is the same no matter what the cause may be. When the weapon doesn't fire the gunner cannot be 100% sure what happened...other than it didn't go boom...so he has to assume that there is a live round that may go off at any moment.

"Never open the cover when the bolt is not locked to the rear, Private!"

Rick

The point Rick is that a COOK OFF CANNOT HAPPEN unless the cartridge FIRST fails to fire. So to me anyway, this is an ammunition issue not a firearm issue. Also, the weapon isn't going to go bang, then bang again, then bang again. Some guys were saying that these machine guns would shoot out an entire belt by cooking them off.

I now know they were no telling me the facts.

Thanks for all your input though.

ASS_CLOWN

ASS CLOWN, you are an absolute jackass who doesn't know shit about weapons, or how to be gracious. Everything Rick told you was something you could take to the bank. Your questions were totally moronic, and he stayed with you, trying to be patient. Besides the sophomoric and idiotic handle, you are a complete jerk.

By the way, for the rest of the reasonable folks out there, here is an interesting aside: Gun is also a measure of caliber. Caliber is NOT the diameter of the bore; it is a proportion of length of tube to bore. Thus, a 105 mm on a tank is a gun, because its length, while a 105 mm artillery piece is a howitzer, again because of length. The three basic categories then, are mortar, howitzer and gun. Mortars have a high arching fire, with a low length to bore ratio, while guns have a relatively flat trajectory, with a high length to bore ratio. Howitzers are in-between, and are capable of a compromise between high, arching fire, and a low trajectory fire. Powder charges and muzzle velocity are also different, with mortars being the lowest and guns the highest.

Of course, the term "gun" has undergone a bunch of changes throughout the years.....

What would you call a short barreled .38? A howitzer or a mortar? A 6,5x55 with a 29" barrel: Is that a gun or is it just a rifle?

120mm,



I agree, Rick was one of the very few who seems to have been telling it the way it is! I have nothing against Rick in the least, I am very grateful to him for his patience as his expertise. His comments were spot on as my research indicated. I was speaking to many of the other who came up with what appears to be a great deal or erroneous BS. Where they got this erroneous information (like a M240 fires from close bolt, belt fed open bolt machine guns will shoot through belts of ammo via cook-offs, etc) I have no clue. I am fairly certain though that much of it is not from first hand experience! By the way, I may know considerably more about weapons than you think. What is the bore to length ratio of a cannon? I am really glad to see you know about bore to length ratios. It is impressive. I can be a jackass, but I really have not been one on this thread, anyway.



Rick, I hope you realize I was not attacking you, quite the contrary, I was attempting to provide independent evidence to support your statements. Which I believe I did! I would also agree with you 200% that many who replied to this thread are clueless as to how mg work, and made statements which were clearly wrong.



I'll leave you guys in peice now to contemplate what an arse hole I am.



ASS_CLOWN

That's correct on those guns (M2 and M240)-- open bolt. I'm thinking closed bolt because when you clear one of those guns a loose round falls out (or in the case of the 240 co-ax the cartridge falls into the spent brass box below the gun. Of course it was a de-linked round that falls out but indeed it had not been chambered.

Cook offs can happen on misfires. But again they are not all that common and the few instances where I saw them they did indeed involve stoppages.

You'll have to forgive as my experience is 12 years in the past. I've only seen one runaway gun and because we were on a tank qualification range they only had 200 rounds linked together so it ran out of ammo before anything happened. I was the range officer and it wasn't my tank but we heard the whole thing on the "jumps" radio in the tower.

FWIW, the weakest part of the M240, like the M60, was the feed tray cover. Of course in M1 tanks the biggest reason for this part failing was because someone left the cover open while depressing the main gun... can you say crunch! While the 240 is an awesome weapon, the feed tray cover could and did have wear problems.

Of course none of these guns are truly capable of sustained suppressive fire.

120mm,

This brings back some memories. The only accidental firearms fatality I saw during my service involved a 240.

1-64 Armor was shooting TT VIII on a range in Grafenwehr I'm gonna say it was 1985... I was in 3-63 Armor and I brought the other TC's out to watch the other BN qualify for an afternoon to "recon" the range. One of the tanks was back at the ammo point, turret elevated and was either taking on ammo for a run or offloading...not sure. But there was a group of GIs joking around on the front slope and someone didn't properly clear and safe the coax...and somehow the guy in the turret punched the trigger....not sure if he manually fired or did it off the electrical triggers on the cadillacs or TC override. But the gun fired and one of the guys caught it square in the chest.

Only guy we ever had get killed in my BN while I was in Germany also happened on a tank range in Graf. There was a HETT tractor and trailer parked on one of our ranges....IIRC it was the platoon qualification couse...range 117 I think. One of our troops decided to take a nap in the shade under the transport and while he was asleep the driver got in and ran him over... He wasn't dead when the range medics got to him but he did die on the helicopter ride to the hospital... That same night we had a guy scoop up a load of rocks in his main gun as he was pulling into a defilade defensive fighting position. This was RIGHT in front of the tower too. First shot blew off most of the main gun from the bore evacuator forward...a big hunk of the main gun came through the tower window! Can you say "Cease fire"!!!! Of course we went through all kinds of nuclear contamination gyrations over finding the collimator because of the small amount of isotope inside...(groan)

I think I had more fun at gunnery when I was the BN support platoon leader than when I commanded my tank platoon. I certainly got to shoot more stuff and blow up lots of stuff that I'd never get to do as a tanker. I think the most interesting thing I ever saw shoot was a CEV...152mm footbal with a range of 900 meters and a danger area of 1100 meters! When the CEV came back from shooting its headlight was hanging by the wires!

Nimrod-Have we done the where were you, when, game, yet?

3-7, 4-4, 3-4 CAV, Schweinfurt, Germany 1987-1991.

Draftee O/C Hohenfels, 1989

National Guard/Reserve 1992-present

Yeah, a while back.



I was in Harvey Barracks in Kitzingen and my company was OPCON to 3-7 Cav for rollout. I got to know LTC Shinseki a little... We might have overlapped a little but by 1988 I was in Pakistan with a Mobile Training Team...got volunteered on the way to the Advanced Course at Knox as I was the only promotable 1LT in the Army not assigned to a unit with actual M1A1 field experience...at the time there were only 2 Battalions of M1A1s in the Army!!!



I commanded a Cav Troop with 3 ACR in Gulf War I.



After that I was the active duty advisor to the Idaho Army National Guard in Twin Falls. Which was great for hunting and fishing.... Got out during the Clinton drawdown... the financial incentive was too good to pass up. Miss my soldiers and the toys. Don't miss being a staff weenie which would have been my fate for 6 or 7 years. Got out as a major. They keep calling me to come back...I'm sure I'd get duty in Hawaii....yeah right!

My youngest son was in the RA in Germany around that time and he is presently an E-7 in the California Guard looking foward to retiring in a couple of years. His guard unit did a short stint in Bosnia and was also assigned to the RA outfit that trained some of the Iraqi exiles in Hungary just before OIF started up.

He really liked Germany...didn't care much for Hungary or Bosnia.

Rick

Rick,
I really wanted to go hunting Roe and Stag in Hungary. Back then it was a little pricey for a Lieutenant. But the German hunters I shared blinds with all swore that Hungary was THE place to go for Stag and Roe. Of course they also thought SW africa was THE place to go in Africa. Probably because it was a former German colony and the language of the Vaterland was spoken there. Don't know from personal experience but they certainly had some impressive trophey rooms in their homes...

I miss Germany. Nothing like getting in your car for a long weekend and driving to Italy or France to enjoy some wine and local fare. Now that the Cold War's over I imagine there are some incredible values to be had in the former eastern bloc both in terms of travel and hunting. Of course I got to go hunting big game nearly 9 months out of the year...May to January...so I was in a blind twice a week if our training schedule allowed.

rick0311,

You are making some good points here, however, "The bolt on M60's isn't actually in contact with the round prior to pulling the trigger but it is within a few thousandths of an inch of touching it. Certainly close enough for radiant heat to transfer." Last time I looked, which was the other week, there is alot more than a few "thou" clearance there.

To paraphrase you in a previous post, "if the radiant heat of the bolt causes the round to fire, you already have a much more serious problem."

While I've been firing MG's for about 19 years, (the M-60, M-2, M249 and M240B) I've never seen or experienced a "cook off" of any sort. This is attributable, in my opinion, to the fact that, as mentioned by you, the rounds are sitting in the feed tray being cooled by the air circulating through the receiver before firing with no contact with the bolt of barrel.

A "run-a-way" is another problem by itself and happens for a varity of reasons.

Oh yea, the M-2 can have a "cook off" if the firer is not careful as the round is held in the bolt face prior to firing. If you get a "cook off" in an M-2, you are hurting for certain.


Regards,

Eric

Kentucky Nimrod, "Humping the pig" in ranger school does not a machinegunner make. When I was in the Ranger BATTALION, I saw another gunner get his finger tip blown off by a round cooked off in an M-60. What many of you experts fail to realize is that after being fired to the point where the barrel and gas tube are red hot, machine guns often JAM. Usually with a bent round part of the way into the chamber. This gives the heat time to transfer to the primer/powder. The round is not chambered, but its in contact with the chamber. The fun part is trying to get it out before it goes off. - John

I thought this topic had pretty much been put to bed...but there I go thinking again!

Guys...all I have been trying to say from the get go is that unless something in the weapon or the round malfunctions open bolt machine guns (due to their design) cannot chamber a round and have it stay in the chamber long enough to "cook off" from heat...it "goes off" because the primer is struck by the firing pin as soon as the bolt locks. Some of the earliest comments on this thread referred to people who had rounds just "magically" go off during lulls in firing and then they supposedly started the firing weapon again. I didn't buy that one and attributed it to a finger accidentally tapping the trigger rather than a "cook off."

When a weapon gets hot enough to "cook off" rounds it has normally been fired enough where things start jamming and malfunctioning and that can happen with just about any fully automatic rifle or machine gun.

Considering the individual that originally started this thread (who unlike some of us has never set foot on a battlefield) I really do believe far too much time has been spent on this ridiculous topic.

Rick

Eric, do I know you? Are you the guy from Washington state who was in the CAV up there?

120,

Yea, sort of. I'm the scout from Oregon that was writting you time to time when you were in Bagdad.

And I still owe you a beer.

Regards,

Eric

So, what's up with the "new member" under your handle?

I'll need to take you up on that beer. I got home in a single piece, despite the Air Force trying desperately to smoosh me across the countryside on our flight out. Would you believe we had a C-130 on F-15 very near miss on takeoff? We very nearly crashed.

Oh, well, all's well that ends well.

120,

LOL, the last time they changed servers I got lost in the shuffle, as well as, uh, three hundred or so posts. I just disappeared.

I re-registered, but have been so busy just trying to live, work, and satisfy the Guard that I just haven't spent too much time here.

I'm glad you made it home in one piece, I sent you a "Welcome Home Soldier" when you sent out a blanket "I'm home!" Blinking pilots. Think they'ed learn how to drive those things in traffic, eh?

My number may be coming soon. We're short senior NCO's here. And little guys too for that matter. The states kind of picked clean for combat guys. Weapons too. We could only get one (1) M240B for an Infantry class MOSQ we just completed. We ordered 25. They're all deployed. We had to use DX'ed M60's from another state just south of us. The absolute worst guns I've ever seen. Even worse than the crap I saw during the V.N. war here in the states.

Anyway,

Fly low and stay cool.

Eric

Machine guns that fire from an open bolt can cook off. I've seen it with both a SAW and a M-60 several times. Usually a stoppage will cause the bolt to be closed on a live round in a hot barrel. For more information Read Army Field Manual FM 23-67 The chapter on malfuntions, immediate action and remedial action addresses it.

How about machines which fire from a closed bolt?

ASS_CLOWN

Bill the thing I remember about the M2 is that once you finished setting the headspace and timing you did a function check. And when you trip the trigger the bolt most defintely does not slam forward...all you hear is a click. The M2 can be set to fire single shot and has been used as a sniper weapon in that capacity. I cannot imagine trying to engage a precision target with an MG that slams home a bolt when fired. We also used the M2 on a special mount on the main gun as a sort of sub-caliber substitute training device meant to simulate main gun. That was years ago however, many moons before they invented the UCOFT.
Have fun at Ft. Bliss. I spent seven years in El Paso.
You never knew a Maj. James with the 116th? We worked together in Twin.

If it is the same MAJ James, I knew him as a fresh butter bar when he was with B 2/116th. It seems he survived long enough to get promoted. He had some good NCO's to teach him well.

They still use a couple different sub caliber devices. The nost common one looks like a bolt action single shot 50 cal that is encased by a 120mm main gun round. It works really well.

M1Tanker,

M2HB most certainly does fire from a closed bolt!

This thread has been immensely informative. Thanks to all who contributed.

ASS_CLOWN