The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

Webley wrote:On the ammo loading comment I recall reading somewhere that for the manufacture of some military rounds, the machines were calibrated before each run. The first X number of rounds were given to the snipers, then next part of the batch to the general infantry and the last of the batch went for the machine gunners. The theory being that the machines would get out of tolerance over the course of the batch running through. I can't recall which ammo/country/time period this was though.

Matt

I read something along those lines a couple of weeks ago in Sgt Mills "Sniper One" set during the Iraq War. It didn't say how long this practice had been going on for.

WelshShooter wrote:There was a scene in "Siege of Jadotville" where the Irish UN Peacekeepers were defending a compound and decided to use their Bren gun in single fire for a long distance shot instead of using their No4 Mk1 (T). Not sure if it's true or Hollywood "artistic licence" but thought it would be interesting to add to this thread.

I don't see how any open bolt design firearm would be more accurate than a rifle like the No4 Mk1.

My farther used to say they used to bang their hand on the side of the gun wile it was firing to spread things about a bit,
he also told of cutting trees down with them, He also said they had brackets on their 25 Pounders that they fitted a bren to
for 25 pounder practice.

Ralph wrote:My farther used to say they used to bang their hand on the side of the gun wile it was firing to spread things about a bit,
he also told of cutting trees down with them, He also said they had brackets on their 25 Pounders that they fitted a bren to
for 25 pounder practice.

Can't believe that one either, when I fired the L4, both hands were fully occupied and it was easy to sweep it about to change targets. Can't image the No.2 gunner having time to do it either.

A friend of mine has a semi-auto MG42 mounted on a tripod. This Lafette42 tripod has a system which moves the gun as it fires, raising it for a few rounds before lowering it again. Apparently this was designed to increase the beaten zone. Not sure if many other tripods have this feature and I doubt it was because it was too accurate.

Ralph wrote:My farther used to say they used to bang their hand on the side of the gun wile it was firing to spread things about a bit,
he also told of cutting trees down with them, He also said they had brackets on their 25 Pounders that they fitted a bren to
for 25 pounder practice.

he's probably thinking about the Vickers HMG and similar, when mounted on tripods it was common to traverse them by knocking them sideways a bit at a time as 2mins in on this video, note how tight the spread is on this MG (I know the range is short, but even so)

There is an element of truth in this as when the Bren was modified to 7.62x51 as the L4 series, they actually took the trouble to make the L4 barrels more 'whippy' to spread the groups a tad.

On a related note, as part of the Canadian Forces Small Arms Competition, there used to be a separate set of matches for the Light Machine Gun. It was designed originally for the Bren, and them later modified in the days when we had the heavy-barrelled SLR (The C2A1 in Cdn service) which was an awful gun. Jumped around so much you would be lucky to hit the side of a barn - from the inside. First two rounds might hit the side of the barn, but the rest would be through the roof. No joke.

The first year the matches were shot with the new C9 (FN Minimi) belt-fed 5.56 mm light machine gun - 1988 I think it was - there were so many near-perfect scores that they had to have shoot-offs in virtually every match. They redesigned the whole shoot for the next year. Rumour has it they put it back the way it was for the Bren to make it harder again.

Can't vouch for the part about the redesign, but I was there at the matches and can vouch for the ridiculously high scores compared to previous years.

Alan D wrote:There is an element of truth in this as when the Bren was modified to 7.62x51 as the L4 series, they actually took the trouble to make the L4 barrels more 'whippy' to spread the groups a tad.

Is this another myth, or do have a link to some evidence this happened. ?