Hola everybody! I am back from shooting our Bradley and Tank gunnery and did I see some great stuff. In my 19+ years I have see a few things happen on a gunnery range that were not nomal. This gunnery was no different. For starters I watched as our Squadron S3 launched his gun barrel (25mm) down range for a distance of about 15 feet. The barrel weighs in the neighborhood of 90lbs or so. Completely destroyed the Feeder assembly and receiver. On a good note, as luck would have it, no injuries to the crew. We had 3 M240C machine guns grenade in the Plenum Chamber. My Bradley engine wrenched itself from the mounts and tried to leave on its own through the engine access door on the front deck, completely destroying anything and everything in its path. I spent 4 days in one spot in the middle of no-where for that one. Saw a Brad lose 2 roadwheels on its #1 left arm and keep fighting the fight. Overall the gunnery was good. Many long hours and many many bullets later we are home. I need a shower something fierce, but thought I should share the info with all of you. Talk to you later. "Q"

yeahbut........welcome home Red.

Jack

Glad to have you back in one piece.

Bet you haven't seen this one! :-)



Jack

Welcome Back Remind me to stay way away from any ranges your unit occupies
Have you ever observed an erractic round? The round comes out of the gun barrel then procedes to go where ever it wants #:-) Now that is scary

Sounds like your unit's Brads are prime candidates for recapitalization, i.e. total rebuild to zero hours. People tend to forget that a lot of unit's equipment was in place prior to Desert Storm and even though they are the best on the battlefield, 10 years is a lot of time for a combat system that gets beat up on a regular basis in an active duty unit.

My worse gunnery experience was while I was conducting a Training Assessment Module (TAM) on a Texas ARNG unit. A TAM is basically an A/C evaluator doing a report card on an R/C unit. While one Bradley company was going down range doing dismounted live fire with Bradley's live firing in support, a different company was on the ready line. The gunner of one of the other unit's Bradley was tracking the dismounts in his sights while waiting his turn to go down range. He squeezed the trigger and didn't realize his coax was loaded. Killed 3 soldiers. I don't recall the unit's designation, but it was a part of the 3rd Brigade, 49th AD. Real bad situation.

Sweating more in training means we bleed less in war! Welcome back and I am glad no one was hurt and your experiences happened here and not "over there" where it is a less forgiving environment.

Goosh I allways thought you Dudes had all the fun now I know I was right. Rob wouldn't even want to reply to that one. worse thing that ever happened was in Basic some dumb*ss private stood up with his M-16 Facing the Drill in the Face he punched him in the face and dropped him right their. They put him out kind of a person that you would hardly trust with a fork let alone a weapon. Did meet a bunch of them.

The Sherdian. Of all the vehicles I've ever crewed, it has to be the one that produced the most off the wall incidents. 1968. brand new Sheridians right off the train. Damn things wouldn't crank. After 2 weeks of work we got 3 of them running. Took them to the train fire range for familerization. After 7 rounds had to close the range and move all of them back up on line. Used the big wood chock blocks which were very quickly turned into toothpicks. Had to but a driver in each to insure the brake lock STAYED locked. Fired 37 rounds and had to close the range again. The TC on the second Sheridian in line started hollering over the net to cease fire, popped up out of the hatch and jammed all his flags down at one time. Everyone but the cook headed over to find out what the heck was wrong. Wrong? The damn turrent ring bolts had come loose and you could see a couple of inches of daylight between the turret ring and the turret. Took most of the rest of the day to fix. Everythings fine now so we continued. All hell broke loose. Turret on no.1 started to spin round and round. The gunner wanted to see if the stab mode worked. 23rd order of the day. Leave the damn stab mode switch a lone. Up popped the flag on 2. Now what? Loader wanted to know what to do with all the bags of propellant from the broken casing. Order of the day no. 24 DO NOT USE the electric breech mechanism, close it by hand. And while your at it check to see if you have enough water in the bucket under the breech. The one you use to swab the burning embers out of the breech. Fireing recommences. Flags on 2 go up. The TC needs 1 and three to be moved back up on line and would someone hand him his helmet which came off his head when 1 and 3 fired almost simultaneously. Fireing rererecommences. Flag on 3 comes up. What the....? Tc needs to be relieved." And why might I ask?" the range saftey officer said. The TC said because his face was bleeding. How did that happen? Short pause for explination. ALLWAYS brace yourself when firing the main gun. "Because when I said "fire" thats just what this d-head gunner did. THEN he announces on the way." We havn't even got to night fire yet. Range flag goes up cease fire. Now what? Range guard wants to know if we should maybe go out and put out the fire on range left. What the heck is this, were fireing training rounds. Tracers you dumn *ss.
Night fire not much different. Next day. "Sir the Range saftey officer says we cain't clear the range until all ammo has been expended or returned to depot and damaged munitions have been secured. You know sir all the broken casings and propellant bags. And this will be how long? 6 or 7 hours sir. Motion offered that we just stuff them up the gun tube, pull the trigger and get the hell out of here. We cleared the range in 2 hours.
The missle. Hoo boy what piece of shhhh.. dog doo. You couldn't fire it toward the east at dawn or west at sunset. It took longer to setup the missle control system than it did to just carry the damn missle over to the target and set it off by hand. A hell of a lot more accurate to. Hard as heck to load and the brass end cap ALWAYS welded itself to the breech. Someone mentioned a round leaving the gun tube and going off any ol where it wanted to. THATS what the shelailie (or whatever never could spell it) liked to do. A lot. That and play hide & go seek in the bushes. At around the cost at that time of a new GTO the army didn't let us fire a lot of them. Which was allright. Those sunofaguns were dangerous. To us. I could just imagine how embaressing it would be to have an enemy TC sitting on the top of his turret holding up a target with hit me written on it and laughing his butt off.
Haven't even said anything about swimming it to include setting up the enclosure or the barge as we called, or that damn rooster tail.
#:-) #:-) #:-)

Great story ARMDCAV ! You should do it more often. Good stuff.

Tread.

BTW, the quote above......priceless!