Are machineguns in general purposely made inaccurate?

[jlbraun]

Does the US still do indirect machinegun fire? I only occasionally read about it in WWII.

If you don't have arty backing you up, I'd say it's better than nothing.

 

[TexasRifleman]

The early BARs were too accurate so they mounted the bipod on the flashhider to move the bbl around, with the intent of messing up its pinpoint accuracy.

I've never read that it was intentional but it certainly does happen.

When I shoot mine off of sangbags and manage to feather the trigger gently enough to get semi fire the thing is extremely accurate out to at least 400 yards which is far as I've fired it that way.

 

[DMK]

a 50 M2 being used for long-range "sniping", during the Korean War

Wow, he must be shooting a *long* way off. Notice the angle of the barrel vs. the scope.

 

[mek42]

Does the US still do indirect machinegun fire? I only occasionally read about it in WWII.

I thought it was the British forces who made more extensive use of indirect MG fire in War 2?

 

[Wes Janson]

If we knew the exact angle between the barrel and the scope tube, we could at least make a guess as to what distance he was firing at. Looks to be well over a thousand yards though, for sure.

 

[sacp81170a]

We were still being taught indirect fire with the M-60 and M-2 for Air Base Ground Defense in the '80's. Of course, we got lots of our tactical concepts from the RAF Regiment at the time. If you have a fixed position and a good range card, indirect fire is no problem with a T&E. It was even better when we got Mark 19's.

 

[aloharover]

Standard 7.62 ball is M80:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...itions/762.htm

Standard 5.56 ball is M855 (was M193 until the M249 and M16A2 came out):
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...itions/556.htm

If machine gun and rifle ammo had different specifications, wouldn't they have different model numbers?

MG and Rifle ammo is NOT made differently.
Plenty of times I have stripped down a SAW belt to ffed an M16, or a 7.62 belt to feed an m14.

The weapons and the ammo is not made to be loose.
It is the natural act of firing that causes the cone of fire. Put a M16A2 on burst and see how big your groups get. A good gunner can put a 3-6rd burst into a single e-type silohette at 300m with the M240 or M249.

I have shot e-types with the M60 and M240 out to 1k

 

[jaholder1971]

Worst in the accuracy dept?

M2 carbine. Shoots Okay until you blow out the barrel on FA, then watch groups go to hades fast.

 

[DMK]

If you have a fixed position and a good range card, indirect fire is no problem with a T&E.

What's a T&E?
A mount with traverse and elevation wheels?

 

[sacp81170a]

What's a T&E?
A mount with traverse and elevation wheels?

Exactly. You mount your M-60 to the pintle on the tripod, and the T&E mounts on the back legs of the tripod and attaches to the gun under the stock. It's marked for both traverse and elevation, so with a fixed fighting position and notations for elevation and traverse, you can engage pre-determined targets, even in the dark, or targets in defillade from your position. In preparing fighting positions, if there is enough time available, you can even have a spotter check the impact of your rounds as you are filling in the data on the range card. This is a good method to use when you are emplacing sensors like PEWS or MAID/MILES to detect enemy personnel or vehicles in areas where you can't see them from your position. If you get a positive hit on the magnetic and seismic sensors and there are no friendlies in the area, you can hit them with a mechanical ambush and take them under fire with your machine gunners in an indirect fire mode. The gunner then traverses and elevates his gun according to the data on the range card to cover the whole of the kill zone while being out of the direct line of fire himself. Mark 19's added a whole new world of hurt to the equation when they were added to the mix.

Here's a nice picture of an M-2 tripod with a T&E:

http://www.auctionarms.com/search/displayitem.cfm?itemnum=8525740

Too bad it's closed. I might have picked it up just for old times' sake.

 

[Deadman]

I've heard Aus. soldiers state that the FN Minimi is inherently more accurate than the Steyr Aug, but have not seen any data which proves it.

 

[daniel (australia)]

In the Oz Army as recently as the late 1980s the doctrine with the GPMG (M60 at the time) included use from a tripod in both direct fire and indirect fire mode. The tripod had T&E wheels and a trigger bar, and in indirect fire mode we'd mount a C2 sight unit (same one as used on the 81mm mortar) and use aiming posts. You could reach out to a nominal 3000m with this set up.

We'd occasionally have "firepower demonstrations" to give an idea of the capabilities of the various weapons at the disposal of a platoon, company or battalion commander. I remember the targets used for the M60 would typically blocks of string lines attached to pegs, with inflated balloons tied to the lines. It was always impressive to see a long burst cracked off at a block of balloons 2000m or so away: there'd be a noticeable delay, and then the balloons would all simply vanish. Mind you, there were always more impressive things to come in a firepower demo, typically coming to a crescendo with arty and/or an air strike.

As for accuracy, the "pig" (M60) wasn't nearly as accurate as the Brens or even L2A1s, but the beaten zone was still only nominally 2 mils wide. Using the tripod the trick was to "jiggle" the T&E wheels on firing to spread the beaten zone a bit, as well as working the traverse 2 mils with each burst to cover a frontage.

 

[mek42]

I have read that military arms tend to have oversized chambers. Does this have any impact on accuracy?

 

[gunnerh]

After 26 years in Naval Ordinance all ammo made for the US is more accurate than it has to be. The beaten zones are size has more to do with the mounts than the weapons.

 

[sacp81170a]

We'd occasionally have "firepower demonstrations" to give an idea of the capabilities of the various weapons at the disposal of a platoon, company or battalion commander. I remember the targets used for the M60 would typically blocks of string lines attached to pegs, with inflated balloons tied to the lines. It was always impressive to see a long burst cracked off at a block of balloons 2000m or so away: there'd be a noticeable delay, and then the balloons would all simply vanish.

One of the firepower demos we'd do was to take a 100 round belt in an M60 and chop a door sized hole in a cinder block wall at 100 meters. Worked every time.

 

[X_m1tanker]

My experience with machine guns is limited to military weapons. I've shot the M-16/ M-4, .45 grease-gun, M-240 .308 and M-2 .50 from the M1 Abrams platform. The coax machine gun in the tank is way more accurate than the loaders M-240. This is because the coax is mounted to the turret of the tank and is much more rigid than "John-Wayning" the loaders gun. The cone of fire is is relevent to the fact that a machine gun firing 800 rounds a minute is jumping around like a mexican jumping bean. Machine guns can accurately shoot if single shots or small burts are used. The rule of thumb I've used in shooting the M-240 is "fire-a-burst-of-six". It helps out with more accurate fire in spite of the recoil. Machine guns are meant for suppressive fire more than accurate sniper fire, relying on the fate of fire to overcome accuracy issues... they fill a specific roll in the military and do it well, in my opinion.

 

[sacp81170a]

It was always impressive to see a long burst cracked off at a block of balloons 2000m or so away

Just for the record, also remember that GPMG fire at that range is plunging fire rather than grazing fire, so basically it's coming in from an overhead angle. Makes your cover a lot less useful. Think of it as "raining bullets" (although not from straight overhead, more like a 45 to 60 degree angle). I love full auto used to its capability.