Lazy Dog Bomb

[JohnB-40]

In the last century my wife and I used to drop by a store that was packed with bins of weird stuff. Found this projectile,10 for a buck and couldn't resist View attachment 849543

I found this survivor sorting stuff the other day......It is a Fleshette from Vietnam War dropped from aircraft using gravity and kinetic energy to penetrate the jungle canopy with lethal results. Quite heavy for its size (0.4" Dia.)

 

[Steveo_1704]

I had some of those as a kid that my Dad found in some surplus store..

 

[PWC]

What is the source for this? Long time since the VN WAR and this is the first I've seen or heard. That is to say, there's a lot I don't know, but this should have surfaced before now.

 

[lemaymiami]

"Flechettes" were different critters entirely , either fired from cannon (at point blank range...) or shotguns (not very effective at all...).

Unless I'm very much mistaken you're looking at a gravity anti-personnel bombing item from WWII... I used to see lots of them offered for sale in bucket loads back when I was a kid prowling surplus stores in the sixties (yeah, I'm in geezer territory now...). Have never heard or read just how effective they might have been - but dropped from altitude I imagine they'd ruin the day of anyone hit by one... I never heard a thing about any use in Vietnam...

I actually worked in the late sixties with an E-7 green beret at one point when I was in the service myself... He'd already had two tours over in jungle land by 1969 and described the use of flechette rounds in cannon as an item only used when "they were coming over the wire"... He also said you'd hear the cry "Beehive" and hit the dirt to clear yourself from the path downrange... When I finally made it to Vietnam myself a few years later I was never a combat type - just a pencil pusher - but the thought of defending the wire with "beehive" and fougasse didn't appeal at all....

My Dad did two tours there (in 1965 and again in 1969) and I'll always regret not learning more about his experiences there before he passed away. Me, I was just glad to come back in one piece -even though we had to sneak back in-country since we weren't very popular at all.

 

[JShirley]

Flechettes were dropped from aircraft back to WWI. Haven't heard of dropping them in 'Nam, but I find a Wiki entry about it.

John

 

[PWC]

Fleschettes were used in anti personnel rounds in the M79 in VN. HE while the bad guys were at arms length, then fleschettes when they were too close. Good at opening a "corridor".

 

[aarondhgraham]

I also had a dozen or so of these when I was a kid in the late 50's,,,
My great-uncle told me they were dropped from altitude over the trenches in WW-I.

They were fun to have a few of them in your pocket though,,,
Totally freaked out a teacher back in the 6th grade,,,
She thought they were grenades.

Aarond

.

 

[kBob]

APERS in the 105mm howitzers used a flechette round round that could be set as muzzle actuated out to considerable range. I personally was on hand in training as they were fired at targets 200 meters with the timed burst about half the way to the target. It was not a big shotgun round in the 105mm but much like an old WWI era Shrapnel round ( which used lead balls rather than flechettes) in that one set the fuze timer for the range it was to be most effective at. I seem to recall the APERS (flechette) 105 howitzer round could be set for targets to 1200 meters but don't quote me assuming one guessed the range correctly the effect was much the same at 1200meters as at 200 as the projectile burst and despinsed the submunitions about 100 meters short of the target,

There was a muzzle actuated Flechette round for the M67 90mm Recoilless Rifle that WAS like a big shot gun round as the flechettes where no longer packaged in the projectile immediately after leaving the muzzle these had a 8 degree average spread and were to be used on targets to 300 meters. The cone was About 14 meters wide at 100 meters and about 40 meters wide at 300 meters.

There was supposedly a muzzle actuated 155mm round though I never worked with or saw that one used. Really big shot gun.

The 90mm tank gun used on the M48 series tanks in VN used a muzzle actuated cannister round that was muzzle actuated so it became a big shotgun. Again eXperimental rounds may have been issued mimicking the 105 howitzer flechette round but they were not standard rounds.

Every 40mm M79 or M203 or CGL round I know of for direct engagement was a shot gun round with round pellets, the one eventually standardized had fewer pellets than the GI buck shot for the 12 gauge and a lot lower muzzle velocity. .As a lot of ideas were played with there may have been an attempt to develop a Flechette 40mm GL round, but they never showed up in any of the manuals as approved ammunition to my knowledge. Biggest problem with any round other than HE in the 40mm GL was the need to unload it or waste it if a HE target showed up. The HE rounds were set back and spin armed at 15meters +/- one meter. The combat danger close area for using the HE round was 31 meters and if one did the math that meant there was cheerfully less than a 1 in 20 chance of catching one of your own frags at that range. The M79 gunner was only armed with the GL and an M1911A1 officially. Thus the appeal of the Colt Grenade Launcher and the M203 mounted on the Service rifle. I will say and M203/M16A1 system is more cumbersome than an M79, but it is a lot more flexible than an M79 in a bad place.
The M79 could easily use long rounds that one would have to detach the barrel to load in an M203 so the Flare, Parachute Flare, and CS grenades used with the M79 pretty much went away with the M203.

The problem with the Lazy Dog submunitions was that the planers did the math for dropping them in a vacuum and the real world isn't. Because of their shape and tail fins to keep them point down they had a higher terminal velocity than say a round ball that size or even a bullet fired from the ground at high near vertical angle falling back. They may have gotten up to 300 FPS or so dropped from any height say over 300 feet. But once the reach their terminal velocity in the air they will not go any faster.

If the target was "troops in the open" they could have done some real damage. Troops under any sort of over head cover could later gather interesting toys to send home or turn into game pieces of some sort.

-kBob

 

[H&R Glock]

you can still buy flechettes at gun shows and sometimes they have "lazy dog" bomblets too. The bomblets are about 4-5 times heavier than the little dart flechettes. Lazy dogs were world war II. The little darts were Vietnam hardware.

 

[theotherwaldo]

I've heard that finned slugs like the one shown above were shoveled out of helicopters and prop planes over suspected Viet Cong camps and trails.

Pure hear-say, of course.

 

[Gordon]

kBob nailed it , accurately and completely as can be.
lemaymiami and I both had dads who went to VN, mine as a civilian on then top secret FLIR installations in the Mohawk aircraft . Dad brought over a 12ga Ithaca riot gun from LAPD contacts he had , he left it with me when he left after 90 days or so. He had the right papers for it and aGeneral officewr transferred it to me as I had a MACHV "pass" . I thought the 90mm recoiless was awesome and yes shot the fletchette round for fun . I was in and out of helio mostly so could think about "acquiring " one

 

[lemaymiami]

Depending on the when and the where you were over there - your experiences were very likely to be completely different from anyone else's... My Dad's first tour was in '65 in civilian clothes living in a hotel in Saigon.... As he said it was great fun until the hotel across the street from his was blown up by the VC... His second tour was in 69 and he was in uniform at Camh Ran Bay (Corps of Engineers - officer type....).

My one tour had me over there (with less than a year's service remaining) in 1971 when things were winding down - and the overall morale and behaviors that I saw were pretty sad... I was actually in one of the first groups required to take a urinalysis - to get out of there when it was my turn to go home.... Something I've never seen any account of in the years since (the heroin problem was that bad where I was north of Da Nang...). I was attached to the 101st - and that was not their finest hour at all.... When I tried to tell my Dad what I'd actually seen - you could tell it hurt him badly that the Army he served in for 28 years had fallen so low... I was a REMF -not a combat type at all - just a pencil pusher, but those rear areas had terrible problems when I was there. Amazing how far we've come since then - and a real cautionary tale for anyone making our armed forces a career...

 

[mokin]

Unless I'm very much mistaken you're looking at a gravity anti-personnel bombing item from WWII... I used to see lots of them offered for sale in bucket loads back when I was a kid prowling surplus stores in the sixties (yeah, I'm in geezer territory now...). Have never heard or read just how effective they might have been - but dropped from altitude I imagine they'd ruin the day of anyone hit by one... I never heard a thing about any use in Vietnam...

This matches the story I heard on these things. They were described as "an anti-material weapon" intended to destroy soft targets like civilian infrastructure, crops, and livestock. Evidently it wasn't about winning hearts and minds back in the day... I picked up a few as a kid. Fun to play with then, one would be an interesting conversation piece now.