Shooting the 5.56 SKS

[caribou]

New Year night and the sound of sporadic celebratory gunfire is sounding back and forth across our Village with fireworks thrown up ever few seconds.
We save fireworks for New Years as the Midnight sun does not let them have much of an effect, but our perpetual Polar night is perfect.

Anyways, it appears the daughter didn't notice a Wolf Steel 55grain 5.56 mixed in with her 7.62x39.

Midnight came and the line up and 'FIRE!' cranked right up, and Carol plugged away just fine, untill it was her last shot (Im standing behind em all, keeping it safe) went from 'BAM!' to 'Pow....' Hmmmmmmm.

At the cease fire she showed me an open bolt back and a case head stuck in the chamber.

I set the rifle aside as we reloaded and spent the rest of our shells as the kids were doing 20 and 30 round burns with AK's, Mini14, etc

Inside, later I took her SKS , used its cleaning rod and knocked out this;

Chambered from the magazine in semi auto loading, It fired.






2 cracks and the thinner steel formed to the 7.62x39 neck and shoulders......

Just sayin'

 

[Speedo66]

Glad she's safe. Wonder if the case results would have been different with a brass case?

 

[caribou]

With brass, it probably would have formed a more defined rather than curved angle with the shoulders/neck, maybe not even crack.... I donno, it wont happen again , if I can do anything about such

Its going into my collection of 'wrong bullet, wrong chambering' left overs

 

[boom boom]

I wonder if Ivan the factory worker accidentally mixed one of the rounds up at the factory.

 

[chicharrones]

And that's the reason all steel case should only be chambered in "commie" cartridges. jk

 

[BigBlue 94]

Wow! Glad all's well. That would make one interesting cartridge design lol

 

[kBob]

WOW! who'd a thunk it?!?!

From the title I was sure someone had rebarrelled an SKS and was showing it off.

I once fired a 5.56 round from a M1911A1....on purpose WARNING! kBob STORY IMMENIANT!

Big training exercise involving stateside troops at Hohenfels one year. There were "bad feelings" between the California Reservist and our Regular Army Infantry out fit stationed in Europe....as in riot in the snack bar, sort of muggings on the road at night, that sort of thing and no we did not start stuff or even egg them on.

I was a 90 RR gunner at the time and my Assistant and I were out on the extreme right flank in an exercise to have a shot up a road to one side or a shot up a fire lane in the other. We had a nice gun pit dug and the assigned ammo bearer was called back to the Platoon HQ to pick up lunch (a surprise for we had been issued C-rats that morning AND the lunch was to be "B-rats", a brown paper sack lunch with Ham sandwitch and a piece of fruit!) His regular team leader Ray, a twenty one y/o Buck Sargeant, took the ammo bearers place while the E2 private did the step and fetch for us old boys. Ray had not bothered to load blanks into his magazines yet and took the time to shoot the breeze while he sat on the back edge of our hole and started loading his magazines with blanks. A field judge with his white banded hat and white arm bands wandered up and leaned against a tree looking at us, as my assistant and I made little improvements to our hole in the form of a little shelf to hold an ammo can we had found. Just as Ray dumped a second box into his hands, one of those Statesiders stepped into my fire lane along the front of the platoon.

I glance up at the Field Judge and he was grinning at me. "Enemy Left" I sternly barked, then "Load One round APERS , tap clear!" All this for the benefit of the Field Judge. Of course we had no AP or HEAT either on such an exercise but we did have a "Subcaliber device" basically a dummy 90mm HEAT round that actually fired 7.62 NATO for training against real targets (there were cutouts in the chamber at the cartridge shoulder that allowed the tracer rounds we used for this to actually blow holes in the brass to reduce pressure and therefore velocity so the lit traced DID have the same trajectory as a 90mm HEAT round) today we had a few rounds of blank from one of the M60 GPMG sections so we could make noise and one was loaded in the Subcaliber Device.

True to form the "enemy" had come up on line for their assault and a passel of them stepped into the fire lane together from 40 to about 110 meters away. This would have been a perfect shot for someone armed with a gun that was about to fire an eight degree cone containing 1200 small darts a supersonic initial speed. My Assistant tapped my helmet and screamed "CLEAR! BACK BLAST!" and I touched off the blank and got a neat smoke ring out the front of the gun but no back blast like a normal round.

I yelled "RELOAD! APERS, tap clear." and glance to see why Ray was not shooting. I saw Rays rear and Elbows passing into the distance back towards the main body of the platoon. The Field Judge was ambling along behind Ray to see what was happening back at the platoon.

Now 90 teams in those days carried the gun, a few rounds of 90 ammo and one each M1911A1 for each team member. Whatever rifleman assigned as out ammo bearer for additional ammo provided his M16A1 to our defense.

Now they did not issue blanks for use in M1911A1 .45 autos in those days.

There was a bunch of firing up to our left rear and then some shouting and the sound of a horde of folks moving in our direction. Having no desire to be tied up with commo wire and beaten sensless I had to think of something.

In the bottom of the hole where Ray had been sitting loading his magazines lay a couple of 5.56mm rifle BLANKS and seeing the approach of the "BAD GUYS" I dropped a round down the muzzle of my M1911A1 primer down and stood up and screamed "HALT! I HAVE LIVE ROUNDS!"

As it happened the group of five folks only now about 20 meters from our hole consisted of a 2LT his some what grizzled Platoon Sargent and three young privates that looked eager to tie me up with commo wire and kick me into rubble. As I was aiming the M1911A1 at the center of that 2LT when I scream he came to a stop. Interestingly the older Sargent dropped to the ground and rolled behind a tree.

This young LT bellowed back at me "BS! Why would you have live rounds?" but he did not come closer and his privates got out of my line of fire.

I yelled back that we were Nuke Security troops and some of us had Top Secret clearences and COULD NOT be taken prisoner and that I was authorized to use deadly force in protecting my self.

The covered Sargent muttered "lets go around, Sir!" Ah, a man after my own heart!

The LT called my bluff again, but got no closer, so I yelled "Sarge, ya ever seen any .45 ACP blanks?" and pointed the pistol skywards and pulled the trigger. Somehow the stars , and more importantly the primer of the blank and the firing pin of the 1911A1, all aligned and the blank fired. There was a ball of flame from the skyward pointed muzzle and to this day I can not under stand the mechanics of why, but the slide moved and there seemed felt recoil.

There was cursing up hill and folks scattered to either side of us in their haste to escape a nut with a "loaded" M1911A1.

Much later I was able to take the time to examine my side arm and find the 5.56 Blank still in the barrel. I had to use a cleaning rod section to knock it free of the barrel of the disassembled pistol. The crimped portion of the tip of the blank was not only blown open , but pealed back like the arms of a hydra and pressing the inside of the barrel.

Four days later I qualified Expert with that same M1911A1.....and the RIGHT ammo.

Actually the only bad out come was that I spent the next year talking Ray out of trying this with a round of ball ammo every time he got the chance.

-kBob (sorry, I did warn you.)