Unofficial technical weapon question forum.

Some older MGs like the Bren were loaded from the top. Why? I suspect mechanical reasons. But the more important question: Doesn't that block the gunners sight???

 

Buddz, I'm not familiar with these older MG mechanism so I can only speculate and extrapolate, but I see many reasons for this.

First, MG magazines are often quite large due to the nature of the use of the rifle. With magazine over 50 rounds, they get long enough to make it difficult to have the mag underneath the rifle. The mag hold/release mechanism has to support considerable weight due to its large capacity. Also, the spring mechanism in the magazine must stronger to push the weight of the rounds up to the chamber. This also makes loading the magazine more difficult and longer. Having a top mounted magazine fixes all these issues at the same time, with the consequence of impairing visibility.

Gravity helps to push rounds down instead of making it more difficult and the mag holding mechanism as much less stress to endure. Also, with a large and very long magazine underneath the rifle, movement of rifles deployed in MG positions may be more difficult. Belt feeder magazine have a lower vertical profile than standard-design very large capacity magazine, which somewhat solves this issue.

 

Older LMG's like the Bren, Czech ZB26 or Jap type 99 have the magazines mounted above the action for pretty much the reasons Geo outlined, it solves many magazine feeding problems that can be encountered as well as having a top mounted magazine also allows for high capacity drums like the 100rd Anti-aircraft drum the Bren could be fitted with, without the drum impeding movement. Because early magazine fed LMG's were of a large rifle calibre, (generally between the 6.5mm to 8mm calibers) magazines were pretty large and weighty, which if located under the mechanism meant the magazine spring would have to be stronger to push the rounds up against gravity to the breech, which in turn meant more pressure upwards against the working parts, as well as the magazine catch spring would also have to be stronger (and often a larger catch is required also) to hold the magazine securely inplace. There's also the problem that if a large magazine is located underneath the weapon the weapon then has to be raised higher on a longer bipod to still allow free movement when firing the weapon prone, which places the firer's head higher up and and better target for the enemy.

A major drawback is of course the strength of the magazine spring needed for a magazine that sits under the weapon feeding up, and it's a problme thats been around since WW1. During WW1 germany experimented with a 20rd magazine for their Gew98 rifles, but they scrapped the idea as the spring needed to reliably feed all 20rds of 7.92mm up would be too strong for the average soldier to completely fill the magazine unaided, it would simply bee too difficult to load the last 5 or so rounds. The same problem came up again with the British/Australian L2a1 development in the late 50's and 60's. They were trying to develop a LMG based of the standard L1a1 (FN FAL) infantry rifle. While the LMG itself was relatively poor, the magazines were the biggest problem. Where as the infantry rifle fed from 20rd magazines, it was decided that the L2a1 would use 30rd magazines. The 2 main problems with it were
1. The magazine spring so strong that it was difficult to load the last rounds in, while it was also just a little too weak as to sometimes cause misfeeds and stoppages with the last few rounds.
2. The 30rd magazine was so long that the L2a1 needed a longer than usual bipod, and even then it caused some mobility issues while prone. Often gunners equipped with the L2a1 LMG instead carried the shorter 20rd magazines, while Aust SASR in vietnam often pilfered the 30rd magazines for their (often field modified to fire automatic) L1a1 rifles.

 

Time to revive this.

While doing a bit of 40mm nade research for my RO979/M4A1Improved projects I came around this XM-1060. It's a goddamn thermobaric 40mm? Now THAT would be fun I guess. "You talkin' to me Mr. Skaarj?" *plop* *BOOOOOOOOOOOM*

But alas the info provided is a tad too little to even start making assumptions - well except for no fragmentation and sure as hell more damage than a M406 - BUT how much more, which lethal effect radius (5m as M406 or more?), which total effect radius, and could such a thing even be portraied correctly in Inf, since they're supposed to be especially effective in closed environments (cave, room, etc).

Soooo, anyone got additional info, please...

 

You do realize that the X in XM-1060 means eXperimental, and that this round has never (or very limited) been used in the field.

 

I'm sufficiently familiar with US military designations to know what the X in XM means since I'm twelve years old.

Also keep in mind this article seems a bit "old" and these round are said to have been field tested in Afghanistan by US troops. If I may quote the last paragraph:

So they may have seen a bit more than just little testing.

EDIT: Also I wouldn't judge the service record of a XM weapon/ammo just on the designation. XM177, XM177E1 and XM177E2 all carry the X and did see a fair share of action.

Also Wikipedia (I know, shoot me) has the XM1060 listed as M1060, which might indicate it has been officially introduced - or that wikipedia is done by incompetent people..

 

I would expect this from anyone playing Infiltration, but we do have a XM-8 and XM-29 in Infiltration ... Every time someone uses one of these I get a seizure from disgust behind my computer...

 

Well, at least the XM8 is not a commonly used mutator - and as I mentioned above the XM designation does not necessarily indicate it's not seen service. Acually I hoped to get some info wether or not the XM1060 has been officially used and/or introduced and perhaps a bit of information which would allow making a realistic depiction of it in a computer game - but since it seems to be rather unkown I guess even a wild guess implementation is out of the question; a pity thermobaric is such a nice word..

How do you react to people using MAG7s, UDARs, DEs and the like - they're not really in military use? But I digress - if anyone finds some info on the XM1060 I'd still appreciate it - just out of gun nut interest

 

Well, there are all sorts of weapons that have been used for a very short time, or have been used in the past but are no longer used...

In general, I think the weapons in Infiltration should reflect what is being used by soldiers in the field today, the original INF weapons do that pretty good AFAIK, while the weapons from the INF mod team seems to be more concentrated on the "coolness factor" of the weapon ....

And no, I do not like DE's and whatsmore either, especially the .50 DE is just retarded, but the XM-8 and XM-29 score a much higher retardedness level.

 

I agree that the weapon selection in Inf varies between weapons which are actually used by soldiers today, and weapons which were added for "coolness" value, but I don't think this is limited to just the community weapons or just the bonus pack weapons. After all, items like the Desert Eagle and AKMSU have been in there from the start, and even weapons like the 5-7, P90, and SG 551 are cool, but are not really that commonly used at all compared to weapons like the M4A1, AKM, G3, FAL, etc which did not make it to the game until the SS and community bonus packs.

 

lolwhat

You're debating what weapons should and shouldn't be in a mod noone is developing for?

 

There's worst things for people to debate here, i just gound it rather odd for Gnam to re-reaise this six months later, I can live with experimantal weapons in INF like the XM8 and XM29, so long as we don't get requests for WW2 weapons or older ingame (wait i already did that ). Although i wouldn't mind a Martini Henry!

 

Uhm, this is the unofficial technical weapon question thread; I guess if we wanted to further discuss the topic raised we should make a "Inf's weapon selection sucks" thread - not that I would think such a discussion useful, but I've seen worse time-wasting ways on these boards.

 

LOL, I must not have looked at the prior post dates. I think I just felt like gabbing about weapons so I poked my head in, looked at the last post, and made a quick response. Probably was a mental precursor to the BR comments I made today.

 

Just a quick qeustion: I've read through a FAL manual lately and found that the operating instructions do implicate the FAL has a "keep-bolt-open" mechanism at empty mag as well as a lever to unlock this mechanism after a new mag has been inserted. Is that true? And if yes why in hell doesn't the INFMOD FAL use this in the reload procedure?

 

I don't know about other countries that used it, but the Australian Army removed the bolt hold open device from our SLRs in service; in Vietnam, our SAS had to jury rig up a device to keep the bolt open after the final shot.

Apparently the Australian Army rationale for removing the bolt open device was that it interfered with ceremonial & parade duty

 

Snake, even our Stg 58 has this bolt release, it is left of the mag release