I learned 1911s helping a buddy maintain my unit's 1911s. Our unit armorer ( an extra duty for one of our supply guys) didn't know how to disassemble one. Neither did the officers they were assigned to. This is late 1980s USAR, M9s were out, but guard/reserves were the last in line.
What I don't get is kids 2 years out of basic forgetting how to take down their M16s. It was at least 15 years after I got out before I touched an AR, but I still remembered how to do that. It was really beat into our heads in basic.
'Nobody ever called the fire department because they did something intelligent'
An audl story from my dad, a USAF chaplain's assistant. The time is 1962, the location is the US Airbase in Libya, and the Cuban Missile Crisis has got the zoomies on alert. Which means that even the chaplains get issued M-1 Garands for reasons. Now, it so happened that both were infantrymen during WWII, and a wager developed on if they still know how to fieldstrip said rifle blindfolded and under a minute, and they did. However, none of them could remember how to properly put it back together again.Originally Posted by TQP
"You win 100% of the fights you avoid. If you're not there when it happens, you don't lose." - William Aprill
"I've owned a guitar for 31 years and that sure hasn't made me a musician, let alone an expert. It's made me a guy who owns a guitar."- BBI
Oh it definitely is, absolutely. I'm absolutely guilty of pulling one over on my CO or other senior officers a few times over the years.
But publicly embarrassing the skipper is a short trip to an exceedingly heavy-handed NJP. A ship's captain of a ship at sea has considerably more power than your average O6 fullbird, even if they're an O4 or O5.
CO's these days also have basically zero sense of humor with these things, unlike in times past. Which makes me doubt that it was deliberate.
...though I've little doubt that whoever mounted that Trijicon backwards is absolutely hating life right now, regardless of whether it was intentional or an ignorant mistake.
I still wake up occasionally from a nap and am mentally stripping down an M60 machine gun. I haven’t broke down a real M60 in 20 years, but it doesn’t go away.
The stranger thing is I never have dreams about a M4s… Just the M60.
It's kinda like that how out of all the cool cars I've ever owned or drive, the only one I have dreams about is my vanilla '86 Honda Accord. Never my Prelude or '66 Mustang.
"You win 100% of the fights you avoid. If you're not there when it happens, you don't lose." - William Aprill
"I've owned a guitar for 31 years and that sure hasn't made me a musician, let alone an expert. It's made me a guy who owns a guitar."- BBI
Same for me, except it's an M249. There's something about being assigned a belt-fed that sticks in one's mind, I think.
How does it work with marines assigned to a navy vessel- do they maintain their own arms room separate from the ships’s own armory? Given the vcog, I’m assuming the rifle in the photo-op was Marine in origin, and if so, would that insulate the armorer from some degree of NJP or at least reduce the severity?
Anything I post is my opinion alone as a private citizen.
I think too much is being read into this.
The whole thing was because of the fixed front sight. The armorer merely wanted the sight to look further away in the scope, thus lengthening the sight radius.....
"... And miles to go before I sleep".
It depends on which class of ship. We have our own spaces for troop armories, some ships have spaces where you store everything. some ships have lockers in the troop berthing for personals. Older ships were designed around storing M16A2s and ALICE gear so its always fun wedging everything we have now into the spaces. On the LSDs the rifle rack is actually a series of deep cubie holes and they are not big enough for a rifle with a PEQ16 attached to fit, so we paint pen where the laser attached to the rail and the LBS in the welldeck prior to departure to confirm it didnt shift after reaatchment. Those VCOGs (SCO) absolutley do not fit in those racks on the M27s. So probably the same issue.
The VCOG on the M4 on a Destroyer is by itself interesting to me... As there are normally no Marines on Destroyers, plus we do not mount that optic on the M4, only the M27 IAR. Every Navy M4 on a ship I've seen before is normally fitted with a Aimpoint or EoTech for the VBSS dudes unless its a M16A2 being used for topside security. So I guess the Navy bought some VCOGS, which was honestly a shit choice due to how they typically use rifles anyhow. Giving out new gear with no guidence on how to set it up or use it is a problem everywhere...
As for the CO of the ship, I'm way more interested in how he leads and fights his ship than how he shoots a rifle. And maybe don't let public affairs make decisions unsupervised...
Last edited by rcbusmc24; 04-12-2024 at 07:58 AM.
"So strong is this propensity of mankind, to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts." - James Madison, Federalist No 10
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