Any chance we'll get this weapon in next CMBN module?

[Broadsword56]

"I called [my resupply request list] in to the battalion supply officer.

The main request was for several types of ammunition, including 60mm mortar shells adapted for firing from the M1 rifle with the aid of a grenade launcher.

"My men had found the expedient to be the most effective in street fighting in Brest and swore that it was more effective than either hand grenades or fragmentation rifle grenades. It, in effect, put the equivalent of 60mm mortars in the forward foxholes."

-- Capt. Charles B. MacDonald, Company Commander, p. 20. The time period he's referring to is October 1944 on the Siegfried Line.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I wonder why they would have bothered with adapting the shell to fire from a rifle when just firing the mortar itself directly works so amazingly well.

[Baneman]

I imagine for streetfighting, they'd want to give it a horizontal trajectory - "in through the window" sort of fing - I'd think a mortar coming through the window could ruin your day.

[Georgie]

It would bring the mortar to squad or at least platoon level. Hey Joe see if you can drop one on at the corner of that building over there; I think there are a couple Krauts waiting for us around the corner.

[John Kettler]

Broadsword56,

I hadn't encountered that one before, but Uncle George, who served in Boat Two (Navy unit which ran LCMs for Patton's Third Army from D+1 to war's end) told me of a more potent version. It seems the 60mm mortar warhead had the same threads as the bazooka rocket. Switching over to the 60mm mortar warhead resulted in a lethal streetfighting weapon. 60s couldn't punch through many city roofs, but it was a whole new ball game when the mortar round whistled in through the window, right through screens, I might add, then hit the wall behind the window and detonated. The casualty radius for a 60 was ~16 meters, so you can imagine the ensuing havoc.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Sgt Schultz]

I was hoping for the SPR "bonk the pin on a rock and throw it" option.

Mortar Team loses its tube and starts chucking the rounds at the enemy.

I mean, come on, we already have the "Lunchbox of Doom" demo charges.

[Michael Emrys]

Even the normal warhead on a bazooka rocket would not be something you'd want coming in your window. Might not kill everybody in the room, but I imagine there might be some soiled undergarments needing hasty attention.

Michael

[John Kettler]

Michel Emrys,

The drill with the bazooka used to be firing it at the wall below the offending window sill. In this way, it blew part of the wall in with it when it hit. Since a shaped charge is highly directional, this is much more effective than what you suggest.

Regards,

John Kettler

[MikeyD]

If you look at recent combat picts of RPG-7s you more often see either a rod-shaped or bottle-shaped HE warhead instead of the old cone-shaped HEAT warhead. During the Iraq war they rebuilt saveral hundered TOW missiles with a squash head HE warhead. When they reintroduced the old Vietnam era LAW into Iraq I believe the new warhead was optimized for anti-presonnel, not anti-tank? So there's a history of AT weapons being modified for close infantry support work. Is the overflight/platter charge TOW 2B missile good for anything besides tank busting?

[Michael Emrys]

Since a shaped charge is highly directional...

This is true, but I submit that that much TNT going off in a confined space is going to be unpleasant for the occupants. Not nearly as many wounds as a fragmentation warhead, granted, but still a shocker.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

If you look at recent combat picts of RPG-7s you more often see either a rod-shaped or bottle-shaped HE warhead instead of the old cone-shaped HEAT warhead. During the Iraq war they rebuilt saveral hundered TOW missiles with a squash head HE warhead. When they reintroduced the old Vietnam era LAW into Iraq I believe the new warhead was optimized for anti-presonnel, not anti-tank? So there's a history of AT weapons being modified for close infantry support work. Is the overflight/platter charge TOW 2B missile good for anything besides tank busting?

ISTR that during the 1982 Falklands war, the Paras used their (MILAN?) AT missiles against dug in enemy soldiers, apparently effectively.

Michael

[Amizaur]

Michel Emrys,

Since a shaped charge is highly directional, this is much more effective than what you suggest.

It's a common misconception, probably because the exact way of working and physics of the shaped-charge detonation are not obvious.

It may be beneficial for future discussions to straighten it out.

The effect of the shaped charge is PARTIALLY directional - only small part (I guess from few percents to no more than 20%) of the chemical explosion energy is actually focused and directed.

The directional part is generated usually in the form of thin metal jet moving with very high velocity - that on very close range is also accompannied with slower jet of some very compressed hot gases that can be also "injected" into the fighting compartment by the penetration hole. There is also flying some other post-explosion stuff that is directed, but it is less lethal and not interesting).

For every soldier that happens to be too close, the explosion (with the exception of concentrated high velocity jet) is just omnidirectional and can normally kill him by the blast/overpressure effects.

It's can't be as "directional" as you think, because the high explosive of the shaped charge is somewhat self-confining - there is no heavy, thick steel outer shell that would confine and focus the explosion force - instead the whole outer part (thick outer layer) of the charge is there just to provide support (by the pressure of it's detonation) for the smaller inner charge part/layer (and - eventually - the metal liner) to be effectively compressed and focused. While outer layers of the charge are detonating, the pressure of the explosion is compressing/confining the inner layers but at the same time nothing is preventing their explosion products from just normally expanding outside!

So most of the high explosive in the charge is exploding just normally, omnidorectionally, and most of the explosion energy is released omnidirectionally too.

Explosion of Panzerfaust (or RPG-7) warhead with 400g of C4 or RDX/TNT would have just the same (well, almost, but the difference would be minimal) blast and pressure wave effect to the sides and to the rear, as a normal charge containing 400g of C4 and would kill you just as well and on the same distances.

And I'll bet if you seen two explosions, one of RPG-7 warhead, and the second of equivalent normal C4 charge, you couldn't see of feel any difference other than existence of the high speed jet produced by the shaped charge.

The shaped charge warhead is less effective in anti-personal role than dedicated anti-personell high-explosive warhead (with the same charge mass) only because the first produces very little shrapnel (the outer shell is made of thin metal or even plastics). There is no other difference.

[JonS]

The effect of the shaped charge (and especially of it's linner collapse) is PARTIALLY directional

Yep. Same thing with a Claymore AP mine. Standing in front of a Claymore is a really bad idea, but standing just behind it isn't going to be a fun time either.

They're both blocks of HE. HE goes BOOM. The explosive force in one direction is focused and/or augmented, but the explosive force in all the other directions doesn't magically vanish.

[Sublime]

One of the two reported fragging incidents (US on US) in Iraq involved a claymore =(

The first incident was literally hours before the invasion, guy chucked grenades into a tent or some such. However later in the war, a major disagreement with an NCO and the company commander and another led to the former NCO placing a claymore in a window and detonating it on the Company Cmdr and his Company Sergeant. Really bad news. Interestingly the guy charged was willing to plead guilty to not be executed but the prosecution wanted the death penalty. It went to trial.. and the guy got off. Lives in New York now.

Off topic I know.. but anything with claymore mines interests me.

[John Kettler]

Amizaur,

A most cogent explanation, but I find it flawed. Here's why.

All other things being equal, a room is not anywhere nearly as confined as the fighting compartment of an AFV. In turn, this substantially reduces overpressure for sure and blast falls off rapidly as a function of distance. Just as blast effects are much less in the open than when in a bus, so, too, are blast effects less in a room than in the highly blast reflective confines of a penetrated fighting compartment. For a crash study on what blast does to the human body, please see here.

[PDF]

Explosions and Blast Injuries - Centers for Disease Control and ...

www.cdc.gov/masstrauma/preparedness/primer.pdf

As seen in 4.1 below in the FEMA study, blast falls off at 1/R cubed, where R = range from the burst. Pressure falls off exponentially over time, in milliseconds. Thus, from a survival standpoint, the more distance you have from the explosion, and the more room the explosion has to expand into, the greater your chances of survival. The Russians found, and I wrote about this somewhere, that locked hatches meant certain crew death if penetrated by a Panzerfaust or Panzerschreck, since sealed hatches contained both the blast and the pressure spike within the fighting compartment. See IS-2 writeup at www.battlefield.ru for further details.

[PDF]

EXPLOSIVE BLAST 4

www.fema.gov/library/file?type=publishedFile&file...ch4...

The other part your model fails to address is that fragments have a considerably greater radius of effect than does blast. A bazooka round is not a very good fragmentation weapon, so, firing it into a wall, which either will fail outright over a considerable stretch and be blown in wholesale or will be pierced and will spray not only the shaped charge effects into the room, but a cone of high speed debris expelled from the far side of the wall. From this, it's clear that slamming a bazooka round into the wall is actually more effective, for typical rooms, than firing it into the window. Had the bazooka been so stellar in the through the window role, this would've been done. That someone came up with a far more effective field expedient is, I believe, significant.

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Michael Emrys,

A valid recollection! The MILAN was indeed used for bunker busting--pricey bunker busting.

http://militarythoughts.blogspot.com/2007/08/this-is-coolbert-from-comments-of.html

Sandbags or 2' thick concrete are poor defenses against shaped charge weapons. Not only was it true in the Falklands, it was true in WW II. I invite you to watch this for some telling weapon demonstrations of the M9 AT rifle grenade and the bazooka against such targets. This particular "fun starts at around 15:30 and lasts for a minute or two.

Regards,

John Kettler