Thread: Other contries equipment cock-ups.

I read that on the Sgt York the radar picked up the vehicles own cooling fans !The Rockwell B1 had a bit of an iffy start until the Septics made up a role for it.

Originally Posted by BuggerAll

Originally Posted by onearmedwarrier

I remember being out in SA with some of the GBQ boys. They could break a polished ball who did a good job of turning thei MV76's into scrap metal.

None of this makes any sense to me at all. I've Googles GBQ and MV76 with no result that would make sense and as for the rest WTF is a 'polished ball'?

I was wondering that. Maybe you have to be in with the the right "crowd"... nudge, nudge, wink, wink....

Saying that, when I was in the B&Q with the MK, I found that the 987's were really useless, and were sold to the Sylvanians.

Originally Posted by Stooge

Well, didn't the americans have massive problems with their M16s when they were first introduced in Vietnam? (I believe that due to poor manufacturing, some of the rifles wouldn't fire).

Wrong propellant, insufficient issue of cleaning kits and general GI slackness.

Originally Posted by Gungythree

Originally Posted by diehard57

Originally Posted by Speedy

It didn't help the M16 that after it's introduction rumour spread that it didn't need oiling either!

I thought they took it a step further saying that the rifle was 'self cleaning' due to the original design of the AR-15 having a chrome lined barrel and receiver. Also, didn't we use the M16 before the septics? I think they were issued to 'them' for use in Borneo and that the USAF had them before the US Army.

It was the AR-15 in Borneo, used by SF and Patrol coys

They were issued to Gurkha and Brit infantry and to FO parties. There were a few M79s available as well. But like the Aust inf in SVN were far too smart to replace all SLRs with them.

Originally Posted by CC_TA

SA80 also went to the Romanian Navy

Equipment c*** ups - nothing wrong with the design, just the destination - An Iso container full of lawn mowers turning up in shaibah Log Base - Iraq - Giggles.

Romanian Navy with A1's and no foresight (might just be for ceremonial though)



Not just weapons, our kit too!

Iraqes brought some tanks off the chinese which were so shite they only ever gave them to their reserve units .

Originally Posted by "emptyeye

Not just weapons, our kit too!

Not just the combat jacket, but the REME TRF too...

Originally Posted by brighton hippy

Chauchaut
was apparently used by the yanks as there boss wanted to keep the new Bar back till the offensive of 1919 germans were quite good at back engineering any half decent allied kit they captured

No the BAR simply wasn't ready when the US Army went to war. Full-scale production started in June 1918 and it was being used in action by September. The Lewis gun, though heavier, would have been a better alternative than the Chauchat.

Since work on the gun did not begin until February 1918, so hurried was the schedule at Winchester to bring the BAR into full production, that the first production batch of 1,800 guns was delivered out of spec;[6] it was discovered that many components did not interchange between rifles and production was temporarily halted until manufacturing procedures were upgraded to bring the weapon up to specifications.[7] The initial contract with Winchester called for 25,000 BARs. They were in full production by June 1918, delivering 4,000 guns and in July were turning out 9,000 units....

By July 1918, the BAR began to arrive in France and the first unit to receive them was the U.S. Army’s 79th Infantry Division, which took them into combat for the first time on 13 September 1918.[7] The weapon was personally demonstrated against the enemy by 2nd Lieutenant Val Allen Browning, the inventor's son.[7] Despite being introduced very late in the war, the BAR had made an impact disproportionate to its numbers; it was used extensively during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and made a significant impression on the Allies (France alone requested 15,000 automatic rifles to replace their notoriously unreliable Chauchat machine rifle).[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1918_B...utomatic_Rifle

The Chauchat was utter crap, its .30US chambering even more feculant. It's estimated that over half the number purchased for the AEF were thrown away by Doughboys.

We had the Lewis in USMC/USN service, but due to a personal beef the Chief of Ordnance(General Crozier) had with Col. Lewis, it was a non starter for the US Army. A few thousand were used for training in the states, but when the Marines landed in France, their Lewis's were confiscated, replaced with the rusty sardine can, Le gun.

Lewis donated every cent of the royalties he recieved during the war to the US Treasury.

American Cockups

T24 Light Machinegun- American MG-42. Developed in 1943 and intended to replace the M1919 in Infantry platoons, it was abandoned after firing trials. Seems the engineers at Saginaw Steering didnt make the MG-42 receiver long enough for the .30US Service Cartridge. Weapon jammed almost every burst, several catastrophic failures to due short chambering

T13 Beano Handgrenade, fragmentation- Developed under the premise that all Americans knew how to throw a baseball. Combined with an impact fuse, Premature detonations ensued when Joe pulled the pin and fliped it in the air before throwing it.

M50 & M55 Reising Submachinegun- Total Crap with a 12 rd mag. used by the USN/USMC/USCG. Col. Edson of the Raiders had his Marines dump the units issue in the Tenaru river on Guadalcanal.

M1903A4 Sniper rifle- Ordnance didnt even test them for accuracy before slapping on cruddy telescopic sights. Now the USMC M1903A1 with the 10X Unertl was a whole 'nother story, a real killer.

and of course how can one forget the USAAF's Bat Bomb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb (apologies for using Wiki)

Moving on we have the
M60A2 Tank aka the "Starship"
M551 Tank aka the "Shank"
Both used the 152mm Gun/Shillelagh Missile launcher. Sheridan also had a crap tranny and ended its days as a VISMOD OPFOR vehicle at NTC. Most of the M60A2's became AVLB chassis.



The M2/M3 IFV/CFV swimming screen- I had the dubious pleasure to experience a failure of the screen during a crossing of Cowhouse creek at Ft. Hood, Tx in 1982. We re-enacted a sinking U-Boat crew trying to unass that vehicle without drowning. By sheer luck all 9 of us made it out safe. It took 3 M88 recovery vehicles to dredge the Brad out of the depths.