Originally Posted by smartascarrots

It was shit. Sheer unmitigated shit and I hated it.


Utterly, utterly arrse.

It was utterly superb, you blaspheming heretic. You never hit anything with it because you were arrse. You never did figure out that fiddly catch thing on the butt cap, did you?

Originally Posted by FourZeroCharlie

Seemed to work for this chap.

Yes, 9mm blank was issued for Ex. Yes, there was a SMG CQB, though it was.......errm......interesting, if you were a Safety Supervisor. And I never really trusted a weapon where the Battle IA to clear a weak charge (that is a round left in the barrel) was to fire a second one round, inviting you to trust in The Great Sky Pixie and ballistics in equal measure.

Spic poseur. I don't think it was the Mk 5 Sterling (a Sterling with holes drilled in the barrel to make the bullet even slower) that worked so much as the Amtracs and Panhards somewhere out of shot.

I never saw a 9mm blank, ever.

PS Apparently the Argentines ensured that chap was evacuated from the islands when it became apparent that things weren't going according to their plans. It seems they didn't want pictures all over the front pagesof the world's press of him with his hands up and a buch of smirking Booties pointing his own Mk 5 SMG at him.

An RUC patrol was ambushed on the Glen road, Belfast one cold and very wet night in "77" 10 rounds from an SMG (which was recovered in the follow up) hit the front and sides of the leading "Hotspur".
None penetrated, peelers reckoned the shooter was only 20-30 feet away, ran like ferck when an army foot patrol opened up on him from about 50 yards up the road, i was in the patrol but tropper ferking was not there, before he starts chipping in.

Originally Posted by Mr_Snakey

So the story I heard years ago about an SMG and a wet blanket wearing chink in the jungle was a myth?

Almost certainly, unless he was wearing a slab of steel plate under the blanket. Clint Eastwood got that idea from somewhere.

The wet blanket thing will only work if it's free to move and the air resistance of moving a large area of material absorbs the kinetic energy of the bullet. Putting a body behind the blanket will ensure it doesn't work and blanket and body will be perforated.

was useful being plt radio op or milan backpacking though did walk off home with one once fairly useless with live rounds though.
had to laugh their was a picture of us specail forces in iraq with some captured though they looked ally

Originally Posted by Onetap

I was an admirer of the small metal gun. A simple question here for all the old gits. How was the SMG actually used in your unit? Issued to Heavy Weapons, signallers and drivers.

My experience was that it was only ever fired at SAA contests, that is single shot, standing at 25 yards. For some of us it was our personal weapon, so we also fired on APWT.

The sights were set for 100 or 200 yards, so did anyone actually get to fire it at 200 yards? Or even 100? Yes. Also fired on Section in Defence where the Sect Comd could have given the go ahead to fire at 600m, but I don't think anyone would be that optimistic. Might have hit targets at 300m, but there were others firing, so don't know.

Did anyone fire it from any position other than standing, i.e., prone, kneeling, from a trench? Yes. All of them and squatting, supported and unsupported. Did anyone ever get to fire it on automatic? Ooh, yes. From the shoulder and from the gut. Did anyone ever do the energetic leaping around stuff between standing and kneeling, that we did with SLRs, while using the SMG, or shoot a falling plate contest with one? Now that would have been interesting. Yes. Falling plate at the end of the 10 mile bash. IBSR and CQBR (in pairs) as well.

Were there any standing orders against such activities involving SMGs and live rounds? Hope not... It isn’t hard to anticipate some dullard tripping whilst having a full auto ND, taking out the entire range party. Done in pairs with DS hot breath on the back of your neck (and usually a hand on your yoke).

The 25 yards range seems to have given rise to the myth that the 9mm bullet fell harmlessly to the ground at 30 yards and/or was incapable of penetrating wet tissue paper. Sterling’s first SMG, the Mk 1 Lanchester, had adjustable sights that apparently went up to (a madly optimistic) 700 yards; I’d suspect that the sight was nicked from some Lee Enfield, rather than being purpose made.

Similarly, the shooting team resented the open bolt design that meant there was a steel billet rattling down the tube between squeezing the trigger and firing. There were some bloody good shots with the SMG. Getting the best out of it was an art form that required discipline and practice, lots of. The thing was designed for the military equivalent of a bar fight, not for Bisley. On this point, I'd tend to agree. As a shoot and scoot weapon for getting out of trouble, fine. As an assault rifle, no thanks. And who the fuck dreamed up the idea of sticking a bayonet on the end of it?

On exercises, since there was no 9mm blank issued, an SMG was as welcome as a concrete 66mm. But infinitely more welcome than a GPMG or Charlie G. And since there were no blanks, much less ammo weight to carry, just a chit in lieu.

So, your recollections please. Anyone mentioning wet blankets will have sharp objects shoved into a wax voodoo image of their wrinkled bodies.

I liked my perforated friend - except when that bloody cocking handle found its way between my ribs. And it could shoot pencils.

Aldergrove 25m range 1981 trying to get rid of boxes and boxes of Indian 9mm through smudge and browning. A bit disappointing when the rounds would only travel 15m and the extracted cases were still fizzing.

Ex Trutziger Zacsher (or whatever it is spelt) in summer 1985. 1TP Dirty 30 vs the elite 82nd Airborne. We won.. until the Dutch DS decided that grungy engineers do not beat '"elite" airborn warriors. Anyway, we are all dead for 6hours, so as you do we all stick to our own until someone breaks the ice. In our case, a young sceptic sees me cleaning my smudge, wanders over and offers me money for it...
... and then more money
... $2000 dollars cash
... and his M16!
"hey Sarge, what do you reckon? me with this under my trenchcoat and a case of magazines, I'd be king of the block!". Thought the loon was joking, was gobsmacked when he pulled the cash out. I did wonder whether the charge plus loss of wages would be less than $2000 and owning an M16 to boot.

We did all the stuff on ranges with an SMG that you would do with an SLR but only out to about 100 metres if my memory is still right after all these years, maybe two hundred, I'm not sure now. That included firing it on single shot and fully automatic, right handed, left handed, standing up, lying down, behind walls and on corners etc etc.

That apart, the only people who actually carried it on operations were MT drivers and the signallers in the signals platoon. Everybody in the rifle companies from the OC down to the newest rifleman carried SLR's except of course in South Armagh where GPMG's, LMG's and M79 grenade launchers were issued and the M79 carriers still had their SLR's.

There was the old story going around that a 9mm wouldn't penetrate a wet blanket at 100 metres. The wet blanket equating to human skin in some way. Well one day down at Hythe, we stuck a wet blanket up and tried shooting 9mm through it from an SMG. Guess what? The blanket failed the test and the 9mm won the day. That blanket ended up with lot's of holes in it.

Anyway, I liked my SLR and if they had suggested to me that I carry an SMG, I would have said "no thanks", I'm ok as I am.

31 Aes , i think we got 10 rounds per year to fire the smudger to qualify. iT was fired at 25 yards on single shot. Our staffie one Tommy Atkins said that he had fire the smg full auto during the mad minutes in Aden or someplace hot and gritty. I must say once i was demobbed I did rather miss the feel of it banging against the hip as you walked down the road.
Never saw one but I hear that they even had bayonets for 'em .

Turfed up in Berlin in 1990 to be greeted by the host SQMS - "Some dozy fucker at your unit sent an indent for X thousand rounds of 9mm. Don't worry, though. I changed it to 5.56 and it's all ready in the Ammo Store."

"Is it the sort of 5.56mm that fits in an SMG?"