Military Photo Thread (Discussion)

Manic Moran

Firekitten wrote: »

jaysus that was close to your noggin wasnt it? Jundi know how to piss off tankies dont they?

Actually, I was more pissed off with myself, because I didn't notice it at the time. It wasn't until I was out of the tank that I saw it. Usually shooting at us is most appreciated, because it takes the most difficult part of the job out of the equation: Finding the opposition. Once they shoot at you, you've found them.

What really irks us tankers are the land mines. Repairing a track is a fairly labour-intensive process, and you can't shoot at anyone to relieve the stress. Worse when you're on your way back to base and looking forward to a nice cup of coffee.

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Erick Martinez, a military dog handler, carries Argo II over his shoulder on Hill Air Force Base, Utah

That dog looks somewhat bemused.

NTM

Firekitten

Manic Moran wrote: »

Actually, I was more pissed off with myself, because I didn't notice it at the time. It wasn't until I was out of the tank that I saw it. Usually shooting at us is most appreciated, because it takes the most difficult part of the job out of the equation: Finding the opposition. Once they shoot at you, you've found them.

What really irks us tankers are the land mines. Repairing a track is a fairly labour-intensive process, and you can't shoot at anyone to relieve the stress. Worse when you're on your way back to base and looking forward to a nice cup of coffee.


.

NTM

IED's taking your track off could be seriously bad, specially if it sticks you in one spot... not quite easy to repair it and slot.... Iraqi persons of balistic interest' at the same time... especially if they are thoughtfully shooting at you. I guess its one form of motivation to make your armoured boys move faster :P

Poccington

Just a little bit of useless trivia on that photo of what(I believe) is a photo of the first female Recruit Platoon to come into the DF.

One of the women in that photo later on in their career came awfully close to becoming the first woman in the DF to pass Selection.

Firekitten

bloody good for her... Pity chances are she didnt pass because of her birth certificate, not her performance.


Brass is brass, regardless of country.

Lemming

Poccington wrote: »

One of the women in that photo later on in their career came awfully close to becoming the first woman in the DF to pass Selection.

Have there been many applications for selection by female members of the PDF? Well, rumour/hearsay at any rate?

Also; first woman to pass? Have there been any that have passed since, if that would be known of course ?

Poccington

Lemming wrote: »

Have there been many applications for selection by female members of the PDF? Well, rumour/hearsay at any rate?

Also; first woman to pass? Have there been any that have passed since, if that would be known of course ?

There's a few that I know of, numbers don't seem to be too high though. It'd be rare to hear of a female on Selection.

No females have passed Selection since it first began. She just apparently came quite close, although the ground phase eventually did her in.

OzCam

Manic Moran wrote: »

Usually shooting at us is most appreciated, because it takes the most difficult part of the job out of the equation: Finding the opposition. Once they shoot at you, you've found them.

Post of the day, Mr. Moran.

We appreciate your knowledge and the time to answer questions on this forum. Thank you.

Repairing a track is a fairly labour-intensive process, and you can't shoot at anyone to relieve the stress.

I heard a rather gruesome story last weekend (which I don't even want to think about again, let alone retell here) about an accident while retracking a Warrior on exercise in Canada. Please take care.

......

Clarification please

"Selection"

Selection for what? Is that for the ARW?

Manic Moran

OzCam wrote: »

Post of the day, Mr. Moran.

Heh...

My current unit is 11th ACR. The motto in Vietnam was "Find the bastards, then pile on." Once you find the opposition, it's much easier to kill them.

From a thread once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away...

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=154045

For a quiet little part of the war, it’s pretty darned busy. We could see at least five fire fights within ten kilometres of us in our OP as we watch our area (which we think mortars might launch from). The worst of it hit some 1ID guys and resulted in some 15 casualties, I’m told. (Including one Bradley?). Due to the compartmentalization of the battlespace, we weren’t allowed to go charging to the fire fight, though we’d have been there in ten minutes or less in most cases. Finally, however, at about 22:00 we get a change of mission and go get sent to create a checkpoint on the road and try to nab some of the ambushers as they drive back from their ambush. For some reason, we drop the AT platoon, so we’re now down to four tanks, and the command Hummer.

Off we go, and we go careening down the road. We stop at a traffic cone in the middle of the road, apparently there’s an Iraqi police station there. After a little checking to confirm that the guys with the AKs were actually police, we go around the corner and go another.. oh… 400meters, maybe less.

The following will be told twice. The first time is what I saw as it happened, the second is what really happened as after I was discussing things with my lads.
We enter a slightly open section, and there’s a lot of popping. Takes me a fraction of a second to think ‘Hey.. that sounds like there’s another ambush going on. We must be near it, wonder how easy it’ll be to find it?’

The next thing which goes through my mind is.. “Well, would you look at that. Tracers.”

I don’t actually remember figuring out that they’re coming at me. I do remember yelling ‘SCAN RIGHT!!!’ Neither do I remember anything between that point, and looking in the GPSE at a target. Dropping into the hatch, mucking around with the seat, moving forward, doesn’t seem to have happened.

I see the most perfect target I could ever expect to see in my career in the thermal sight. A guy crouched, and running parallel to us, carrying what appears to me to be an RPK. (Initially thought it was an RPG, but I don’t think so).. I call for the platoon to stop (Took me a second, my usual response to an ambush is to drive through it, but hey.. I’m in a sixty-ton tank!), and also yell ‘RPG right!’ on the radio.

“Gunner, coax, troop”. Gunner has already flipped the toggle to ‘coax’

Then a ‘Clunk-thunk-unk’, the sight picture jumps around and I lose sight of the guy. Mutual curses from myself and gunner, he plays with the controls, and I have a target again. The person I’m looking at in the sight has no weapon, both hands are in his pockets, and he’s kind of casually standing around. There’s a built-up area near as well. I cannot be 100% sure it’s the same guy I saw two seconds earlier with the RPwhatever, and so don’t shoot. He strolls around, as if he’s a spectator, than after a minute or two, casually walks off.

We’re left cursing our luck. There was so much fuming going on in the tank, you could probably see steam escaping out the hatches.

OK, this is what really happened.

We drive along, and the enemy open up with an ambush consisting of at least two RPGs and two automatic weapons. Interestingly enough, the ambush is from both sides of the road at the same time. They’re evidently not worried about crossfire, though it does complicate things for us. RPGs fly in front of two of my tanks, one of which detonates on the far side, the other, near as we can tell, did not detonate at all. The tracers were all agreed to be high, possibly they were aiming for TCs. An inspection of the tanks later don’t indicate any hits by even small arms. The actual shooting lasted about three or four seconds, it was over bloody quickly. My lead tank’s loader got off a 16-round burst at one chap, he says he’d be surprised if the guy lived given the range, but I’m not optimistic. Nobody else got off a shot. Indeed, to my knowledge, mine was the only gunner to actually acquire a target. They let off one burst, and went to ground. What we think happened is that they’re not used yet to the concept of a whole bunch of tanks in our area, (Apparently my company has only one less tank along than the entire 1st ID) and thought they had another APC convoy going through (M113s, Brads). They launch their attack without knowing that we were a little stronger than that, but after we stopped, slewed the turrets, and that 240 burst as well, I think they probably all copped on, and decided that discretion was the better form of valour and scarpered.

I yelled to scan, and myself and my loader both dropped like rocks. As for what happened to my tank, it transpired that we traversed back far enough that we hit the inhibitor which prevents the gun from hitting the back deck. Unfortunately, what I didn’t know at the time was that whilst I lost sight of the guy with all the jumping around, the gunner did not (effectively a wider field of vision through the GPS than the GPSE I think) and saw the gentleman in question place the weapon on the ground. I didn’t find out about this until much later. Had I known, we’d have killed him. My gunner thought I knew. Hence my not being sure if I have a killer instinct: I think anyone else in the platoon would have shot him, but I didn’t. Then again, at the time he had the weapon, I had no doubts about commanding ‘fire’ at all.

Terrain involved some irrigation ditches, we couldn’t follow. There was a set of triple concertina wire, followed by the ditches. An attempt by myself to maneuver around the side resulted in the tank pitching forward at a horrible angle, and so we decided not to go forward. Six decides that they’re going to at least get the weapon that the guy dropped, so they get out on foot, have a tank lead and crush the wire, and so the dismount element of two captains and their driver goes out into the zone and starts hunting around for this thing. An hour later, they still haven’t found it. The terrain sucked, it wouldn’t have been too hard for the guy to push the weapon into the mud just under the surface. In the meantime, the tank that was used to crush the wire now has it wrapped around the sprocket, and so is limited in manoeuvrability. It then gets stuck in the ditch, listing at about a 50 degree angle, with the left track wedged in the ‘V’ at the bottom of the concrete ditch. Joy. So now we have to cut the wires, and of course, the sprocket with the wires trapped around it is the one on the threat side. Out hops the E-4 with the wire cutters. Another E-4 joins him, and I figure that I may as well stand out there too and keep ‘em company. I have to take out the bullet-proof plate in the back of my vest to work in the tank, so as I’m standing there holding the flashlight, joking around with the guys, I’m really thinking ‘please don’t shoot me in the back.. please don’t shoot me in the back…’ Considering we’re standing in the open with lights on where the bullets were flying not fifteen minutes earlier, the humour content of our chatting was pretty reasonable. Anyway, we get the wire out, the tank manages to extract itself, and it’s back home. We’re back in the tents by 0500.

So, lessons learned.

1) This mucking around with safety regulations such as mechanical safe on the .50, or whatever else that reduces response times has to go. From now on, my toggle switch is set for ‘coax’ and the .50 cal to ‘fire’. I’m just going to be careful about leaning on the butterfly.

2) This stuff happens bloody fast. It was over before we had even known exactly what was going on. I didn’t find out that it was an ambush from both sides until much, much later.

3) I don’t need to immediately drop to the GPSE. The gunner’s already looking at that. I should use that bullet-proof glass thing under the .50 cal and look for flashes.

4) Stay low. They try for TCs.

5) They don’t like taking on a platoon of tanks.

6) Say something like ‘coaxtroopsfire’. To hell with the long fire command. Afterwards my gunner said he was shocked to hear the textbook ‘gunner coax troop’. Chap would have been dead had I been a bit quicker on that one.

Final score was a nil-all draw. Better than a five one win in my opinion. Incidentally, my little foot-long Irish tricolour was flying from the gunnery flag stand just behind the TC’s hatch, so it is now my official battle standard. I hope this means we can get a combat patch now.. surely surviving an ambush counts! Overall, we’re almost spoiling for another fight. Just to redress the ‘you shot at us, so we’ll shoot at you’ balance. After that, if I never get into another fire fight again, I’ll be happy. I just have this naggling worry about a lucky round impacting my handsome profile as it sticks out the hatch

That was our first night out. We had more success later on in the deployment once we realised that the opposition would run away from us as soon as they figured out we were tanks.

NTM

Gatling

Excellent , as for the tree hugging ,earth lovin,beards moaning about your use of the flag typical bs a bunch of bums

Firekitten

Manic Moran wrote: »

Heh...

My current unit is 11th ACR. The motto in Vietnam was "Find the bastards, then pile on." Once you find the opposition, it's much easier to kill them.

From a thread once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away...

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=154045



That was our first night out. We had more success later on in the deployment once we realised that the opposition would run away from us as soon as they figured out we were tanks.

NTM

I belive what can be derived from this... is that they don't like it up 'em.

and Ozcam, I think I know that story... as per usual, Whiskey Jockeys dont know the meaning of 'stop' and 'now'

Poccington

OzCam wrote: »

Clarification please

Selection for what? Is that for the ARW?

It most certainly is, Selection for the lads with black tape over their eyes.

Firekitten

Special forces.... the reason armed forces never have enough black nasty lying around.

Puding

OzCam wrote: »

I heard a rather gruesome story last weekend (which I don't even want to think about again, let alone retell here) about an accident while retracking a Warrior on exercise in Canada. Please take care.

heard some horror story's from my late grandfather about his time as a tanker in Germany after the war

Grim.

Puding wrote: »

sad to hear about these two being killed

Leftyflip

Errm??

swiftblade

That one is staged for the photographer (note: no ammo belt)

But apperently it does work.How? I have no clue...

Leftyflip

swiftblade wrote: »

That one is staged for the photographer (note: no ammo belt)

But apperently it does work.How? I have no clue...

Got that yeah, just, yeah, look at him! That is silly.

swiftblade

Leftyflip wrote: »

Got that yeah, just, yeah, look at him! That is silly.

Ok hold on there's a better one....

swiftblade

A make-shift turret there. Can turn a full 360

Leftyflip

swiftblade wrote: »

A make-shift turret there. Can turn a full 360

Now that's thinking... even got his bottle of water, oh rebels...

Horse84

Grim. wrote: »

sad to hear about these two being killed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um4v-ioHqws

RIP

Leftyflip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kerMm0HG1mk

OzCam

Leftyflip wrote: »

Errm??

That position is for shooting at helicopters. It's an easy field expedient way to get the elevation you need.

Puding

that picture does seem a little off as the belt feeds from the right on the pkm but it is still a valid improvised anti air stance trained out, seen it a few times but manly from east block country from the pictures i;ve come across in the past

Firekitten

Hmm, second from the right looks deeply like a certain someone I can recognise, if I can, others can ... that picture should have the faces masked up Dave... its possible to ID them...

MindPhuck

Leftyflip wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kerMm0HG1mk

thanks for posting that. that really made my day man

MerryDespot

whydave wrote: »

Finnish Army

So THAT's the dude who won the winter war...

DoBhrionn

Leftyflip wrote: »

Errm??

That's how it's done apparently, according to sources, ridiculous as it seems. Using the 7.62 round it's good to fire at aircraft, mainly helicopters.
This method was also used in World War 2 on the Bren gun for on slow moving and low flying targets in the sky.
Crazy stuff though.

Firekitten

Ah merlins... gotta love em. Getting a combat insertion (admitedly on ex) in those was amazing craic. Though not when the grass the thing hovered over turned out to be a lot deeper than you expected. (Cue pile of bodies at the ramp end), and a very amused loadie.

Gatling

love to see them use an RPG like that ,

whydave

WANT !!!

whydave wrote: »

AlternateID

Firekitten wrote: »

Hmm, second from the right looks deeply like a certain someone I can recognise, if I can, others can ... that picture should have the faces masked up Dave... its possible to ID them...

Did I see that pic on panorama this evening with the faces blured?

DoBhrionn

whydave wrote: »

WANT !!!

I'm of the same mind...I've been looking for a CQB barrel everywher but to no avail ...maybe I'm not looking in the right places....

Firekitten

AlternateID wrote: »

Did I see that pic on panorama this evening with the faces blured?

Didnt see the show, but i expect so. Guys with an ops history like them shouldnt be posted so obviously. It is on milphotos too, but that doesnt make it right... Im quite concerned about it infact. They got up to some secret squirrel antics and pee'd off both sides.

Manic Moran

Manic Moran wrote: »

Tankers carry the M9 (Beretta FS92). MPs and aircrew get the M11 (SIG P228).

I need to come back to this one, quickly. I work with a light colonel who runs an M.I. battalion, they just did their range quals. Their pistol is also the M11. I wonder if it's not spread out to the extent that any non-combat arms unit uses the M11, to cater for the females.

NTM

Captain Chaos

The ol first shot double action trigger pull. Not allowed to just cock the hammer by thumb I take it?

Poccington

Firekitten wrote: »

Ah merlins... gotta love em. Getting a combat insertion (admitedly on ex) in those was amazing craic. Though not when the grass the thing hovered over turned out to be a lot deeper than you expected. (Cue pile of bodies at the ramp end), and a very amused loadie.

Nothing worse is there? Happened to me on an Ex while getting out of a 139.

Tanked up in complete battle rattle, with an 84 for good measure we barreled off the chopper and I straight away ended up waist deep in a ****ing bog. Spent the next 16k walking while soaked, absolutely cursing the IAC and everything to do with them.

Firekitten

I think they do it on purpose.

OzCam

AUG carbine barrel, 407mm.

whydave wrote: »

WANT !!!

Soon, my precious, soon.

Lemming

OzCam wrote: »

AUG carbine barrel, 407mm.



Soon, my precious, soon.

If I recall, you already have a shortie barrel for your AUG Bernard? I seem to recall you using one at one point at Berget 7 (or else I imagined the whole thing; the barrel, not B7 :pac: )

OzCam

Lemming wrote: »

If I recall, you already have a shortie barrel for your AUG Bernard? I seem to recall you using one at one point at Berget 7 (or else I imagined the whole thing; the barrel, not B7 :pac: )

Yes, that's the 350mm Compact barrel, the shortest one there is. I had to get a ported cylinder for the JG AUG to make it work properly, but it's great indoors.

It's easy to make; you just have to buy an adapter from eHobby and a short inner barrel.

The carbine barrel doesn't seem to be commercially available, but I'm having a standard barrel cut down. I must order the inner barrel soon...

1man3letters

seen this aug in the back ops thread (odd i know) but just look at the gnarlyism of it! winning! (its the last post on page)
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056084360&page=128

Manic Moran

Captain Chaos wrote: »

The ol first shot double action trigger pull. Not allowed to just cock the hammer by thumb I take it?

Eh? No, it's due to grip size. The FS92 is one of the larger pistols out there, a lot of females just can't reach around with their fingers far enough to hold it right. I always fire single action only on the qualification range with the M9.

Yes, that's the 350mm Compact barrel, the shortest one there is. I had to get a ported cylinder for the JG AUG to make it work properly, but it's great indoors

Meh. Real riflemen use the longest barrel possible.

NTM

Lemming

Manic Moran wrote: »

Meh. Real riflemen use the longest barrel possible.

NTM

Tank barrels don't count. That's just cheating

Manic Moran

American tankers are smoothboremen, not riflemen.

NTM

OzCam

Manic Moran wrote: »

Meh. Real riflemen use the longest barrel possible.

Short barrels are handy when you don't have the option of driving through or over a building, or reducing it to rubble from a couple of thousand metres away.

Firekitten

Manic Moran wrote: »

American tankers are smoothboremen, not riflemen.

NTM

Yeah, they arent man enough for rifling at that size not like the Brits They may be the Chavilry, but they can handle a bit of twist :P


Ozcam: the CAS Radio is mightier than the CQB rifle :P

Manic Moran

OzCam wrote: »

Short barrels are handy when you don't have the option of driving through or over a building, or reducing it to rubble from a couple of thousand metres away.

Do they even have a bayonet mount on a bullpup carbine barrel?



NTM

Gatling

try the ARW aug cqb barrel and Cmag as standard

whydave

Manic Moran wrote: »

NTM

I've seen your posts of your collection of BOOM sticks and now you tell use you have a sword !!!!!!!