Had that been one of my gunners, his team leader had better get to him first… To prevent me from doing the lad harm… He and his team leader could count of carrying the main and secondary barrels of that gun until I got tired, and, back in the day, that took a very long time…
Hat tip to the Armorer…
June 4th, 2009 - 20:51
But how did they manage to pull it off? The barrel must screw into the barrel extension sufficiently far to allow for some sort of decent headspacing, doesn’t it? I haven’t been around .50’s for years, but as I recall, that is just not a simple thing to make happen.
June 4th, 2009 - 21:20
The barrel screws into the barrel extension. As the end of the barrel (which actually contains the “chamber”) reaches the depth where it must interact with the bolt, it is ratcheted in all the way, and then the gunner uses his headspace and timing gauge to back the barrel out to the optimum headspace (the gap between the face of the bolt and the entry into the chamber.)
If the gap is slightly wider than it should be, enough explosive force is generated when the gun is fired to create a credible explosion that can shred the gun (and gunner)…
In this case it looks like the gap was so wide as to allow the gas pressure of the fired round to dissipate freely, without compromising the physical integrity of the receiver, and knocked the barrel off, which tells me that the barrel was just hanging on by a few threads… Obviously either somebody didn’t know what they were doing, or they blew off checking the headspace.
The fact that they were standing around laughing about it afterwords, instead of calling for a medic (which is the very first thing I’d do if I saw a gun explosion) ells me that these folks didn’t know what they were doing, or didn’t appreciate the ramifications of what just happened…
Bottom line: The gunner got lucky on this one…
June 5th, 2009 - 10:54
Off topic…………love you
June 6th, 2009 - 20:50
Love you too, Highness…
I’m not scared anymore, of a great many things…