"The Air Force kept losing its nuclear weapons"
Misleading.
I know that this was posted a while ago....and has little to do with low numbered Springfields.
Agreed, whether or not the President is guilty of Cronyism has little to do with low number Springfields, outside of how the bureaucracy does everything it can to deign responsibility and shift blame. I thought I would lay out the top level structure of DoD and point out yes, the President is responsible, and that all under the President fear his wrath.
Nevertheless....it is a misleading statement (at least based on the documentation). Use of the verb "kept losing" strongly implies that this was a continuing problem, repeated over and over. That is not accurate.
The reference in Wikipedia refers to a single incident (bad enough).
Accounts of the missing nukes can go to fantastical levels such as the story in this link:
Missing Nukes: Treason of the Highest Order http://www.globalresearch.ca/missing-nukes-treason-of-the-highest-order/7158
A less fantastical view is in this document:
The Unauthorized Movement of Nuclear
Weapons and Mistaken Shipment of Classified Missile Components
https://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/ada557097.pdf
We the public don’t know all of what has been going on behind the curtain. This Barksdale account would not been public unless it had been leaked, and then put into National Publication.
The Air Force decided to keep the mishap under wraps, in part because of policies that prohibit the confirmation of any details about the storage or movement of nuclear weapons. No public acknowledgment was made until service members leaked the story to the Military Times, which published a brief account Sept. 5.
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nukes-on-the-loose-how-it-happened/
The fact that the Secretary of Defense fired the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff indicates there was a lot more going on. The second citation I provided shows a failed system, not something that could be blamed on a group of outlaw forge shop workers. I am certain the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff would have welcomed some clearly defined scapegoats, and probably tried to convince the Secretary of Defense of them, but their heads rolled anyway. Perhaps the Barksdale incident was the first time the Air Force physically lost nukes, but then, how would we be know? The storage, movement, and loss of nuclear weapons is classified.
I read through this thread again. It seems that during the course of discussion the understanding of the "low-numbered problem" has changed from "it is impossible to tell which of the low numbered receivers are unsafe and therefore one should avoid shooting any of them" to "all of the low numbered receivers are faulty and none should be used."
Is that correct?
I agree it has all gotten murky. I could give a recommendation one way or another. This thread has been evolving over five years, and as I have learned more, the more I am leery of all old firearms. These things have real risks. I do think there should be a counterbalancing narrative to Dr Lyons and his adherents.
http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/
Some Observations On The Failure Of U.S. Model 1903 Rifle Receivers
Dr Lyon’s risk analysis is all based on the list in Hatcher’s Notebook, which is an incomplete list. It is really disturbing to realize that Dr Lyon is a medical Doctor (might be a reason 120,000 people die each year to medical mistakes) and to see that his analysis ignores underlying causes. Dr Lyon’s is not interested why these things break, he is analyzing a data base and providing misleading risk statistics. For him, the characteristics of low number receivers are irrelevant. The technology of the era, the poor quality of the steel, the lack of process control technology, these are things ignored in Dr Lyon’s analysis. It is as if low number failures have no assignable causes: the receivers just blow up randomly. No rime or reason to it, just acts of God, totally unknowable and unforeseeable. Well that is not true, there are reasons why these receivers are structurally deficient.
Shooters with low number receivers should gather all the information they can, and decide on their own what to do with their low number receiver.
Or go ask Mom and Dad. Dad will probably tell you to go ahead and blow your fool head off, and Mom will tell you not to shoot your eye out.
