Do you remember? fletchetts

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butchb243

New member
Does anyone else here remember a story comming out of WW2 about the U.S. loading some B17's with bomb bays full of flethchetts & droping them in the European theater ?
:confused:
Iseem to remember this story & they decided not to use them again because thy were so deadly that everything on the ground was killed & they were too easy to copy, didn't want the other side to use them.:eek:
Was this a true story, in a novel or am I suffering from old age
( senile) ? :(
 
Don't recall that, but I don't think they'd stop it because they were"easy to copy". Weren't flechettes used in WWI also?
 
Yeah. The Germans used them in WWI too. Flechettes are just small darts used in mines, etc. Anti-personnel and not good for much else. Sort of more sophisticated versions of the PLO's nail bombs or the Unabomber's pipe bombs.
 
They are still used

Tanks and artillery have flechette rounds for anti-personnel use. They slang word for them is beehive. We don't use them in aircraft bombs anymore because we now use cluster bombs for anti-personnel use.
 
I am familiar with what they are & thier use in shotguns in WW1. What I am looking for is the sorce of the WW2 story I mentioned.:)
 
Haven't found a source yet, but I did find a picture of the little boogers:

flech2.jpg

http://www.adrax.com/watsons/flech2.htm
 
Are we talking about flechettes, that look like tiny arrows, or are we talking about Runt's "Lazy Dogs", that look like .45ACP rounds with fins? The lazy dogs were used in WWII and would go through a engine block due to their weight but the arrow type flechettes would not have enough velocity or energy to do that much damage when dropped from aircraft. When shot from guns, that is another story.
 
I thought that flechetes were used in Vietnam by Marine artillery. IIRC there was a small APC with four tubes mounted on it that was used to clear areas under heavy foliage. It6 fired either pellets or flechete.

Anyone in country remember any of this?
 
"Lazy Dogs"! I used to have a bunch of those things when I was a kid, but I never figgered out what they were for. I assumed they came from one of them ol' timey warplane models, you know...before they had plastic and stuff.

Another loose thread tied into a tidy knot. Thanks. :D
 
Now that's a big gun(s)!

The one's I saw had two tubes on each side of the body near the top. Picture a tracked cigar box with a pair of tubes on the top of each side.
 
Libertarian, if it looked like a tracked cigar box, it's probably an M113 APC with TOW launchers or some other tube launched missle system.
My dad has pics somewhere of him sitting on an Ontos with four 106s on it. They were removable and could be fired from the ground as well. He said the flechettes from the 105s worked well for clearing thick brush and grass as well as other things.
 
Helicopters carried rockets with flechette warheads in Vietnam. The flechettes were packed in some sort of red powder buffer in the warhead. The rocket would zip out to some distance, then PUFF! a charge behind the flechettes would detonate, throwing a cloud of them forwards. You could see the red puff in midair. :eek:
 
Austrians use a flechette round for the AUG don't they? Read somewhere that they had a flatter trajectory and better accuracy than 5.56 ball.... interesting thread.
 
At a gun show 10-12 years ago in VA, I saw a saboted flechete rifle round that looked like a 12d nail sized sparrow missle. It was .308 IIRC
 
Vietnam

I know that there were artillery rounds loaded with flechettes as well as 12 guage shotgun rounds....but that was in Vietnam...don't know about WWII
 
Some of the Cav units in Viet Nam fixed 106 Recoiless Rifles to the sides and top of their tracks to clear buildings and foliage of suspected VC. Some weere mounted on top, others welded to the sides.

Tanks and Artillery both have "Beehive" rounds using fletchettes.

IIRC a Japanese movie I saw many years ago about their participation in WW1. The movie showed japanese aviators dropping nails on the German defenders of Port Arthur in China! Of course this was a movie but possibly could have been based on fact. Can't remember the name of the flick but it was definitely subtitled.

As to the M113, here are a couple of links. You have to scroll down to find pictures of the M113 with 106 mounted:

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/5265/M113A3.htm

http://www.geocities.com/equipmentshop/m113combat.htm
 
Here's a shot of a couple of flechette rounds I have in my cutaway collection;
the left one is an XM645 Special Purpose Individual Weapon (SPIW) cartridge, loaded by IVI in Canada for the SPIW program at a cost of $3.50 per round; they fired these at 2000 rpm:eek:
the right one is a newer round from the late 80's ACR (Advanced Combat Rifle ) program. Both of these are "puller"-type flechettes, unlike the Vietnam-era 12-gauge rounds. The flechettes used in the shotgun and Beehive rounds are a lot blunter than these, and are thicker and heavier as well.
 

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I once listened to a Major who told a story about a Victor Charlie attack one night. It seems that their leader jumped up on a berm with a pistol and motioned for the attack with a sweeping movement of his pistol. He was IMMEDIATELY hit with flechettes and the attack stoped dead. Recon found him "nailed" to a tree by the flechettes. Nasty, but effective. (I know I'm going to spell this wrong, but I believe they were also called "Shalayly Rounds"...Anyone remember the correct spelling?)

KR
 
"Shillelagh" was the missile fired from the 152mm gun launcher mounted on the Sheridan "Armored Fighting Vehicle" (AKA deathtrap)

It is named after some type of ancient Scottish weapon, ask George Hill he will probably know. :D
 
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