M-14 Rifle: used on nuke subs !!

K

Kernel

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The March 2000 issue of National Geographic has an article about U.S. Navy submarines in the Arctic. The lead photo shows a poor half frozen swabee shivering on the conning tower, ice & snow as far as the eye can see. The text says something about standing "polar bear watch." (Er, yeah. Watch this polar bear eat Lieutenant Niedemier while I empty another clip of FMJ into it it). I guess the Navy Department never hear of the .375 H&H. ;) -- Kernel
 
I subscribe to National Geographic, but haven't received the March issue, yet. *grumble*

I can understand the polar bear watch, tho... the submarines must look like seals on steroids to them. :D

Cliff
 
Based on what I know about submariners (from Tom Clancy novels, movies, and the History/Discovery channel), they would welcome any chance to go topside, even for what must be a short watch in the Arctic.
 
Polar bear watch on the Coast Guard's Polar class Icebreakers is stood with a .375 H&H. At least it was when I was doing it. If we were doing the "ice beach" thing, (Drop the brow, and have a picnic on the ice, most of the time complete with softball game. Don't slide into 2nd, ice ain't soft.) Guns normaly set up one of the .50's, probably more beause the Skipper would let us shoot it after we got back underway, than for any real need.

Eric
 
Puddle Pirate, that's fascinating! Do you mean that the Coast Guard has actually purchased and issued .375 H&H magnums for Artic use? Can you give us any details about the guns, ammunition, scopes or sights, etc.?
 
AEM,
It's not an actual H&H, I think it was a Remington, but I got off Polar Star in '91, and my memory isn't that great. I only fired it once, for the qualification. The Deck dept. took over all the gun crews, so all us engineers could do was the occasional trap off the fantail. Guns did let us try that with the M2, that's a lot of fun, but them little pigeons are hard to hit with a .50. Now THAT is your tax dollars at work.

Eric
 
M-14 would be a pretty practical way to discourage polar bears, IMHO. I know a guy who had to shoot water buffalo in VietNam several times, and HATED the M-16 the first time he emptied a magazine into one and still saw it coming; he'd never had to put more than a couple of .308 into 'em before...
 
Long Path,I used up the whole mag, including the tracer that was round number 15.I had acquired an M14 by, uh, not reg channels,and held it in high regard.BTW,keeping the weapon on target in full auto is possible if you can do 2/3 round bursts. Most of that mag were hits.

We were laid over at a Firebase that had been hit pretty hard, and got drafted for sentry duty. Charlie drove a Water buffalo into the wire. The idea was to see if the buffalo got through,and test perimeter security w/o rosking his troops. The beast turned up in our sector and we opened up
With all we had, flares, Claymores and small arms fire.

The beast kept floundering and bellowing. Needless to say, the whole perimeter opened up and nobody got any further sleep that night.
 
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