M-60 question

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i like the 60 for what it is but all things being equal i would rather have the mag58. It always felt more"solid"

had a team sergeant killed by a cook off from a 60 in thailand

last round of the last firing order of the last day off training - jammed and the weapon was set to the side - he and the weapons guy went downrange stepped in from of the gun - bang !

I always thought that indeed it was his time - the odds were incredibly small


freakin bad Buddha that day
 
The M60 was kind of the canary in the coal mine. If you heard hundred round bursts, well the stuff was on. It doesn't take that many belts to get the barrelglowing.
 
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I wish they'd bring it back, I've held an E3/E4 model and it was significantly lighter than the 240B, the M60 weight is closer to the 5.56mm SAW. If I had the money that'd be the first full auto firearm in my safe.

Oh well, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts we'd all have a merry Christmas.
 
Having no experience with the -60, I asked Pops about it.

He said the Air Force at one point gave them M-60D(with spade grips) as door guns and he said they were the worst guns he dealt with in Vietnam. They shortly went back to .50 cals and mini-guns.

And I agree with Tuck, the idea behind the -E3 variant in appealing, or having something like the Mk-48 the SOCOM guys get.
 
Really? How does a cook-off cause the bolt to bypass the sear and sear notch on the op rod? Provided the trigger is not depressed at the time.
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Yea, I think you gota give this one to Stryker, I always thought it was the hot barrel thing as well, but thinking it through I believe he is correct.

Some of you may appreciate this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXzkHxwaoV4


One night I was pulling CQ in Korea, I was on perhaps my second pack of smokes, was really bored and I was doing my security checks. I got to the arm's room and the armor was up working so I spent some time talking with him. As we talked I looked at the 60s hanging by their carry slings on pegs on the wall left of the cage, and it made me think. I was bored right?

I reached in, and through the bars I started dissembling the gun and pulled each and every peace through the bars and reassembled the gun outside the cage. The armorer wasn't happy, they had to rearrange everything the next day :o
 
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Probably many trolls have never fired a m-60,least alone carried one.Never had a runaway on a cold one,always one that had been operated in a sustained fire mode.For the arm chair experts i would recommend downloading FM 3-22.68,and read up on what to do with a runaway.Or i guess, a condition that is impossible to happen.I must have been hallucinating when i saw on many occasions,the gunner drop the butt on the ground,hand off the grip,and tracers lofting downrange.
 
I fired/worked on hundreds of 60's. A lot has to do with the time period it was made. They (M-60s) would actually start to come apart if they had enough early parts on them. The early barrel latch would vibrate loose and the barrel would come out. If the gas piston was not safety wired on, the cylinder cap would open up and lose the piston. The early rivets would pop out and the receiver would start to come apart ( There was actually a quick fix welding jig in the system to repair loose receiver rivets. It worked like crap and ruined the receiver). I even remember a couple that had the barrel socket come loose, not while firing though. There is a lot more when it comes to assembly and design problems. Could you run a couple cans through with long bursts? In a new gun. Hell, we just tilted the gun, hit the latch, yelled look out below and threw a new barrel in. For the guy in the Navy: I had to take some guys out to qualify when a float came in. Until that day I had no idea that an M-60 would chamber a round with the bolt mounted backwards on the op rod! I also was around when the 240 was mounted in the 60 series tanks as a co-ax gun. It is better.
 
Being a former Marine machine-gunner, I don't have a lot of experience with the M60, but I have a lot of experience with the M240G, which is similar in terms of operation. The M240G, just like the M60, fires from an open bolt. The bolt is locked to the rear when the trigger is not being pressed; the trigger pull releases the bolt, it slams forward, chambers a round, fires it, then the bolt goes back and if the trigger isn't held anymore the bolt locks back to the rear. So if the chamber is so hot that it would cause a round to cook off, it doesn't really matter because there is no round in the chamber in between bursts.

So on an open-bolt belt-fed machine-gun it is impossible to have a runaway gun because of a cook-off; in fact, it's impossible to even have a cook-off in the normal sense of the word because every time a round is slammed into the chamber it's immediately fired anyway. In between bursts, the ammo is not in the chamber, it's on the feed tray. So if the gun was so hot that it caused the round to explode it wouldn't go down the barrel, it would just explode on the feed tray and the bolt would probably stay locked to the rear; and even if the bolt went forward there would be no live rounds left on the feed tray to chamber.

On an open-bolt belt-fed machine-gun, a runaway gun is caused by the sear breaking (or just wearing down) and not catching the bolt back after you let go of the trigger. It usually happens when the gun is hot because that means you just put a lot of stress on the sear.
 
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I was going to post what Theo did concerning the open bolt. I don't understand how it could be possible in an open bolt gun.

The only way I see it happening is if other parts of the gun were heating up to the point where they failed. Was something expanding to the point where the bolt could ride over a sear that would function in a cold gun? After it cooled the gun returned to functioning? That seems extreme, but I guess it might be possible especially considering claims they tore themselves entirely apart.
 
m.p.driver posted
No,a runaway is caused by chambering the next round into a red hot chamber,so it cooks off.
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This is completely wrong. On an M60 it is impossible for a cookoff to cause a runaway gun.

Heck; on an open-bolt machine gun like the M60, the round will be fired immediately as soon as it is chambered; how can that cause a runaway gun? Whether the round is fired by the firing pin or the hot chamber, the gun is designed to always fire as soon as the round enters the chamber. Either way, the sear will still catch the bolt and lock it to the rear as soon as you let up on the trigger. The only way to get a runaway gun is if the sear doesn't catch the bolt and lock it to the rear in between bursts, which is usually caused by extreme wear on the sear.

m.p.driver posted
Never had a runaway on a cold one,always one that had been operated in a sustained fire mode.
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Your M60 ran away because you had just put a lot of wear on the sear, causing to to fail. Shooting it a lot causes wear on the sear, which can cause a runaway gun; shooting it a lot also causes it to get hot. That doesn't mean the gun ran away because it was hot.

The only way I can see the heat alone causing a runaway gun is in the way that johnwilliamson062 describes above. But even if that happened, it's still not a cook-off.

m.p.driver posted
Probably many trolls have never fired a m-60,least alone carried one.
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Maybe they haven't, but it appears that some of them still know how it works better than you do.
 
For the arm chair experts i would recommend downloading FM 3-22.68,and read up on what to do with a runaway.
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Gosh...what for? Nobody said a runaway wasn't possible, but a cook-off it isn't.

And for those who may be wondering...a cook-off usually occurs when you have a round stuck in the chamber, for example a "failure to fire". If the chamber is "hot", you may get a cook-off.

Can't speak to the likelihood of this happening with the M240 as I never worked on or taught that weapon but I would assume those procedures are still part of the training program.

IMO, there is much more to running a gun than just being able to shoot it, understanding the cycle of operation, immediate/remedial action procedures, operator maintenance, INSPECTION and FUNCTION CHECK should ALL be known and applied.
 
I was never a -60 gunner, but I did my share of humpin' the pig. It was a good infantry gun, but it was not soldier-proof. If it was set up right, though, it was reliable and functioned well.

I think the problems began when the Army switched from C-rations to MREs, and we couldn't get the B-3 fruit cans we needed to stick on the feed tray...

The weapon fired from an open bolt, so there could be no cook-off from a loaded gun, but the anecdote cited seems to refer to a gun that had a stoppage with a round stuck in the barrel (Rules 1 and 2...ouch!).
 
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Guntucky...

If you catch CMT's new "unscripted" TV series: Guntucky about the gun shop near Knob Creek KY, they had a segment with the newer CAR-60 type 7.62x51mm machinegun.

ClydeFrog
 
There are still some in service. I shot one in the early 90's off the USS Portland (decommissioned) along with full auto M14's. The M60 was fun to shoot at the ocean at some target we threw out. M14 full auto not so much.
 
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