November 28, 2008
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
06:17 AM
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Post contains 11 words, total size 1 kb.
"Look! We've reinvented the Japanese Knee Mortar!"
Which, of course, was called such because of a translation error, thus resulting in more than a few broken legs...
Posted by: Wonderduck at Fri Nov 28 10:21:47 2008 (Hrqgp)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Fri Nov 28 13:02:35 2008 (+rSRq)
Steve, if it looks stupid... and it works... than it wasn't stupid. The guy evidently proved to himself that he could direct-fire a mortar "from the hip", NOT permanently damage himself in the process, and he got an idea of about what accuracy (or lack thereof) he could expect. Maybe it looks silly- but using equipment in ways the designers never expected (just in case you might, say, need to tackle a bunker or a fortified house thirty yards away in urban terrain, when your squad is all out of LAWS or the equivalent) is very much the American Way.
At least he wasn't using rifle blanks to fire sections of cleaning rod...
Posted by: DaveP. at Fri Nov 28 18:09:56 2008 (uAsxY)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sat Nov 29 13:46:01 2008 (+rSRq)
...and yet, Major Robert Cain won a Victoria Cross for (among a vast number of other things) engaging the enemy with a British light mortar in just that fashion: holding it off the ground, firing it horizontally, like the guy in the video is doing... and, if memory serves, there was an American who engaged targets the same way during the Battle of the Bulge... and I'm quite sure that, if you asked some long-service NCO's, you'd find out that this soldier isn't the first to ask "What if?"; just the first to videocam himself.
I'm also pretty sure that we train our soldiers to understand the difference between the firing line and the field, as far as stances and cover go.
Silly, I may grant you. A great deal of the experimentation that young men in uniform do with their weapons can be rather silly. But "stupid", much less with the emphasis you put on it, is going it more than a bit high.
Posted by: DaveP. at Mon Dec 1 01:10:03 2008 (6iy97)
Posted by: FAKevin at Tue Dec 23 19:19:16 2008 (yyz0D)
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