Posted: 9/19/2014 5:06:55 PM EDT
 Gone to the great Snackbarr in the sky
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| I can't claim to be an expert on mortars but googling around has taught me that there have been similar incidents within our own military. One round could be in the tube already and a second one is dropped which sets off the first one. Unfortunately that happened with a 60mm mortar and a group of Marines were killed. I've seen video and pictures of Syrians making their own mortar rounds inside of local workshops. Ordnance made in non factory conditions by amateurs probably isn't going to be very reliable. Also Assad's forces have been known to booby trap ammo. |
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Quoted: I can't claim to be an expert on mortars but googling around has taught me that there have been similar incidents within our own military. One round could be in the tube already and a second one is dropped which sets off the first one. Unfortunately that happened with a 60mm mortar and a group of Marines were killed. I've seen video and pictures of Syrians making their own mortar rounds inside of local workshops. Ordnance made in non factory conditions by amateurs probably isn't going to be very reliable. Also Assad's forces have been known to booby trap ammo. |
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Quoted:
I can't claim to be an expert on mortars but googling around has taught me that there have been similar incidents within our own military. One round could be in the tube already and a second one is dropped which sets off the first one. Unfortunately that happened with a 60mm mortar and a group of Marines were killed. I've seen video and pictures of Syrians making their own mortar rounds inside of local workshops. Ordnance made in non factory conditions by amateurs probably isn't going to be very reliable. Also Assad's forces have been known to booby trap ammo. Also not a mortar guy, but I have fired the 81mm numerous times. I was usually at the other end, but when I was instructing FIST procedures at USMA, they had the FOs man one of the tubes during an FPF at the end of each day. Hard for me to see how two rounds get in the tube at once. We'd have one guy call "hang it" and then "fire" when shit was level. Would have been tough to get another one in the tube after the guy hanging it dropped it, but as you note, it has happened with tragic consequences. I suppose that other things could also go wrong. Fortunately, they went right for me one of the first days I was being trained on mortar ops. I was at a tube with several other FOs and we hung and dropped a round and it went up maybe 15 feet in the air...slowly, before it fell back to earth. We all hit the ground and flattened out. The mortar guys with us stood still and laughed. That was the day that I found out that that the fuse requires a decent amount of acceleration to arm. |