I was Marine for 1960 till 1965 and Carlos Hathcock was a legend in the corp before Vietnam and if there was no Vietnam I'm sure he would only of been known to the Marines.
No question there was more KIA's.
Carlos Hathcock .30-06
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I was Marine for 1960 till 1965 and Carlos Hathcock was a legend in the corp before Vietnam and if there was no Vietnam I'm sure he would only of been known to the Marines.
No question there was more KIA's.
Seven reasons why high power match rifle shooters liked the Winnies:
Receiver's near 3 times stiffer. Don't belive that? Go measure them. Or calculate it with those 4th order mechanical engineering moment of inertia formulas.
Easier to charge a magazine with 5 rounds quickly from stripper clips and a clip guide.
Easier to operate the bolt; it's got a better shaped and longer handle and is smoother with less tight spots.
More reliable feeding from the box magazine.
Extractors rarely, if ever, break.
Holds epoxy bedding better due to its flat bottom and side parts. Round receivers tend to work loose from epoxy bedding after a few hundred rounds.
Field strip the bolt and replace firing pin or extractor without special tools.
Trickymissfit
Well-Known Member
from what I read and heard, there was a guy in the 9th Infatry Divison down in the delta that had hundreds of confirmed kills, but the all time leader was actually a helecopter pilot. His tally was way over 1000 KIA's. Shot most of them out the side window of his chopper with a generic rifle (nobody said he wasn't nuts!). A lot of the KIA numbers has to do with were you were posted. Had a sniper been assigned to the Kam Duc area, he'd probably averaged over a hundred kills a month. There were some snipers assigned to SOG that probably did two dozen a month in Laos and Cambodia, but we'll probably never know for sure. Plus there were hatchet team guys that probably ETS'd with over 250 KIA a piece, and that job often cut your tour off on the short side. In some areas your life expectancey rapidly shortend everytime you pulled the trigger, as the NVA had ther own hunter killer teams that were most often very well equiped. While in other places it was business as usual. Still five or six thousand KIA's is a smallish fraction compaired to the big numbers (minimum of 665K), but most interesting.
gary
Trickymissfit
Well-Known Member
I did this with a mechanical CAD program that had 60K psi factored into it with a standard 30-06 bolt face with 60K psi pressure. Results were most interesting. I did it wiith generic 4350 pretreat steel that had a hardness of 30RC. I simply took a short actioned .223 and made measurments off it. (scaled them up. The bridge shifted all over the place on the round Remington action as well as the flat bottomed Mod. 70 action. The area behind the bolt seating area was much stiffer in the Winchester style due to the squared surfaces of the flat bottomed reciever. But the tops on both action needed work. Even more interesting was what the barrel did during the travel of the bullet. Seemed to twist in two directions at the sametime, but the slower the twist the less it did.
gary
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I never followed much after I got out of the Marines some thing better left alone so what your writing has no interest here.
Set your CAD up to see what receiver bends the most in the vertical axis as it gets flexed by barrel whip while the bullet's in the bore as the barreled action has its fulcrum at the back of the recoil lug.
RMulhern
Well-Known Member
The 173 gr. BT bullet out of the '06 made 2640 fps; NOT 2550 fps! I've fired thousands of those rounds while shooting on the Service Rifle Team with the USAAMU!!
Rick, check some on-line Mil Spec sheets for M72 and M118 match ammo then you'll see those velocities are measured at 78 feet. They're 50 to 60 fps faster at the muzzle.
An ex USMC rifle team member told me at a match in the late '90's that Hathcock's rifle shot M72 about 2580 fps and shot about 18 inches at 1000 yards. It's barrel was well worn. The unit at Quantico checked it out after Gunny Carlos retired. Carlos told me at the 1971 Interservice Matches (after he won the 1000 yard match with his magnum) that barrel was "well used."
Trickymissfit
Well-Known Member
Mr. Hathcock, I'm very certain knew what B/C's and things like that were in 1967 and 1968. But few others did. We all knew the bullet dropped a certain amount, and learned to adjust for that. I find him very facinating, and often wonder just how good he could be with today's bullets and equipment.
The rifle he was carrying when the AMTRAC ran over the mine on the road from Baldy to Ross dissappeared, and nobody knows what happened to it. Somebody in the Marine group recovered it, and kept it I'm sure. I have a photo of me standing at the fork in the road where that happened, but never knew who Hathcock was at the time. The road was not a good road to travel, and ws always mined. But there were worse roads to travel in that era of time. The Tam Key road was much worse, and even armored CAV units didn't like going down it so most guys off loaded an walked. Had Hathcock got out and walked he'd probably never been hurt.
gary
RTK
Well-Known Member
With all the superiority of the m70 that you have stated, why do they (government) continue to use the rem700 action as the primary bolt rifle today??
Kevin Thomas
Well-Known Member
Government contracts = lowest bidder. Simple fact of life in Government procurement.
Trickymissfit
Well-Known Member
1. lobbyist
2. political influence
3. locale of manufacture
4. the GOA (taking into all of above)
5. overall cost over performance would rank number one with the GAO
There were at least two rifles that came in cheaper than the Remington (probably more), but the Remington was lighter in weight. (important). A couple years back it looked like the Army was going with the Stiller action, but now looks to be out of the picture (so much for performance).
I do know that the Marines are looking for a new round to base a sniper's rifles off of. Last I heard it will probably be a 6.5 or 7mm round. Case will be fairly new, and maybe a completely new design. The idea is to take four pounds out of the rifle scoped and ready to fire. There has been a constant gripe that all the rifles out there are too heavy to be carrying all over hell's half acre. I have the distinct feeling that the action will not be Remington if they have their own way about it.
gary
