OT So, if you are a navy SEAL and you're carrying a gun, intending to use it as soon as you pop out of the water, do you have to put a cork in the gun barrel, so the barrel doesn't get any water in it?
I heard once that water in a barrel will cause the barrel to explode or something when the bullet hits it.
I'm sure water could leak into most other guns from the rear end of the barrel, but I figure there are ways to prevent that. But the front end of the barrel has to be either unobstructed or easily cleared.
And btw, did the captain jump into the water a second time, like I first heard, or was he sitting in the lifeboat?
I saw some demos recently of some models designed to replace the current M16. They would be pulled right out of sand and fired. Same from mud. Full auto. They did make the comment that the current Navy model of the M16 has ports drilled in strategic places so one can come right out from underwater and fire.
No kidding! Wow. I'm glad I asked. Although it turns out they weren't shot by Seals but by marksmen on the US ship 25 yards away, who probably had dry guns. They had towed or were towing the lifeboat to "calmer waters" but it still sounds like a hard shot when at least the lifeboat if not the big boat is going up and down.
Naval rifles had a canvas & cork cover/plug. If convenient, they were removed before firing.
If not convenient, no biggie. Not much will interfere with a 16", 2000 lb shell.
============== Then, too, there's this from another group:
Re-reading a Lee Child's novel [DIE TRYING], this passage stood out:
--- begin quote
First thing out of the barrel of Reacher's Barrett was a blast of hot gas. The powder in the cartridge exploded in a fraction of a millionth of a second and expanded to a super-heated bubble. That bubble of gas hurled the bullet down the barrel and forced ahead of it and around it to explode out into the atmosphere. Most of it was smashed sideways by the muzzle brake in a perfectly balanced radial pattern, like a doughnut, so that the recoil moved the barrel straight back against Reacher's shoulder without deflecting it either sideways or up or down. Meanwhile, behind it, the bullet was starting to spin inside the barrel as the rifling grooves grabbed at it.
Then the gas ahead of the bullet was heating the oxygen in the air to the point where the air caught fire. There was a brief flash of flame and the bullet burst out through the exact center of it, spearing through the burned air at nineteen hundred miles an hour. A thousandth of a second later, it was six feet away, and its sound was bravely chasing after it, but three times slower.
The bullet took five hundredths of a second to cross the [parade ground], by which time the sound of its shot had just passed Reacher's ears and cleared the ridge of the roof. The bullet had a hand-polished copper jacket and it was flying straight and true, but by the time it had passed soundlessly over McGrath's head it had slowed a little. And the air was moving it. It was moving it right to left as the gentle mountain breeze tugged imperceptibly at it. Half a second into its travel, the bullet had covered thirteen hundred feet and it had moved seven inches to the left.
And it had dropped seven inches. Gravity had pulled it in. The more gravity pulled, the more the bullet slowed. The more it slowed, the more gravity deflected it. It speared onward in a perfect graceful curve. A whole second after leaving the barrel, it was nine hundred yards into its journey. Way past McGrath's running figure, but still over the trees, still three hundred yards short of its target. Another sixth of a second later, it was clear of the trees and alongside the office building. Now it was a slow bullet. It had pulled four feet left and five feet down. It passed well clear of Holly and was twenty feet past her before she heard the hiss in the air. The sound of the shot was still to come.
Reacher's bullet hit Borken in the head a full second and a third after he fired it. It entered the front of his forehead and was out of the back of his skull three ten-thousandths of a second later. In and out without really slowing much more at all, because Borken's skull and brains were nothing to a two-ounce lead projectile with a needle point and a polished metal jacket.
The bullet was well over the endless forest beyond before the pressure wave built up in Borken's skull and exploded it.
Reacher was watching it through his scope. Heart in his mouth. A full second and a third is a long time to wait. He watched Borken's skull explode like it had been burst from the inside with a sledgehammer. It came apart like a diagram. Reacher saw curved shards of bone bursting outward and red mist blooming.
--- end quote
These goddamn male romance novels get me all choked up !
The author could have devoted more words to what the principals were wearing, what they thought about what the other principals were wearing. And what smells were there on this gentle breeze he mentioned?
On the whole, though, an entertaining jockstrap-ripper.
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And Reacher - the shooter - was even a SEAL. He was an ex-Army MP.
Interestingly enough, this one says: "Tory made sure that there was no air in the barrel because, if there was, the barrel could explode."
That seems to imply that if there is both air and water in the barrel, the barrel can "explode". So there would still be a big problem coming out of the water (with water leaking from either end of the barrel) to shoot into the lifeboat.
I never implied the AK was a replacement for the 16. The post I replied to was about a rifle that could be buried in dirt, pulled out & fired without cleaning. That's the AK.
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