Sunday, September 18, 2011

Firing the M203 Grenade Launcher

Continuing with my Heaven in Camo weekend, this morning I got to fire a half dozen rounds from an M203 Grenade Launcher--the standard grenade launcher for all army units.  M203 is the designation for the entire weapon. The grenade launcher itself is the 12-inch tube underneath the barrel of the rifle  or carbine it is attached to.

The weapon fires 40mm grenades and loads like a shotgun.  We fired dummy rounds.  The live rounds are high explosive and have a kill radius of 5 meters so you don't have to make a direct hit to be effective.

Stalingrad: War and Peace for the Twentieth Century

Vasily Grossman ’s Stalingrad is an ambitious novel, and remarkably, it succeeds in its vast ambition. When Grossman set out to tell the st...