Juggernuts... » USMC / MARINE CORPS / SEMPER FI

FOUND THIS ON BBC: DAKOTA MEYER SUES

Yarbz — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:12:20 +0000

I didn’t see this in the American sites, maybe I just missed it. I always find interesting stories from all over the world on the BBC that are not even touched on in American media, left or right leaning. Americans are too interested in who won American Idol or other network reality show or watching trials of assholes that don’t matter one hoot in hell… (Myself excluded as I refuse these shit shows and pseudo news events)

This REALLY looks cool

Sal Uki — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:08:17 +0000

The carrier classic is tonight. With all those jets removed from the deck I would imagine a pretty badass flyover. Happy Veterans Day!

FUN CARTOON BY ‘FREDDIE’ FROM THE SGT GRIT NEWSLETTER:

Yarbz — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:57:52 +0000

Click on the cartoon to go to the Sgt Grit store where you can like to the archived news letter or just buy cool stuff!

GREAT IMAGES FROM VETERANS DAY FROM ‘THE BIG PICTURE’

Yarbz — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:03:13 +0000

Click on the picture for a large version and click HERE to go to the original post…

FROM THE SGT GRIT NEWSLETTER. READ IT BUT ALSO THINK ABOUT BEING IN HIS BOOTS IN THIS SITUATION AND IF WE’D LIVE UP TO IT OURSELVES:

Yarbz — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:34:48 +0000

With people like this in the Marine Corps and other branches of the American military we’re obviously in good hands. Remember the pressure and difficulty Wooldridge and others endure daily as well as the everyday heroic the actions of our troops when we feel like bitching and moaning about poor weather, no raise this year, having a head cold, our team loses on Sunday or whatever… Semper Fi, -Yarbz

Below is an excerpt regarding the actions of one Cpl Clifford Wooldridge:

On 18 June 2010, CAAT White Bravo was screening in the Musa Qal’eh Wadi when it came under intense and accurate machine gun fire. After the vehicles returned fire, dismounts were pushed out to close with the enemy. Once the dismounts moved away from the vehicles, the company began receiving indications and warnings that the enemy was preparing an ambush for the dismounted squad. Corporal Wooldridge took his fire team and pushed around the suspected enemy flank. During the movement, Corporal Wooldridge’s fire team received fire from a tree line 100 meters away. Corporal Wooldridge directed his Marines to return fire and close on the tree line.

Once Corporal Wooldridge arrived at the tree line, his Marines noticed approximately 15 enemy fighters carrying machine guns, Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG) and rifles. The fighters were gathering in preparation to ambush the other portion of the dismounted squad. Corporal Wooldridge emplaced his Marines and proceeded to engage the enemy fighters. During the engagement, Corporal Wooldridge and his Marines killed five enemy fighters, wounded three, and forced the others to break contact and run away behind the compound. While his Marines held observation on the downed enemy fighters and waited to link up with the rest of the squad, Corporal Wooldridge picked up flank security. While on flank security, he heard voices around the corner of an adjacent wall.

Corporal Wooldridge then pushed around the corner and saw two enemy fighters moving into an ambush position less than 25 meters away. He immediately engaged with two bursts from his M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon, killing both fighters. Immediately after killing the fighters, he began to re-load his weapon and noticed the barrel of a medium machine gun appear around the corner of a wall less than five feet away from him. Knowing his weapon was out of ammunition, Corporal Wooldridge grabbed the barrel of the enemy’s weapon, threw the fighter to the ground, and became engaged in hand to hand combat. During the fighting, Corporal Wooldridge made multiple attempts to subdue the fighter. When the fighter made an attempt to grab one of his hand grenades Corporal Wooldridge grabbed the enemy’s machine gun and butt stroked the fighter, killing him instantly. Corporal Wooldridge’s bravery and aggression saved the lives of his fellow Marines by forcing the enemy to withdraw from the ambush and dealt the enemy a tremendous defeat and instilled fear in the remaining fighters.

A SHORT PIECE I POSTED TO THE SGT GRIT NEWSLETTER ABOUT MY DAD IN THE KOREAN WAR (ER,,, CONFLICT):

Yarbz — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:17:50 +0000

Mounted On A Tripod

Sgt Grit,

I subscribe to a weekly email from Military.com which includes links to interesting videos. One recent link was to a video called “One Mile Kill Shot” taken from History Channel. In it, the Marine Corps sniper uses a .50 cal single shot rifle to take out insurgents during an operation in Iraq

I forwarded this to my dad, retired Marine Colonel Barkley “BB” Yarborough (Enlisted as E1 1943, Retired as O6 1988). He enjoyed watching it and replied as follows:

Reminds me that in 1951 we used the older .50 cal machine gun, sandbagged with a scope sight, for a sniper weapon. It worked long range too!”

Well, that intrigued me and I asked him to elaborate a little and this is what he wrote:

“The gun was mounted on a tripod, with scope sight on top. Placed on ground and moved to get the sight set on the target spot. The target spot was one which had been observed with binoculars as a place where enemy soldiers were seen frequently. The sight could be changed every few days to pick a more likely traffic spot.

Once the sight was set on the spot, the tripod was anchored with sand bags to it would not move. Then a gunner would stand watch on the gun, and a second Marine would use binoculars and tell the gunner when a person had entered, or was about to enter the target spot. When the gunner had a target in the sight, he would squeeze off one round. Gotcha!

Our gun was set at the ridge line just over the left shoulder of the XO in this photo, taken in front of Charlie Co. CP. I have attached the image my dad referred to above. I hope the readers enjoy the story.

IF ANYONE CAN PULL THIS OFF IT IS PETRAEUS

Yarbz — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 10:56:28 +0000

Click anywhere above to go to the whole story…

MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST LEGALIZE LYING AND IMPERSONATING A CONGRESSMAN OR A SENATOR OR WHATEVER. PEOPLE SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING AND SAY ANYTHING… I GET THE FEELING WE’LL HAVE TO INVADE CALIFORNIA BEFORE TOO LONG AND IMPOSE MARSHALL LAW…

Yarbz — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:21:13 +0000

Court again strikes down Stolen Valor Act

The Associated Press

PASADENA, Calif. — A federal appeals court panel ruled Tuesday that people have a right to lie about receiving military medals, the second federal court decision in a month to go against the Stolen Valor Act.

Xavier Alvarez, who falsely claimed in 2007 to have received the Medal of Honor, challenged the law on appeal after he was charged with violating the act, which makes it a crime to falsely claim to have won a military medal.

Alvarez said the act is a violation of free-speech rights.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY

A10 “THUNDERBOLT” OR “WARTHOG” OR “HOG” OR “72 VIRGINS TRAVEL AGENT” OR…

Yarbz — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:20:49 +0000

From my email… Interesting stuff:

The official name of the plane built around this gun is “A-10 Thunderbolt II.” Its nickname is “Warthog” or simply “Hog.”

First there was this gun…

It was developed by General Electric, the “We bring good things to life” people. It’s one of the modern-day Gatling guns. It shoots very big bullets. It shoots them very quickly.

Someone said, “Let’s put it in an airplane.”

Someone else said, “Better still, let’s build an airplane around it.”

So they did. And “they” were the Fairchild-Republic airplane people. And they had done such a good job with an airplane they developed back in WWII…

…called the P-47 Thunderbolt, they decided to call it the A10 Thunderbolt:

They made it so it was very good at flying low and slow and shooting things with that fabulous gun.

But since it did fly low and slow, they made it bulletproof, or almost so. A lot of bad guys have found you can shoot an A10 with anything from a pistol to a 23mm Soviet cannon and it just keeps on flying and shooting.

When they got through, it looked like this…

It’s not sleek and sexy like an F18 or the stealthy Raptors and such, but I think it’s such a great airplane because it does what it does better than any other plane in the world.

It kills tanks.

Not only tanks, as Sadam Hussein’s boys found out to their horror, but armored personnel carriers, radar stations, locomotives, bunkers, fuel depots…just about anything the bad guys thought was bulletproof turned out to be easy pickings for this beast.

See those engines. One of them alone will fly this puppy. The pilot sits in a very thick titanium alloy “bathtub.”

That’s typical of the design.

They were smart enough to make every part the same whether mounted on the left side or right side of the plane, like landing gear, for instance.

Because the engines are mounted so high (away from ground debris) and the landing gear uses such low pressure tires, it can operate from a damaged airport, interstate highway, plowed field, or dirt road.

Everything is redundant. They have two of almost everything. Sometimes they have three of something. Like flight controls. There’s triple redundancy of those, and even if there is a total failure of the double hydraulic system, there is a set of manual flying controls.

Capt. Kim Campbell sustained this damage over Bagdad and flew for another hour before returning to base.

But about that gun…

It’s so hard to grasp just how powerful it is.

This is the closest I could find to showing you just what this cartridge is all about. What the guy is holding is NOT the 30mm round, but a “little” .50 Browing machinegun round and the 20mm cannon round which has been around for a long time.

The 30mm is MUCH bigger:

Down at the bottom are the .50 BMG and 20×102 Vulcan the fellow was holding. At the bottom right is the bad boy we’re discussing.

Let’s get some perspective here: The .223 Rem (M16 rifle round) is fast. It shoots a 55 or so grain bullet at about 3300 feet/sec, give or take. It’s the fastest of all those rounds shown (except one). When you move up to the .30 caliber rounds, the bullets jump up in weight to 160-200 grains. Speeds run from about 2600 to 3000 fps or so.

The .338 Lapua is the king of the sniper rifles these days and shoots a 350 grain bullet at 2800 fps or so. They kill bad guys at over a mile with that one.

The .50 BMG is really big. Mike Beasley has one on his desk. Everyone who picks it up thinks it’s some sort of fake, unless they know big ammo. It’s really huge with a bullet that weighs 750 grains and goes as fast the Lapua.

I don’t have data on the Vulcan, but hang on to your hat.

The bullet for the 30×173 Avenger has an aluminum jacket around a spent uranium core and weighs 6560 grains (yes, over 100 times as heavy as the M16 bullet, and flies through the air at 3500 fps (which is faster than the M16 as well).

The gun shoots at a rate of 4200 rounds per minute. Yes, four thousand. Pilots typically shoot either one- or two-second burst which set loose 70 to 150 rounds. The system is optimized for shooting at 4,000 feet.

OK, the best for last.

You’ve got a pretty good idea of how big that cartridge is, but I’ll bet you’re like me and you don’t fully appreciate how big the GA GAU-8 Avenger really is.

Take a look…

Each of those seven barrels is 112″ long. That’s almost ten feet. The entire gun is 19-1/2 feet long.

Think how impressive it would look set up in your living room.

Oh, by the way, it doesn’t eject the empty shells but runs them back into the storage drum. There’s just so dang many flying out, they felt it might damage the aircraft.

Like I said, this is a beautiful design.

I’m glad it’s ours.

My Nomination for FOTW: Westboro “Baptist Church”

Geekess — Thu, 06 May 2010 02:27:44 +0000

You are invited to help preserve the honor of Marine Lance Cpl. Thomas E. Rivers, Jr. and shield his family, friends and loved ones from the planned protest by Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS during his funeral service.
Details Here

If you are unaware of who Westboro Baptist Church is, or why they protest at the funerals of America’s Heroes who are killed in action, please scroll to the bottom of this page and view the 90-second video news clip.

Lance Cpl. Rivers died April 28, 2010 during operation in Helmand, Afghanistan.

Lance Cpl. Rivers was from Hoover, AL. He was a 2007 graduate of Briarwood Christian School and had wanted to be a Marine all his life. He joined the Marines in June 2007 and was serving his second tour of duty in the Middle East and had previously served a tour of duty in Iraq.

His Awards and Decorations include the National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Combat Action Ribbon, Afghanistan Campaign Medal and Iraq Campaign Medal.

He died at age 22 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.