China Lake 40mm Grenade Launcher at the Range
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- čas přidán 29. 05. 2024
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Today we have a chance to take one of the reproduction China Lake 40mm grenade launchers out to the range! We are using practice chalk rounds...let's see how it goes! Only a handful of these were made, and perhaps we will find out why they were not more seriously considered by the military...
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Forgotten Weapons
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I think if it were HE and not chalk, you would have gotten him just about every time. Close enough for horseshoes as they say
Good enough for goverment work
@@jmace5964 government workers play horseshoes?
That explains *so* much...
40mm should have a 5 meter radius I believe
Came here to say that.
Exactly what I was thinking 🤔 😂 💯 close enough only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades... & 40mm high explosives too 😂😆
It's alright Ian, "close" actually does count with horseshoes and grenades.
And atom-bombs. The saying, as I have heard it, is: "Close only counts in horseshoes, hand-grenades and atom-bombs."
@@speedythree I like it. Will definitely include it next time I say it.
Depends what you're close to ... if you're close to but not in the opening in the pillbox, close might not count in handgrandes either. And depending how deep underground the command bunker is, might not even count with nukes.
The target he needs is a window to shoot into.
Also counts with hot dogs.
My friend has always dreamed of shooting a China lake even with chalk rounds, he's got stage 4 melanoma and has been trucking along like a champion with experimental treatment. Random internet outreach, we're out in Utah and if the viewer who has this China lake sees this I'd love to see if there's a chance I could surprise him with getting a chance to shoot this.
@@shaunpatterson9148 thank you!
May Ian and the owner of the gun sees this, i hope he can achieve his dream.
@ROTTENF00D He's stg-4 and signed over to a exp study? I've got a min I guess. Hmmm, I suppose this; umm, not sure if it's in journs yet or maybe a few years out from review but there's a cancer therapy prog out in NY he might want to check out...they're close if not just about on the doorsteps there. There's a few things I'd suggest to them to improve their results but I digress. IIRC, their last panel was ~15/15 over 6mos period with 1.5mos eff set in. He should see if they have a study that corresponds with his particular variant or close to see about eff of cross-prescribing for multi-use if nothing for direct use. He should be well to mention his prognosis for expediency so he can be fast tracked or if they've got something referential. I hope this is an answer to his issue. Best of luck.
Upvote this and help happiness
@@AM-dc7pv China Lake Cancer Therapy is highly recommended
I dont know why, but seeing Ian shouldering this thing makes me realize how ridiculously huge this thing really is compared to what it looks like in video games
I feel like most games actually make guns look bigger than their real life versions are, kinda funny to see it the other way around lmao
I really like the split screen between firing and the target.
Indeed. It's rare seeing the target in his videos. Would be nice to have for every range trip besides sniper rifles and some paper targets to see a group. But there is 9-hole reviews too and he already is quite busy.
I didn't realize how comically huge it would look like when you were shooting it. That thing is ridiculous for all the right reasons!
It looks like a cartoon tf2 shotgun
Yes
@@williamknight9379 demoman's loch n load as some similarities with the china lake
Looks like a gun for a badass comic superhero like Hellboy with his giant revolver..
@@JeffBilkins yea
I worked in an arsenal and made 40 mm rounds. When we test fired them, they were never on the target, but when we retrieved the target, they were riddled with holes. The rounds hit about 6 or 7 feet from the target but were still lethal.
Nice to know. Since the target is far from the camera, the explosion looks “harmless” and far from the target. But I was anticipating a comment like your confirming that this thing would be devastating even if it hit 10-15 ft from you.
I think even the farthest away hit would have been devastating to a real person. It might not kill them instantly, but probably take them out of the fight for a while.
@@leesuschrist One of the things we've seen from all the drone footage from the invasion of Ukraine is that the effects are surprisingly random. You often see good effect on target, but you also often see people in very close proximity getting away clean. Although something that's also been apparent is the difference between the soviet 40mm rounds and NATO 40mm. The ex-Soviet ones have a noticeably worse effect on target, with much less shrapnel being thrown around.
"I wasn't running the slide... violently enough"
Ian, remember your training! Run that thing like it owes you money!
I've read about these in a few books by Vietnam war era SF guys. They said the weight was also a factor in them not using it. An experienced M79 operator could lay down faster fire for a longer duration while carrying more rounds for the same weight.
It was built for assault squads and ambushes and for people who need to carry other things so a grenade launcher that shoots fast and can hold more than 1 round
The intent was the ability to lay down a lot of rounds in one burst, particularly when opening up an ambush. There were reports from SF that with the China Lake launcher they were able to put all 5 rounds in the air by the time the first round was impacting, which is huge in those first few critical seconds when firing starts. A single shot can't do that.
Russian GM-94 seems improvement of this concept
@@swordsman1137 i truly cannot find anything better about it. only lighter by .4 lbs and reloading is more difficult on the gm 94.
If I remember form John Meyers book one of his guys carried one one time and it was the weight of ammo as you needed to carry more ammo as it shoot faster I also read somewhere for the SOG guys the lack of a quick way to go from HE to Buckshot was a killer a trained m79 gunner could quicky change to what was needed most for the given situation with the China lake you had the same issues as most mag feed shotguns changing to slugs is a little bit more involved process than a break action
Yes, a single shot M79 in the hands of a skilled user is more practical in the long run but the China Lake was for specific applications, mainly to put down an instantaneous burst of grenades at a moment's notice. China Lake users reported they could put all 5 rounds heading downrange by the time the first round was impacting. That's pretty devastating in the first critical seconds of an ambush.
A practiced M203 gunner is able to put 3 rounds before the first one impacts (assuming a range of 300m +) and doesn't have lug around all that weight.
@@erikdingman9806 pretty sure the m203 didn't exist back in the Vietnam War era
@@luigiff3431 I remember seeing a picture once of a soldier in Vietnam era uniform with one. I always assumed based on that they did. It may have been late in the war.
@@luigiff3431 The m203 was used in the Vietnam War, Laotian Civil War, Cambodian Civil War, Civil conflict in the Philippines, Sino-Vietnamese War, Cambodian-Vietnamese War, Sino-Vietnamese conflicts, 1979-1991, Third Indochina War, Soviet-Afghan War, War in Afghanistan, Iraq War, War in Iraq (2013-2017) and the Syrian Civil War.
@@luigiff3431 it came into service in '69 and was in country pretty immediately.
The M79 was my carry gun in Nam, but I only carried 4 grenades for it. the other three bandoliers were smoke, gas, and flares. I also had another two bandoliers with all my medical supplies, because I was not about to carry a Unit One and become a primary target. I have to say it was significantly easier to load.
cap
@@MDLC424Nah, I look at the channels he's subbed to. I believe him.
I am after visiting the war remnants museum in Saigon last week. The China Lake is still there. This time it's called the "reformed M79 grenade launcher". It's an improvement over my last visit, when they simply called it an M79.
Saw it there in the "American War Museum" in 2005, never knew such a thing existed until that day.
Probably better using a metal rod...
czcams.com/video/EX_KGYCcQ30/video.html
Beretta M-79 if I remember correctly.
@@richardjames1812 Used to be called the museum of american war crimes
Vietnamese museum weapon experts seems to didnt even have basic knowledge about how different pump action grenade launcher and break action grenade launcher is.
The China Lake had quirks, but generally was fond of 2 ammo types, HE and Shot (My dads friend said his Sarge called is Canister), there was Phosphorus and a few other options like mentioned here such as a flare charge and a flachet round (The Artillary version was "Bee-hive" ammo). Out of all this he said they were trained to use "special" loads on the fly with Breech loading style, they put a new round in the tube direct after cycling the action otherwise you had malfunctions consistently. The field soldiers often would make there own warheads using the "Ranging" rounds he said. He never explained what that consisted of, but he said it helped a lot in specific situations when you needed more charge on range then you needed ranging charges.
Do note I'm not defending it, he was trained in the field and said he was not the designated grenadier. He took the position till a replacement came in a few months later. He said the action got tricky on ranging rounds and flare charges. He did say that suddenly being told to carry such a thing sucked as he was still using the M14 which was heavy. His opinion of the Grenade Launcher was that it was cumbersome, but in a fight its "a Piece of Hell that's on your side"
In the early 70s I remember seeing something on TV about gunships in Viet Nam using rockets that had flecette warheads.
I’ll take “things that are blatantly fake” for 500 Alex!
@@Morningstar_Actual super original joke dude
Did he ever get to use an M79?
True or not, that last quote is pretty cool
Keeping in my kind that the original China Lake launchers were probably even *smaller* scale production, you have to think, "Maybe there's a *reason* the China Lake just sort of died on the vine..."
ya its called spec-ops
Small scale production can also mean better fit in exchange of standardization.
And likely each one had a lot of time by an armorer going over them to make sure they functioned properly before being issued.
considering how long the US Army pursued the M14, I'd say it's not always a good reason. But like some of these other guys said, SF can play with stuff like this because it doesn't have to stay in the field long.
@@AsbestosMuffins Things that work well for special operations tend to bleed over *very* quickly to line dogs, *if* they work and are at all useful for anything but extremely niche purposes.
They built less than 50 receivers (and a little over 20 were confirmed to actually have been issued for field use) and it was only in service for one year with Navy Special Warfare. That's not an indication they worked well in service overall. I mean, the SEALs kept running their Stoners until they basically wore out and the M249 (which also fired the new service ammo that was coming online at the time) was available through regular procurement channels. And the Stoner had serious downsides and had other competitors available (for example, the HK21) that had fewer downsides, but the SEALs liked the Mk23 Stoner LMG so much they kept it until they HAD to change.
The China Lake launchers were nearly unique in capabilities, and yet the SEALs dumped them almost immediately and the project shelved, even though the SEALs were heavily involved in the very types of operations it had been designed for. That speaks volumes.
The two shells flying out at the same time killed me after all that time struggling 🤣🤣
With how many issues it has loading from the tube magazine, you'd probably get a higher rate of fire just loading straight into the chamber from the ejection port each time.
Behold the m79
Thats only because they were chalk rounds, like he said in the beginning of the video. They are literally made to only shoot HE rounds, the chalk rounds barely cycle.
Gotta love it.... "Oh drat my China Lake isn't running right...guess I'll have to bust out the m203.."
Never thought I would hear the words "grenade launcher" and "carefully" in the same sentence.
Be carefull, he has a grenade launcher.
@@Followme556 I love Paris in the the spring
Nothing like coffee and watching Ian fire a Vietnam-era pump action grenade launcher in the morning, lol.
In the summer of 1969, I worked at a Martin Marietta plant in South LA. One of the products was inert 40x46mm practice rounds for grenade launchers. The grenade portion was solid aluminum that was supposed to be the same weight as a real 40-millimeter grenade.
A handful of people have made a functioning 37mm version of this with a 3d prints and steel tubing.
Where?
interesting, but prints will malfunction after a few shots for sure.
@@moosesnWoop got hundreds of rounds down with prints
@@moosesnWoop could as wel be 3d printed steel or as 3d printed cast parts?
@@moosesnWoop lol
Seeing the 40mm pump action grenade launcher makes me wonder, is there a lever action grenade launcher out there? Please make one!
it will prolly work like a charm
I can picture the ads for the Henry "Huckleberry".
It would be a thing of beauty.
I'm holding out for the 40mm gatling gun.
@@50megatondiplomat28 The Hotchkiss Rotary Cannon is something like that
@@baileyclifford2852 STOP! I'm already as hard as I can get...😆
Charles "Patches" Watson was a Navy SEAL in Vietnam and he was involved in the creation of that 40 mm pump gun. And in one his books "Walking Point" or "Pointman" he claims to have come up with the idea. I read both books a few decades ago and they were great as I recall. He was Richard Marcinco's pointman. Dick wrote "Rogue Warrior" and started SEAL team 6, and he confirmed some of Watson's story. Their books are all worth reading.
I agree! I’ve read books from both SEALs! Rest In Peace, Commander Marcinko. You are missed.
He also mentioned that if it were not for the safety fuse in the 40mm round, he would had died testing the weapon because he accidentally fired off a live round into the ground less than 10 feet from where he was standing.
@@badweetabix I forgot about that. Patches talked about showing the China Lake folks how he used the break action grenade launcher and they were shocked how accurate he was. But that was long ago, I don't remember the exact details.
Not to correct you but I was told the 40mm has a centrifugal thing that has to spin so many times to arm it. We used to toss them at each other while gently spinning them to make the other guy shit his pants.
@@johnlefucker9323 did you read the part about the safety fuse? That's it. The projectile has to shoot far enough for that centrifugal safety to arm itself. So you didn't correct anyone, you said the same thing in a different way.
So, there's a trick with GLs, you pull the chalk projectile and replace it with a piece of fluorescent plastic that is the same shape and roughly the same weight as the HE rounds. You should be able to find them and reuse them. Also useful for handloading. Does take a bit of machining, but they're plastic, so not a big deal.
in the future
"nooooo you can't show up at 3 gun match with a 40mm pump action granade launcher"
ian: "eheh china lake goes thump thump thump thump"
Big thanks to the owner offering this opportunity. Why do they make the chalk ones that much larger when they colour code them anyway?
Yeah
given they chalk rounds are just molded from plastic
it seems like it would be trivially easy to match the shape of the live rounds
is there some safety purpose for making them different? maybe there's a training weapon out there only capable of chambering practice rounds not live?
Chalk isn’t dense so you need to enlarge the payload to get to the same weight and get similar performance to the HE loads
I have no proof of this, but I’d bet it’s for weight reasons. Chalk is probably lighter than the HE filling used in the standard 40mm rounds, meaning you’d need more volume for the same weight. You’d want the chalk practice rounds to weigh the same so they’d have the same trajectory as the live HE rounds to train proper accuracy. If you do all your training with a round that flies significantly further than the round you’ll be shooting in combat, once you get to combat all that training will be less than useless because you’ll be constantly missing.
Edit: I guess someone made basically the same comment I did just a minute or two before I posted this, but it didn’t show up on my end until after I posted it. Sorry Thomas; didn’t mean to steal your comment.
@@610Blackhawk That makes sense, but in that case why use chalk, rather than some other inert material that has the same weight as the HE charge?
@@nihtgengalastnamegoeshere7526 Chalk makes a nice colorful puff when it impacts, making it very clear where the round has landed. My guess is this is why they’re used for practice rounds, so it’s easier for the person practicing to tell how much they need to adjust their aim to be on target. They’re also probably also a little bit less dangerous than a solid slug, at least in theory. While a solid slug could ricochet and still hit something afterwards, chalk’s just going to break apart on impact, though that’s probably not a big factor in why they’re used.
I spent a lot of time as the squad grenadier, and the M-203 rocks once you get used to it. For training, we used dummy rounds that had the same shape and mass as the M433 HEDP round. Shooting on a flat trajectory defeats the purpose of a 400mm GL, which is to drop rounds on targets the rifles and machine guns can't hit.
a 400mm grenade launcher? we call those howitzers lol.
Learned the bloopgun and the M-203 in the early '70s. I was amazed by the simplicity of the task of launching such a large diameter slug (or shot, etc.) from it without creating problems from having to use small quantities of propellent which, in a rifle might wander forward or back, creating varying states of finicky ignition. The solution was an elegant one, as you know. I preferred the blooper, as it had all the reliability of a ball peen hammer while the 203 could let you down in a number of ways. Sorry you could not be allowed any silver or gold tips. they can really make things jump. Regarding the loading probs on that China Lake model, just be glad there is no Chiappa Triple version...
The secret to 40mm HE is you only need to lob the things within 5m of the target to be effective, so a 10m group at any range does the trick. Even Ruger owners could be effective 40mm grenadiers
I didn't even know ripping on Ruger owners is a thing.
@@elitedavidhorne8494 found the Ruger owner.
*sweats in PC9*
@gdiel1 My favorite A-team moment was when a civilian helicopter plowed, going like 200mph, into an underpass and exploded with the bad guy and all his men onboard. Then, a minute later, it shows them crawling out of the flaming helicopter wreck without more than some dirt smudges. Truly A-Team is the show where everyone has God Mode.
@@elitedavidhorne8494 oh yeah it is. Not the level that Taurus owners get.
Horseshoes and hand grenades. Would have been fun to see how close you could get at a 200-300 meter target.
I worked with a guy that claimed he could plop rounds in a ten foot circle at about 300 meters with an M-79. Note the word claimed.
I put one through the window at the qualifying range at ft. Knox with my m203 and hit within 1-3 ft with every other round using the quadrant sight. I believe that was 300 meters.
Close enough to matter. Lol
@@mpetersen6 I believe him. With some practice it’s not crazy difficult. It’s like shooting a long bow. At 100-150 yards you can lob them within 5m by feel. Those radius sights aren’t a great improvement over reflex shooting anyway.
Extra rounds, stopping power, and easily concealable. Might be my next EDC
"easily concealable."
1:23 - "They had a really hard time running anything except high explosive." A very important point from Ian that a lot of comments seem to be ignoring in their conclusions on this. Also a lot of "Oh a skilled X could do Y" Ok, you can say that about almost anything, a magazine's always going to be easier to use than single loading, it's kind of the whole reason why magazines exist. This video tells you how chalk runs in it, nothing more can be concluded from it, except that Ian looks like he's having good fun.
I started grinning when Ian said he was contacted by the owner, I was still grinning at the end 👌
Definitely seems like a special forces weapon for those situations when rapid fire is needed over all else, I'd imagine if you trained with it long enough you'd figure out the quirks of the action but unless you need the rate of fire the m79 seems more practical in every other regard.
That and it probably would work better with HE rounds.
I think the M79 would have a higher effective rate of fire even so. We could not ask the users of this weapon about their experiences in combat...I am sure they are all deceased with purple heart
The idea of this weapon system is defiantly great. Even if it can only fire HE, image raining down rapid fire three rounds of HE onto a target. That would be rather effective. Does not fully replace the M79 though as that can fire all kinds of other odd rounds, is lighter, and works for most 40mm tasks.
3+1
Pump guns are fun but a break action still has its benefits.
Either way, glad you had the opportunity to use and show us this thing
I am glad you did the comparison with the M-203 at the end, it was pretty much what I was thinking while I watched you struggle with the feed the whole way along.
I'm glad you said something, i didnt watch till the end till i read your comment
Isn't it a M320 when it's a standalone like that?
@@thetalesofdaneandco m320 is the heckler & Koch UGL it’s an entirely different weapon , m203 is m203 haha
Better comparison would be the Hawk Engineering MM-1
The M203 is certainly a neat little tool. But those chalk rounds didn't do that China Lake any favors. With proper live ammo it has far less feeding issues.
That being said the M203 can be slung under a rifle . And weighing less it lets you carry more 40mm.
I grew up on China Lake in the late 1960s and 1970s where my dad was an engineer. He was a civil engineer, so he built targets instead of weapons, but he may have crossed paths with that.
Everyone at China Lake is an engineer haha. Honestly it's the biggest secret hidden in plain sight. There's generations of families that have worked as engineers or other contractors or civil service on base. It's a bigger small town now, but it's still pretty small. As one of my friend said, "My grandpa worked on sparrow, my dad works on base, and now I'm going to be a mechanical engineer, working on base."
@@dogboy0912 when I first came to China Lake, the air quality program manager had grown up here, gone away to school, and came back to people all over the base asking if she was the daughter of so-and-so and thus-and-such. As it is, I'm an engineer working in hazardous waste.
I can see why man portable MGLs went in a different direction than pump-action. In the time it took to rack those rounds an M79/M203 could have put down twice as many grenades down the range
Planning to replay some New Vegas soon, Ian convinced me to bust out the China Lake for the run
There are some crazy stories about the MACV-SOG guys using these on operations in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Instead of HE, the SOG mad lads would put together their own jerry rigged 40mm buckshot cases, remove the HE rounds and reload the 40mm shell with said buckshot cases. One of those 40mm buckshot shells would absolutely shred that thick triple canopy jungle they found themselves fighting in, so it was sometimes to being used to create clear fields of fire and deny the enemy cover in a dense jungle where it was impossible to see more than 5 feet in front of you. But it wasn't necessarily just the jungle foliage being shredded. There's an account of an NVA soldier getting blasted with a China Lake loaded with buckshot from around 5 meters away when a SOG recon team initiated an ambush somewhere in an area called "the fish hook", the account noted it looked as if a Great White Shark tore a large chunk out of the guys abdomen. Absolute devastation.
79 lighter than 60 i loved it 68vet
I think the chopped down M79 in a custom leg holster is WAY more badass than the China Lake.
Vietnam vets weren't heroes in any way, they invaded a foreign country just because their government told them to.
I wonder what the recoil was like on those jerry-rigged buckshot shells. If I remember correctly, 40mm cartridges use some sort of special low-pressure system to get a good distance out of the round while not bowling the operator over or busting up their shoulders too badly, right?
Would that mean that loading the shell with, what, half a pound?, of solid lead shot would increase the recoil substantially? Would it underperform instead? I've heard stories about those jerry-rigged 40mm buckshot rounds too, I've just never heard about how effective they were.
I know specialized 40mm buckshot shells have been made since then, but I assume those were designed from the ground up to get ideal performance out of them, and not field-expedient weapons made on the fly.
@@kitblue3194they use a 9mm blank in a secondary chamber under the projectile to reduce the pressure increase. It's so the shock of a high pressure launch won't trigger the grenade primer early.
It's like a bullet shoved up the backside of another, bigger bullet in cut aways
"Yes, yes I do" The most absolute example of an appropriate response.
I ran an M203 on my M16A4 and M4A3 rifles in the Army, loved that thing. The China Lake is a good idea in concept, but seems to have just a few too many quirks (and weight) to make it practical nowadays (chalk round size/ shape aside).
"Close" is perfectly adequate when it comes to grenades.
Remember the rage you felt when you spent your last 950 points on the box with no ammo in either gun and the China Lake popped up
and it could only hold 2 rounds for some reason
Bruh memories
Nap time
“Ah, za nostalgia. It really isn’t vut it used to be”
-Dr Edward Richtofen
It pumped so slow it was faster to reload after every shot even without Speed Cola
Thank you to the owner who provided this opportunity.
My experience has been that the HEDP outperforms the chalk round in every measurable way. They fly further, with more accuracy, and the chalk rounds rarely travel to the distance on the sight, whether you're using a quadrant and leaf sight.
Ian has a lot more patience than I do, I would have started single loading them after one magazine!
Awesome. I've been waiting years to see this in action. Gun Jesus shooting the holy grail.
With this thing you can launch the grail out a fair way.
Truly this is the weapon of a carpenter.
TBF, with a grenade launcher you don't usually have to actually hit the target precisely.
I was looking forward to this one coming out. Sorry to see you had ammunition trouble at the range. I think I would be machining up some correct weight inert solids if I owned it.
Copy that!
40mm Bonk! rounds..
Got to use a M79 in basic and it was very accurate and being fairly heavy didn’t have bad recoil. Hit the corner window frame of a deuce repeatedly and into a 12x12 window from a hundred yards away. I carried the 203 in my service days to me more is always better if your trying to continue to live in a bad situation.
The china lake with the shotshell rounds for the 40mm would be epic.
15 round .22 lr beehive insert. Probably won’t cycle but still.
Shotshell rounds in grenade launchers are actually kind of disappointing... Ian has a video which he mentions this I believe. 12 gauge gets the buckshot going a lot faster than 40mm does.
The buckshot load is equivalent to a 20ga. Sadly.
With enough pellet velocity it would be perfect for geese season vs goose season. Although in my area (SE WI) there used to be (and maybe still is) an unlimited special early goose season. Fourty years ago one never saw a year round goose population. Outside from a couple of golf courses. In fact we would only see geese in spring and fall. Now they are year round and congregating anywhere there's green space. And doing what geese do.
At one time Mayor Daldy wanted to sue the cities in SE Wisconsin for the pollution causing Chicago to shut down their beaches. Nope. It was the local geese in Sh!+ago crapping on the beaches.
@@infogunvault6920 Yes, sadly physics get in the way. You would not want to fire a 40mm shotshell designed for optimal ballistic effectiveness. And before somebody brings up two bore and four bore shotguns, almost all of them were either industrial shotguns or punt guns (which were actually industrial shotguns as well when you think about it), and weren't intended to be shot from the shoulder.
Very cool! My only experience with the China Lake is in video games (lol) and seeing you hold the real deal made me realize it’s a bit larger than I had imagined. Thanks for the video!
yeah it looks like it would be a bit inconveniant to carry around
@@therideneverends1697 you think war is about conveniences? 😂
@@HRM.H Obviously the lack of this things adoption and use agrees with me
5:29 had me in stitches. That has to become a meme. The reaction is just gold.
Oh man, you always get to have all the fun, Ian. Thanks for sharing it with us.
So, just like an 870, you fight a poorly designed elevator! The model 37 Ithaca elevator/ejector fingers are brilliant.
I love my Ithaca 37.
Yep looks like it behaves just like an 870. If you pump it gingerly like Ian is doing you'll get malfunctions every time. Gotta rack it with some authority
@@lairdcummings9092 same same! One in 28 gauge, three in 20 gauge. Ten in 12 gauge! Lol
@@Joe3pops Dude! You should really consider getting a shotgun, they are great! lol
I just love how my ithaca throws the shells out
John Plaster addresses this contraption in his MACV SOG photo book and notes the same issues with reliability. Plainly the Bloop Tube was faster and more reliable
thank you Ian for bringing us new content almost every single day and giving us history behind some of the coolest firearms!
I had a toy one when I was a kid for a Christmas present, it fired tennis balls and worked really well and was great fun.
...That sounds awesome, I want one.
We used to call those practice rounds “Smurf” rounds.
That would have probably worked better if it were chambered in 20 mm.
Has Ian ever played Hotdogs, horseshoes, and hand grenades on VR? If not, I'd really like to see his reaction to it.
The modul m1a mod has a rifle grenade attachment and I added it to a China lake
He briefly reacted to it in a video he did for GameSpot about the SPAS12 in video games.
Something about that humongous cartridge bopping up on the ammo elevator just cracks me up.
I think if the mechanism was refined and worked as reliable as your average pump-gun (well, assuming it doesn't work with HE any differently then it did here) it would be pretty devastating. A single guy could lay down a significant amount of firepower in short time and then just switch to shoving the grenades in the barrel through the open breech for continuous fire.
"Significantly short"
Not words you wanna hear on a Pro Pipe range
The perfect sidearm for a space marine.
Yes it is.
Except it should be shooting 40mm self propelled rocket rounds. Like a 40mm high explosive gyrojet.
The only thing more annoying than New Vegas fans in FW comment section is 40k fans (I'm allowed to say this, i'm also a fan of both)
@@wildcardbitchesyeehaw8320 Don't forget the Star Wars fans any time a Mauser/Bergmann/Sterling/Lewis Gun/etc. appears on the channel.
@@wildcardbitchesyeehaw8320 so if I start yelling *"MOAR DAKKA,"* you'll be gritting your teeth..?
😁
When you shoot the M-79 enough you get an “eye” for the distance. Yea that was a while ago.
My only experience was with the M203 Grenade Launcher under an M16A2 when I was in the Army. That thing was a blast.
The shell wiggling around at the beginning made me laugh more than it should've
In your previous video on it you stated that there were reports that when it was running well a skilled soldier could unload a full gun into the air before the first shot hit the ground. Clearly it really does prefer the HE.
Ian's really out living his best life. Living the dream really.
The M79 was much simpler to use, although I would have liked to see a two barreled M79. I recall one range training day when our target was a blue painted barrel: we had a female soldier who was quite good and she lobbed a practice round right into the barrel from 200 meters.
i never actually thought that the nades are as "slow" as in something like call of duty so seeing that go across the arc in a second or so made me really happy as if i were to ever get ambushed and id have a china lake id be off good as i am a noob tube enjoyer
It would be great to see this with a little bit of tuning to get it running perfectly.
And the M230 is so much nicer to shoot on a platform like a M16A2 with all the extra grenadier hand guards and sights.
So basically, if you properly design and finish the pump action version, you could make it run a lot faster, considering it works as it should.
There's nothing wrong with it. It's just the chalk rounds are slightly too large. With properly sized live ammo the thing works beautifully. Well as beautifully as a cumbersome pump action grenade launcher can anyways.
I wonder if it would be better to just have dud paint rounds or something instead with something dense in them to match the weight of regular rounds
@@cleanerben9636 The chalk rounds were used and are still used because they cost pennies to make. And in a M203 or more modern multi shot grenade launchers the slight size difference doesn't really matter. Since the M203 is single shot and most of the other multi shot launchers use a rotary style action which doesn't have the issues a tube fed does.
The 40 MM has a really interesting combustion chamber worthy of a video. Explain the use of a burst disk to efficiently burn available propellants etc.
Great thing about proper 40mm. Close enough works just as well, your previous 8 shots would have made the 9th pass through a cloud of dude mist.
I think the M203 is faster and just easier to aim, load, and inherently more accurate.... But just doesn't have the name & the cool factor the China Lake does. Nice video 😊📸
I thought we'd never see him fire the China Lake
While this isn't a 'real' China Lake it does put paid to some of the myths. But then I suspect each one of the China Lakes had a lot of armorer time making sure they functioned correctly. If they cycled smoothly then the ability to lay 4 40mm rounds into an area in 3 or 4 seconds could make a big difference.
@@mpetersen6 you cannot make judgements about the quality and reliability of historical weapons from reproductions, repros can be much better or much worse than originals. Take reproductions of cap and ball revolvers for an example. In modern C and B revolvers cap jams are much more common than they were in originals, this is partly due to the design of modern percussion cones and the hammer face itself isnt quite shaped correctly. Modern caps are also not that great and versus originals are less sensitive and not as powerful.
I love how the video splits up to show both Ian and the target.
looks like great fun, they should work on a practice round that is a more precise clone of the regular rounds though. maybe a thicker plastic bullet weighed down with a core of sand.
yeah, chal rounds breaking is incredibly fun. I've always enjoyed it immensely when I or my troopers had it happen while training with our grenademachineguns. So much fun >_>
"safety is on fire"
Well, you'd better put it out then!
I'll show myself out...
Noooo come back! That was hilarious!
Please let the door hit you as you go.
Huge fan, proud of you for following you passion for years and years
Quite a beautiful piece. One problem i have read is that the China lake's disassembly pin could be triggered by slamming the pump into the pin, by the trigger guard causing it to come apart while under duress. I have also read that most of the originals were hand made & it was pretty damn hard to fix them because of that.
This is an excellent reminder about practicing with your tools. You do NOT want to figure out how to load and cycle the action when time or lives are on the line.
This, the UMP, and the AA12 are 3 guns I always dreamed of owning.
Great three-gun load out :D
Gonna want a mid range rifle along with that too, just in case. I just got an fal from a pawn shop, and id heavily recommend one
The holy trifecta of video game favourites that were passed upon by most major militaries.
@@stevenbobbybills they all kinda lack practical utility for military applications, even if they are pretty neat
@@stevenbobbybills What about the Pancor Jackhammer. It's entire reputation is from video games
The manliest pump action ever created.
Thank you for shooting one of my dream guns, and thank you for making the best content on CZcams.
It seems like to me that the M79 grenade launcher is more practical. I fired the 203 with pink chalk (I think) and HE later on during my time in the Army. I did not like the way the 203 made the M16 heavy and unwieldy plus hard to aim. But it was fun to shoot!
The M203 can also be it's own weapon rather than an underbarrel to a rifle, like Ian's in the video. It's a fair deal easier to shoot rather than it being underslung onto an M16 or M4, but without the rifle's weight you feel more of the recoil.
The M320 is trying to replace the M203 but it's suffering from some of the same issues and new ones. Under a rifle it's just as bad as the 203 and as a standalone launcher it's recoil is kinda bad with its stubby stock.
Between all the different infantry grenade launchers I've seen (GP-25/GP-30, M79, M203, M320, China Lake) it seems like all of them are tradeoffs to varying extents for that increased firepower, and some might not be worth it. I haven't used all of them, I've only ever shot one, but still, seems like everything I see about them just kinda makes me realize that while fun, grenade launchers are kind of a hassle.
@@Eye_Of_Odin978 I agree. But the option was not available to me.
Always wanted to see one in action!
Ian is on point with these!
Have you seen GM-94 in action?
@@user-zw5kt8ik2g Yes,I did.
That bloop noise is the best part of any grenade launcher 😜
I'm envious of your amazing job !
I'm somewhat curious, loading seemed to be a pain in the ass, but the lifter also appeared to raise when you pumped the action back. Could you retract the pump, and load the tube while the lifter is raised, add one on the lifter and use it that way?
It's more the chalk rounds than anything else. Since they're a tad longer and wider than standard live 40mm rounds the action will throw hissy fit after hissy fit.
It's an inherent problem with all tube fed pump actions. If the ammo isn't exactly the right size you'll have non stop feeding issues.
Nice one, hell of a bit of kit.
5:28 Seeing the spent case and a new round both nope! out of the gun had me laughing.
Ian, close only counts in horseshoes, hand-grenades and pump-action grenade launchers.
You got them.
Gun Jesus is back at it again with a vengeance
I'm always fascinated by oversized guns. Just watching you load that big Remington action is mesmerizing.
Back in the “olden days”, we had practice rounds for our M-203s that were the same size as the he rounds. We got yellow smoke instead of boom.
About 30% of the he were dud’s , also part of the safety brief was to show the difference between the 40mm ammo fired by the M-129 chunker and the M-203, with hardly any effort the slightly longer M-129 round would fit in most 203s. Not GI proof, most troops could close the M-203 barrel over a dummy chunker (M-129) round. The M-203 ammo came in cloth bandoliers M-129 ammo came in belts, problems came from loose ammo on the range and at the ASP. There were several types of loads for the M-203 making IDing the ammo important.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
One thing I've wondered with the 'China Lake' is, can you 'ghost load' it?
For those unfamiliar, it's something that can be done with some tube fed shotguns, where you have a shell in the chamber, a full magazine, and then you open the bolt just enough to drop a another shell onto the lifter, giving you another +1.