Automatics

[Jim Dixon]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2001, Bill Stewart wrote:

> The military recoilless rifles are more or less bazookas -

Hardly.  A bazooka is a shoulder-held tube from which you fire a 
missile, the fuel in the missile burning as it goes through the air.
When the missile is gone, you put another one in.

A recoilless rifle fires a conventional artillery round.  The 
motive force is supplied by fuel which burns in the barrel of
the gun.  When you have fired, you open the little door at the
back, pull out the empty shell casing, and put in another one.

> their objective is to fire a relatively large and usually explosive shell
> to blow up tanks, trucks, and other big hard targets,
> while still being conveniently portable.

Depends on the war.  I believe that in Vietnam it was common to
mix beehive and HEAT 50:50.  Beehive rounds contain zillions of 
little darts about half an inch long.  HEAT is what you are talking
about - High Explosive Anti Tank.

> I'm also puzzled by the "flakes" comments - rapidly expanding gasses
> are plenty of reaction mass, though perhaps there's some sort of
> wadding to provide increased gas pressure that gets flaked in
> the explosion.

Yes.  The gas comes out of the back of a recoilless rifle a lot 
faster than the shell goes out the front.

--
Jim Dixon                  VBCnet GB Ltd           http://www.vbc.net
tel +44 117 929 1316                             fax +44 117 927 2015