The U.S. Military Loved the M60 Machine Gun. Let Us Tell You Why.
Warfare History Network
History, Americas
It could do some serious damage.
Variants of the M60 included the short-lived M60B, which was designed to be fired by hand from helicopters. The B model had no bipod and featured a different rear stock than the regular model; it retained its pistol grips. The M60C lacked pistol grips, but its main difference was the electronic control system and hydraulic swivel system, which allowed it to be fired from cockpits on OH-13 Sioux, OH-23 Raven, UH-1B Huey, and Ov-10 Bronco helicopters.
The time was early 1967, the place a crowded square over a body of water on a narrow bridge in downtown Saigon. A 19-year-old American Army gun jeep commander in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade stood at his post in the rear of the vehicle. Both he and the driver wore .45-caliber pistols and carried M16 rifles. Besides the pistols and rifles, the Americans also had an M79 grenade launcher on the floorboards of the jeep, covered with heavy sandbags in case the vehicle hit a Vietcong landmine.
The jeep’s principal weaponry that day was the deadly United States Army standard-issue M60 machine gun, which—like the M14 rifle—fired the basic NATO round of 7.62mm ammunition. With the exception of the 1911-introduced .45, the other three weapons had been brought into the NATO arsenal at about the same time, in the early 1960s. The reason was simple, to ensure that all NATO armies were armed with the same weaponry and ammunition for ease of common supply in case a land war erupted in Europe with the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Albania.
Surrounded by a Sea of Swarming Humanity
Read full article