The world's most dangerous shooting range - humor!

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Jim March

New member
http://rhinoden.rangerup.com/the-dumbass-chronicles-the-most-dangerous-range-ever

Military hi-jinks...sounds like huge fun but absolutely insane at the same time. An ignorant young Lt. is given the "job" of "disposing of" the following:

15,000 rounds of 5.56 ball ammo for the M-16
10,000 rounds of 9mm ammo for the pistol
7,000 rounds of 7.62mm for the M60 machine gun
2,000 rounds of 40mm grenades for the M203 grenade launcher
8 hand grenades
15 claymore mines
1 AT-4 rocket

:eek:

:D
 
C

Crosshair

New member
Think about this story next time someone brings up the subject of cutting the military budget.;) Less such dangerous stunts, more ammo for civilians.
 
B

Blackshirts

New member
Dibs on the grenade launcher. It's the same waste as everything else the government gets it's hands on. Same reason there are so many construction projects started in the winter. They need to use up their money or they won't get it next year. And they wonder how we got in this mess.
 
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Nnobby45

New member
Yes, and various government agencies are in the same situation with re: to money. If they don't spend it, their allocations are cut. Seems to get spent in the same reckless fashion as the expending of surplus ammunition.

Surplus ammo and money. Both of which must be disposed of before they get more of the exact same stuff they had to get rid of to get more. What a system. And what a bunch of gas bags running it.:cool:

And yes, I do feel better now.:D
 
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Eghad

New member
Reminds me of the tale of the Soldier the 1SG put in charge of cutting 50 gal drums in half for the latrine. The 1SG told the Soldier he could have the rest of the day off as soon as he cut all the drums in half for the latrine. The Soldier was an engineer MOS. He went and got some det cord and wrapped the drums. Then set it off. The 1SG came running over to see what had happened. The drums were all cut in half and the Soldier got the rest off day off.

So be careful what orders you give.

Yeh the joys of Range Fire.... The Ammo Point usually told you to only to turn full boxes of ammo in. They couldn't make you do it but they could give you trouble the next time you came to draw ammo so you usually shot up every round. Especially at range in Sep.

M40 and Mk 19 rounds are in short supply you are lucky if they give you one round per each authorized to weapon to familiarize with.
 
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medalguy

New member
I remember way back when the AF had M2 carbines. We had about 20,000 rounds of tracer ammo to get rid of in midsummer. The ammo was declared defective because of corrosion around the primers, so we shot.....and shot......and shot tracers. All freakkin' day long. Four of us getting rid of 20,000 rounds of ammo. Wish I had stashed some of that away now!
 
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firespec35

New member
My buddy was an engineer MOS his first tour in the army ( and Medic, and infantry, and DI, and Surgical Tech he's actually got the biggest case of career ADD I've seen) the above reminds me of him saying "Theres not too much in the world that can't be solved with a suitable application of high explosive." (not sure if he stole it from a movie)
 
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OkieGentleman

New member
You did WHAT??

That story reminds me of when I was a SP4 in Berlin in 1968. Our outfit used some monster size reels of 1 inch tape. I was told to "dispose" of about 100 reels of tape. I go to the security NCO and ask to use the burn furnace to do the job. Nope not allowed. Ask the NCOIC in charge of our section how do I get rid of this stuff?

Burn it in the pit next to building XYZ with 20 gal of gasoline. I object that this not good idea. This is per Major XX's orders I am told.

Burn tape in pit. Watch pieces of tape float over Berlin Wall (we are only 75 from said wall) mull over stupidity of job and orders.

Two days later am called into Colonel's office. Many officers and senior NCOs present. This lowly SP4 sweating bullets.

Tell me Specialist do you know any thing about this highly classified piece of recording tape being found on the barbwire of Berlin Wall by a German police patrol?

Yes Sir, must be one of the pieces of tape that got loose when I burned that 100 roles of tape in the pit next to location xyz two days ago.

Why did you burn the tape in the pit?

Security NCOIC would not let me use burn furnace and was told to burn tape in pit by NCOIC per Major XX' orders.

Security NCOIC, section NCOIC and Major XX now sweating bullets.

Am dismissed from Colonel's august presence with head attached and butt in original condition. Never did find out what happened, but never disposed of anymore classified material.

LOL
 
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Uncle Buck

New member
I laughed because, 1) It was funny, and 2) I have seen this dumb stuff happen to often in my 24 year career (12 years which were spent in Korea).
 
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orionengnr

New member
Great story--enjoyed the read. I salute the LT's creativity, and I'm happy to read that there were no casualties. I wonder why the command did not schedule monthly training to allocate those resources and waited until the end of the fiscal year to expend all the resources.

In all my years in the military (1977-2000) I frequently saw my squadrons trying to come up with the fuel to fly the required flight hours. Ordnance used for training was incredibly sparse. Getting to fly a training evolution that actually expended ordnance was a rare (and memorable) event. Trying to get small arms training for qualification or requals was absolutely un-heard of (except for one visit to an overseas base, and that window of opportunity was very brief).

"Excess" fuel or ordnance was non-existant. Guess I joined the wrong branch of the service (USN).

On the other hand, I never had to sleep in a foxhole or dig a latrine...so on balance, maybe it all worked out okay. :)

I guess, when you get right down to it, it is yet another example of how our Federal Government drives incredible inefficiencies and poor decisions. I could give any number of recent examples, but will refrain. :)
 
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kraigwy

New member
That's funny, what is funnier is there are a lot more similar incidents that just don't get published.

I was running a sniper school for the NG/LE at Ft Richardson AK, when a young LT comes up and ask if I could help him dispose of some ammo so he don't loose his next years allocation. I said, fine, why not.

He Shows up with with 35K of 5.56, and 24K of 7.62 M60 ammo. I decided to give the students a day off to play, and sent one LT to fetch some M16s & M60s to get rid of the ammo (that LT is now the AG for the State of Alaska).

He showed up with 10 M16a1s and two M-60's. I want you to know we burnt up some guns that day. Turning barrels and gas tubes red hot. I've seen some mad minutes in my time but this really showed the M16a1s can take a lot more abuse and keep going.

Range central started bitching because my sniper school was harder on his machine gun targets then any machine gun qualifications. (we used the 1100 meter machine gun range for sniper schools).

There has got to be a way to convince the military to make it easier for ammo turn ins. Allowing training time for marksmanship training would be better but I don't see that happening either.

It works the same way with money. Got to get rid of the money before the end of the year too. I'd do my budget, planning to buy equipment for my marksmanship unit. I had a friend who worked at USP&FO who would call me telling me to bring my equipment list as he had X amount of dollars to spend before the end of the year. I'd buy everything on my wish list, then have to jump through hoops to find something else to buy with the money I had budgeted for the next year.
 
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Yung.gunr

New member
It is funny. After just hearing from Sect of Defense and what he had to say about budget problems we won't hear about this kind of nonsense again. This stuff has always irked me. Makes no sense.
 
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armoredman

New member
The year before I got to my ship they forgot to fire off the M79 bloop tube 40mm grenades. Hence, there were none for me to fire when I got there. Dang. Likewise there wasn't a single round of ammo for the four Ruger Service Six revolvers assigned to us - how we had 4 Ruger revolvers in the ships armory is a mystery to this day.
That was a good read, and I have also seen that with 50BMG and 3"50 cal ammo at sea. Tracers bounce off water sometimes, too.
 
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Doyle

New member
"Excess" fuel or ordnance was non-existant. Guess I joined the wrong branch of the service (USN).
Click to expand...

By your forum name, I'm assuming you were in a P-3 squadron. Navy tends to use things farily consistently throughout the year plus most Navy units don't get annual allotments of stuff like ammo. I too noticed very little of this type of end-of-year spending. What little I did notice (I was a Supply Officer on a ship) was with regards to consumable items (paper products, cleaning supplies, etc). We always managed to make sure there were no "leftovers" (at least on the books).

There were items managed quarterly that allowed us to spend more freely at the end of the quarter than at the beginning. Primary example was food on the mess decks. By being a little thrifty during the first part of the quarter, I was able to serve surf and turf at least once at the end of the quarter.
 
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