The break-action shotgun-style launcher was officially approved by the military in 1961 and immediately began making its way into the hands of U.S. This article first appeared in 2017 and is being reposted due to reader interest. The idea was a weapon that could lob a high explosive munition up to 400 meters - though the effective range for most launchers comes in at around 350 meters, or less - and with no more recoil than a 12-gauge shotgun. In the years that followed, that first “40 Mike-Mike” birthed a generation of aluminum-encased ordnance for a variety of launchers and payloads, from high explosives to buckshot to white phosphorous to parachute flares and non-lethal rounds.īy turns dubbed the “bloop tube” and “blooper,” owing to the sound made as a 40mm is launched from the barrel - or “thump-gun,” because of the noise it makes when said round lands - the M79 was created by Springfield Armory in Massachusetts in the 1950s. The program was called Project Niblick - named after a 9-iron golf club, to highlight the similar arcing trajectories of a golf ball and a grenade in flight, according to Rottman.īy 1953, Project Niblick had its ace in the hole: the 40mm grenade. In the early 1950s, weapons developers at the Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratories at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland were hard at work on a new type of grenade inspired by experimental German anti-tank munitions during World War II. The armaments were a mainstay of American combat troops for decades, but the weapons weren’t without shortcomings: The more distant the target, the less accurate the grenades became, and their range often maxed out around 200 meters - leaving a lot to be desired. Rottman’s historical account of the weapon system published last September. Throughout World War I and World War II, American infantrymen relied on a wide variety of rifle grenades, according to U.S.
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