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I'm doing Russian tank rounds now.
American rounds it's easy to find the weight of the loaded round, but hard to find the length and weight of the projectile.
Russian rounds have been the opposite.
Extensive data on the projectile, not much for complete rounds.
Of course, it's better than Nazi German ordnance, you can often find precise data on penetration values and be left wanting for how much anything weighs.
I am dreading doing France and the Brits.
When the Army realized that the M2 and M3 guns in the M3 and M4 tanks weren't going to cut it for most anti-tank purposes...
OK, they didn't. The M2 and M3 guns do exactly what they were supposed to do, and the Gun Motor Carriages were supposed to handle the stuff that was too heavy for the tanks.
So they made what we call "tank destroyers," or gun motor carriages.
The TD counterpart to the Sherman is the Gun Motor Carriage M10.
It's got a long 3" gun that's tailored to kill tanks. This is the M7 gun on an M5 mount.
Towards the end of WW2, they started to replace the M10 with the Gun Motor Carriage M18 "Hellcat". It too has a long 3" gun that's tailored to kill tanks. This is the M1 series of guns.
The tank destroyer concept started to wane after the war and we developed a light tank with a long, 3" gun that had a decent chance against a tank. This is the M32.
They all use the same round, right?
No.
No, they do not.
Despite all sharing the same caliber, they don't share the same case.
Frustratingly, The M7 and M1 guns share projectiles. The cartridges are named after the projectile so they share designations. 76mm HE M42 for the M7 is a different round from the 76mm HE M42 for the M1.
The M7 gun fires 76.2x585mmR.
The M1 series fires 76.2x539mmR.
The M32 fires 76,2x580mmR.
The manuals that ordnance issues doesn't really distinguish between the 76mm rounds and even forgets there's more than one cartridge length.
What caused me to notice was going through the rounds for the Lee/Grant and Sherman's 75mm M2 and M3 guns. Those guns both fire 75x350mmR.
But Ordnance doesn't specify that the 75mm Pack-Howitzer rounds are not the same.
The round that started my noticing was the 75mm M66 HEAT-T round and seeing how low the muzzle velocity was compared to other rounds fired by the Sherman. Even lower than the shorter barreled gun in the Lee/Grant.
This is because the pack-hog fires 75x272mmR! It gets a couple of rounds that the Sherman never got because it stayed in service a lot longer.
It's getting sorted.
I have also made my first set of stats for a NBC round. The M64 Chem round. Mustard gas! Not to be confused with the M64 Smoke and M64 HC Smoke rounds.
Ferguson, Missouri?
Isn't that one of those "fiery but peaceful" places?
It doesn't seem a very nice place to live.
The tragedy is it appeared she'd had a successful GoFundMe campaign to allow her to get a place outside Ferguson and was only at the BP station to get celebratory slushies for her kids.
Because it was balls hot and they figured it'd cause a minimum of debate if they were feeling heat-stroke coming on.
"Sign it and we open the windows!"
It would appear that SNT Motiv will be making a production facility in Louisiana and not just Americanizing guns that are mostly made in Good Korea.
Sadly, that means that new tooling needs to be bought and manned here in the states and that will make the K2S a lot more expensive.
Probably at least as expensive as a used DR200 is.
Shooting the 915 today reminded me that there's nothing wrong with many older guns.
You can get 17 round mags for it.
It's only a little heavier than a Glock 17.
You're not giving up anything, really, by carrying one.
There's scads of guns that still work fine and have enough beans to be competitive.
They may be used by the time we get to them, but that just means the previous owners ate any depreciation there is.
I've seen so many used, but unfashionable, guns with almost no wear on them going for about half what a new one would go for.
Several are in the safe!
The downside is parts support. The manufacturer might not support it any more.
But it's, mostly, not a problem.
The Lovely Harvey is getting more comfortable with her new Equalizer.
It also helps if I stop hovering.
After shooting we stopped at the Tarpon Springs Aquarium and Animal Sanctuary. It's touristy fun!
Then we hit Britton Guns and managed to escape without buying anything. Russ and Heidi both say "hi!" to Willard.
There are no consistent sources for the weight of complete tank rounds for Nazi Germany.
Worthless AI guesses are the projectile weights.
I test fired the S&W Model 915 with the curved grip and the two magazines for it that I'd replaced the springs.
I think it went well.
The curved backstrap is definitely superior to the straight one and recoil was very gentle.
I don't care for the sights on this second least expensive version of the S&W 3rd gen. They are not conducive to fast shooting, but I made due dew do.
One round failed to fully chamber and the round below it had its nose up the feed ramp. Not sure if that's a magazine problem or not. It's disappointing because it has a new spring in it and it'd suck to have to decommission it.
The 8.8cm KwK.43's Pz.Gr.40/43 will do 6dx16(2) pi++ out to 5,950/17,500.
That's got more reach than the same projectile from a Tiger E.
The 8.8cm KwK.36's Pz.Gr.40 will do 6dx13(2) pi++ out to 4,980/14.600.
Those punch 9.6" and 7.8" of RHAE respectively.
The 90mm gun on the T-26 firing a M82 APC-T round does 6dx10(2) pi++ follow-up 6d+2[4d-1] cr ex.
That punches 6" of RHAE.
That's our best armor piercing round.
On the plus side, the Tiger II only has 5.9" of armor on the front of the hull. That should only be DR 400, but it's sloped for DR 850 and the M82 round will ping... You need 6dx21(2) to get a Tiger from the front. We didn't develop a round that could do that until we filed the serial numbers off the Brit L7A1 105mm gun and called it M68.
On the down side, the T-26 firing that 90mm round almost has 4" of armor... It too is well sloped and gets DR 420. 6dx10(2) penetrates that.
On the gripping side, there were damned few cats of any flavor running about when the T-26 arrived to test out the idea of what would become an MBT.
ATF is adjusting their stance on NFA and fingerprints.
With special love for us with NFA Trusts.
Did the 76.2mm rounds today.
Did you know that East China had a long-rod APFSDS round for their modernized Walker Bulldogs?
I didn't.
I also discovered that tungsten is almost the same density as depleted uranium, a little heavier in fact.
I knocked out the 75mm German WW2 tank guns too. They were very considerate using the same projectile in three different length cases. Just had to change the velocity to get the stats.
The 75mm HEAT round they came up with in '38 is truly pathetic. At least by modern standards.
The Hl.Gr.38B only does 6d+1(10) cr ex with a linked 6dx3 cr ex.
The improved Hl.Gr.38C does 9d(10) cr ex with a linked 6dx3 cr ex.
6d+1(10) penetrates a mere 220 DR, just a tad over 3" RHAE.
9d(10) will get past 315 DR, or 4.5" RHAE.
While that's adequate for early WW2, I'd gotten used to Twilight and the M456's 6dx5(10) cr ex linked 6dx3 cr ex. That punches 1,050 DR or 15" of RHAE.
If I ran a campaign where this was available, the big question is will an NPC have one to confound the players, before a player adds it to their equipment list.
Moar dakka is always the goal of the player, but they often make quirky choices in arming themselves that interrupts achieving the goal.
The cannon part:
The missile part:
There are variants of the HEAT round that are identical in GURPS terms.
Same same for the Canister round.
These stats are for the M162 gun in the M60A2, but the M81 gun in the M551 is identical in game terms.
They're mostly identical in real terms, but the differences in mounting added up quick.
PS: Did you notice that M162 is double M81? The '60's did this a lot.
The M219 is simply M73 tripled. "Third time's the charm!" It wasn't.
In 1868 granting birthright citizenship to anyone born on our side of the line wasn't an issue because all you got was citizenship.
If you didn't get to work, like everyone else, you'd starve.
If you worked it was, relatively, simple to become a productive member of society rather than a burden.
It's an issue now because of the lavish, and unending, handouts and, as was pointed out in the comments, the penumbral right to bring everyone with even 1% consanguinity with you here to live.
The issue compounds.
Personally, I'm in favor of killing the handouts. We really can't afford them.
Ideally we only let the citizen stay and send their parents packing. I'm not sentimental about breaking up a family whose only goal is to punch out an anchor baby and start hanging from the welfare teat.
Especially now that we've seen how much fraud came with it.
I have used Gun Stats to make stats for all of the US issued 90, 105, and 120mm tank gun rounds.
Yes, I remembered the M58 gun on the M103 heavy tank.
75 and 76mm beckon...
Then it will be time to do the Soviet stuff.
Back here I had the damage for the 105mm M494 APERS round at 3d cut.
Gun Stats changes that to 1d-2 cut.
The 14 hits at 50 yards only does 2 per hit now and that's 42 damage.
Not a red-mist, but very unhappy with life.
10 consciousness rolls and 3 death rolls tends to make people grumpy.
A 16"/50 Rifle Mk.7 firing a 16" HC Mk.13 round does:
6dx80(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx24[20d] cr ex out to 16,160/37,300
16" AP Mk.8 does:
6dx51(2) pi++ linked 6dx12[20d] cr ex.
It's hilarious calculating these things in grains! 133,300,000 grains for the exemplar Mk.13 round.
Explosive D has an REF of 0.95 not 1.13, so that changed things a mite.
The standard US flechette is 1" long and 0.05" in diameter and weighs 13gr.
The tungsten ball in an M1040 canister round is 0.31" in diameter and weighs 73gr.
For some reason this was harder to find than it was the first time I looked it up.
The massive tax cut represented by increasing the homestead exemption will NOT make renting a house more expensive.
Cutting taxes on home owners doesn't increase the taxes on rental properties. Those remain the same as before.
In fact, there's language slowing down the rate they can increase the taxes on non-homestead properties from 10% to 5%.
That will help renters, not hurt them.
My old stats for the M900 were:
6dx34(2) pi++ inc; 6,000/18,000 - That's good for punching 518mm of RHA at 0°.
Gun Stats gives:
6dx33(2) pi+ inc; 8,140/26,700 for APFSDSDU. 503mm penetration.
6dx39(2) pi+ inc for long-rod APFSDSDU. 594mm penetration. "Long-Rod" is defined as a penetrator being 15 times longer than its diameter. The M900 penetrator is 25x603, 23 and change to 1. It's a long-rod.
A bit short of both benchmarks I found back in Feb '25. The round's performance is still classified (sorta) so there's not a lot of official information, but a great deal of "already leaked" information. War Thunder thinks 522mm.
But 6dx39 is in the ballpark of what I think it should do.
It's a game, so the important thing is the relative values come out about right even if the precise numbers don't quite. Gun Stats even has a section about how to use stated penetration values to determine damage.
Take the RHA penetration in mm * 0.787 / armor divisor and that gives dice. 6dx34 in the case of 522mm! But, like I said in Feb '25, I think it punches more, so I'm going with the long-rod numbers!
I've long been willing to concede that anyone born here is a citizen.
But if their parents aren't and are here illegally, there's nothing about that child's citizenship that allows those parents to stay.
The child is a citizen and therefor ours.
Our fellow citizen gets to stay, and be raised by their fellow citizens, while Mom and Dad are swiftly and surely returned to whence they came.
Yes, I am saying we're going to be separating families.
For the good of the child and our nation.
Wanna bet this small change stops birth tourism in its tracks?
"New Delhi Steakhouse" India themed like Longhorn is western themed, all vegetarian.
"REAL Vegan Diner" Just a normal diner, but hire actors to profess to being vegan and extoll the virtues of various cuts of their own bodies in a manner similar to "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe." Then they leave the table, you pay them, they never come back out front. Serve pork and "steak" made from soy and lentils.
It would appear that President Trump did us hot-rodders a solid!
🚨 JUST IN: President Trump signs an order to STOP people from being arrested or targeted for FIXING THEIR VEHICLE, giving the “right to fix”
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 29, 2026
Common sense!
This also breaks up a California-based monopoly on 3rd party car parts certification, per Lee Zeldin 👏🏻
TRUMP: “It came… pic.twitter.com/yOf3FiBzlu
I think I'm better than the dealer at fixing my car and have always felt that I should be able to access, modify or fix any system on it.
Just as every bit of matter is a chemical...
If you're not eating it raw, it's been processed.
Cooking is a process.
Harvesting is a process.
Butchering is a process.
Motor oil is organic, by the way. All hydrocarbons are organic molecules.
All domesticated food sources are genetically modified. Some by injecting genes and splicing, some by the old fashioned method of selective breeding.
This has been your linguistic science fact diatribe of the day!
Gun Stats says it can do cannon. In fact, they give us the detailed process of making the 120mm M256 firing the M829A3 APFSDSDU round.
So I decided to see if the numbers I pulled out of my ass for Twilight 2000 were even close.
The initial APFSDSDU round did 6dx19(2) pi++ inc out to 4,800/16,600. This round didn't last long in testing and never got an XM designation.
XM885 (Delta 3) APFSDSDU round did 6dx25(2) pi++ inc out to 4,800/16,600.
XM885 (Delta 6) APFSDSDU round did 6dx28(2) pi++ inc out to 4,800/16,600. Delta 6 might have become M885A1 if development had continued.
XM884 HE-AB did 6dx11(0.5) pi++, follow-up 6dx3 [4d-1] cr ex out to 2,400/8,300.
The penetrator is 19mm in diameter and 380mm long, so it's definitely a long-rod with its 20:1 LDR.
Gun Stats says a long rod penetrator APFSDSDU should do:
XM885 does 6dx25(2) pi+ inc out to 9,340/30,600.
XM884 does 6dx12(0.5) pi+, linked 6dx3 [4d-1] cr ex out to 4,670/15,300.
I get more range, regardless. I'm giddy how close my original XM884 round was and I'm happy that the calculated damage matches the published penetration values for the Delta 3 round. Not sure how to get it to spit out the published Delta 6 values, except for the section on page 23 saying to just calculate the damage off the actual values rather than the what the formula says.
The delta 6 is calculated as a "long rod" round, delta 3 was not, but there's some speculation that it was also heavier than the delta 3, which could up the damage.
If delta 3 was always a long rod and 6 is heavier... But I don't think that 2.91kg is realistic.
Acc changed from 8 to 5+3. ST changed from 70M to 62M. Rcl changed from 10 to 4.
I think I can live with these numbers.
Unlocked the M12 rack and dusted the AR's.
This, of course, meant pointing them at the mirror and aiming at my reflection.
Although Dissipator Dottie is about the most comfortable, holy crap is the XM177E2 clone LIGHT!
That applies to the M16 and M16A1 clones too.
They're just so damn pointable!
It also reinforces my feeling that a fixed stock is better than a collapsible one for comfort.
The M4 clone is comfortable enough, but...
Who else is shocked that Iran is still shooting at ships?
The problem is we have not defeated them.
Curtis LeMay had the right of it, but it's Nixon who has the correct method.
We stop bombing when you sign the agreement and not before.
We resume bombing the moment it even appears you lied about what you signed.
What you are signing is entirely written by us, you don't get a voice in the terms, you're surrendering.
Sooner or later we're going to hit something they care about enough to stop fighting.
I don't care what it is, but defeat needs to be what they feel.
In the world according to High Tech, an M1 Carbine does 4d+1 pi damage.
An M4 Carbine does 4d+2 pi damage.
I don't think that .30 Carbine really does almost the same amount of damage as 5.56.
Gun Stats thinks it should be 4d pi-.
That better suits its reputation, I think; and it fixes a long running problem with where the line between high and low velocity is with small caliber rounds.
Gun Stats has a little table for the length/diameter ratio by caliber and if a .30 round is LDR of less than 3, then it's pi-. The 110 grain bullet of M1 carbine is definitely under 3. 2.24, to be exact.
I've long suspected that an errata should have been made for it, but Hans-Christina Vorsitch long maintained that 4d+1 pi was correct.
Calculated .30 Super Carry!
S&W Shield Plus stats.
Dmg: 2d+2 pi-; Acc: 1; Range: 140/1,500; Weight: 1.5/0.4; RoF: 3; Shots: 13+1(3); ST: 8; Bulk: -1; Rcl: 2; Cost: $550/$41; LC: 3.
Notes: Improved visibility sights, hammerless, 16 shot magazines ($41, 0.5 lb.) available.
This compares to the 9mm Sheild Plus...
Dmg: 2d+1 pi; Acc: 1; Range: 140/1,600; Weight: 1.5/0.4; RoF: 3; Shots: 10+1(3); ST: 9; Bulk: -1; Rcl: 2; Cost: $550/$41; LC: 3.
Notes: Improved visibility sights, hammerless, 13 shot ($41, 0.5 lb.) and 15 shot ($41, 0.6 lb.) magazines are available.
That pi- still kills it for me. BUT...
If all 13 rounds hit, that's an average roll of 9 for 4 damage with ball and 8 damage with 2d+2(0.5) pi hollow points for 52 and 104 respectively.
9mm, if they all hit with an average roll of 8 for 8 damage with ball and 10.5 damage with 2d+1(0.5) pi+ hollow points for 80 and 105 respectively.
Closer than I expected.
Harvey is digging the experience of her new Equalizer! Absolutely thrilled to, finally, have a pistol where she can easily work the slide.
Next up, getting her glasses where she can see what she's doing better.
But she was happier leaving the range than I've seen in months.
We fed the Equalizer several brands of ammo, including Hornady 135gr Critical Defense and Federal 124gr HST.
Her old gun, an M&P 2.0 Compact, would not feed Hornady Critical anything. It liked HST.
No problems of any kind turned up with the Equalizer!
It ate three brands of 115gr ball and both of the brands of carry ammo!
The counter person who sold us the hollow-points was a little surprised we were taking them straight to the ranged down the hall. It seems that a lot of people don't ever shoot the ammo they're betting their life on.
I shot my M&P 2.0 Compact and continued to try and speed up my Mozambique drill. I'm no Jerry Miculek.
MSN, you just keep being you...
20 Firearms that are living off their names.
Basically, every gun fails to be the author's favorite example of whatever type of gun they're talking about.
They're impractical.
They're too expensive.
I think that Josh Clark subscribes to the "only brutal practicality" school of owning guns that misses 70% of the experience and all of the fun parts of shooting.
It has been twenty years since Rob of Acidman's Gut Rumbles shuffled off into the void.
It doesn't seem like it's been that long, but... Damn.
Best wishes to his daughter and son, and I hope they got to know him from what he left them on his blog.
Saw this on Facebook:
But I do have more books than guns.
I think I have more books about guns than I have guns.
All it really means is I have a metric shit-ton of books.
There's nothing about having more books than guns that predicates having few guns.
"How many Indians are in that village over there?" asked Col. Custer 150 years ago, today.
"Exceptin' me, Joe and that Pawnee feller; all of them." the scout replied.
"I like my odds!" exclaimed Custer and he rode off to battle!
Sitting Bull, on the other hand, had been talking about a vision of a great battle with the White Man, where if they ran and did not fight, everything would come out OK for the Sioux. But if they fought, they would win the battle and all would be ruinous from then after.
He'd told of his vision often, and few believed him; many thinking he'd lost his power.
When Custer and Reno attacked, he realized that: "This was it!"
His cries to stop the fight were unheeded as Crazy Horse took charge...
And the Indians won the battle.
And all was ruinous for them thereafter...
Hawaii's vampire rule has been struck on 2nd and 14th Amendment grounds.
For everyone scoring at home, this is another 14th Amendment incorporation moment.
It's also reminding Hawaii that they're a state and subservient to the US Constitution and there's no legal binding to the spirit of aloha.
I've been reading about Special Forces' new idea for a rifle.
HICAR.
The super special ammo is 5.56x45mm in all but one respect: 82kpsi chamber pressure.
Normal 5.56 is around 55kpsi and M855A1 runs about 62kpsi.
So, about a third higher than the current round that's causing issues with bore erosion.
Why do they need this higher chamber pressure?
To get the exact same velocity as a 20" barrel gets while using an 11 to 12 inch barrel.
And a suppressor...
Always lose the handling gains from the short barrel by bringing it right back to the previous length with a suppressor.
But there's good reasons to want one, and they have them.
But I am waiting for the day that some normal soldier loads a spiffy M855A1+ round into their M4 and... Well, the proof round is about 77.9kpsi.
Ever wonder why .357 Magnum is 0.1" longer than .38 Special which is 0.12" longer than .38 Long Colt?
It's to keep this exact pressure mismatch from happening.
I can't help but think that an M16A4 is a lot handier, even with a suppressor, than a Garand, and an excellent training exercise would be to show them exactly HOW handy a 20" M16 can be. That way they don't introduce a dangerously high pressure round into the supply system just to recreate the velocity that standard pressures make with a longer barrel.
While we're at it... Make a flat-top pencil-barrel M16 available to them to remind everyone that the A2 and A4 are unnecessarily heavy.
Open carry has been legal in Florida for almost a year and I still have not open carried.
I've always been a staunch advocate that it should be perfectly legal, while conceding that it's prolly not the smartest plan.
Not as dumb as some people have made it out, but I like the element of surprise.
Lots of stores have "no open carry" signs up. They don't care if I conceal carry.
That's a balance of rights I can live with.
I should do it once just to say I have.
I think I will wait until it's cool enough to do what I call semi-concealed carry with an OWB holster and a Hawaiian shirt.
