Ma Deuce (m2 machine gun) barrel attachment

In the videos of troops stationed in Iraq, I often see the vehicle-mounted (most often on M1A1s) M2 .50 cal machine gun with an odd barrel attachment on them

I tried Googling images, but could find any.

The attachment looks like three metal bars parallel to the barrel. I would (in my ignorance) assume that the purpose was to prevent barrel deforming during sustained fire.

Any tankers out there to shed light?

Are you sure these are not photos of training exercises?

We had .50 cals on our APC’s, and the blank adapter sounds like what you describe. I don’t remeber the specifics on attaching it, but it had a ring on one end that slid over the barrel, 3 rods running parallel to the barrel, and a fitting over the end of the barrel.

Blank adapters partially block the gasses exiting the barrel, providing enough pressure to cycle the weapon.

That sounds exactly like what I saw, however I’m fairly sure that these vehicles are in-combat vehicles.

Is this it?

Note the crimped ends on the cartriges - they’re blanks.

The M16 also has a blank adapter on it.

Bingo. That’s it. I thought for sure that the tanks depicted in the Discovery videos were on active duty in the Gulf of Bush. Would they use blanks for vehicles over there?

Thank you master. You’re GoogleFu is better than mine.

Cost cutting measure? :wink:

Seriously, no clue, but I pulled guard duty on NATO headquarters durring the Gulf of Bush I and I shit you not, our magazines were empty the whole time.

My wife has stories of long, boring nights of guard duty in Germany in the late '80s with no magazines in rifles. The really stupid part is that the sergeant would have one round locked in the safe. WTF?

FWIW,
Rob

Well, at least we made it look good and had an empty magazine in the rifle!

It’s possible that whoever put together the video you saw just used “stock” footage (taken while U.S. soldiers were participating in a training excercise at Yuma or 29 Palms) to show while the narrator yammers on.

On the History Channel, they routinely show the same short footage of the SMS Blucher rolling over and blowing up (she was sunk in January, 1915), even though the show is about WW2.

Houyhnhnm!

Yes, that’s supposed to be a horse’s whinny.

Booooo!