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APG – Pictures of Women Testing New Machine Guns at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, 1942
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great pics, must have been rough with no hearing protection. LOL
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Lady on the right side of the Bofors seems to be wearing plugs ,no no our Left :tongue::rofl::rofl:.
That be a stout hoss lady firing the MG 52
That be a stout hoss lady firing the MG 52
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ear plugs back then were wood. either painted black or peach.
Always have to wonder how many of those pictures were staged for propaganda reasons. So we take the women out of their ordinary jobs for a photo op maybe some get to fire weapons but maybe not. Back in the 70s when the National Guard first let women in they ran an ad on TV showing a soldier welding something. An NCO says something to her and she raised her face shield and he discovers it is a women. Big surprise. I knew that women and she was no welder. She was a clerk typist that worked in a headquarters office. That was probably the first time she ever saw a welders helmet. In truth at that time most of the women recruited got office job and didn't even have to go through normal basic training. Of course that was forty years ago.
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Most look staged to me, especially the ones with men on the edges shouting instruction or laughing their butts off. On one end of the spectrum you have the lady with the carbine who obviously knows what she is doing. On the other you have the lady "sighting in" the 1919 with a loaded belt in place, her finger on the trigger, and her face about 1/4" from the back plate. That's gonna leave a mark.
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I have analyzed these before, all the .30s are converted from WW1 1917s. If you look at the tripod under the A4 (Which is likely a Westinghouse) you will see the early azimuth ring.
Probably one of those rare 1919A4 chambered for 30-40 Krag. Just to use up surplus ammo from the Spanish American war. Actually the ammo technical manuals from 1947 still mention 30-40 Krag ammo. It was used in a sub caliber set up for artillery. Maybe that was the only ammo they had for the photo op. The M1925 sub-caliber 30-40 cartridge did have the pointed bullet just like in the photo.
Come to think of it they probably would have had to test the ammo in some kind of gun as every lot of ammo had to be tested. Maybe they actually did make a M1919A4 in that caliber.
I noticed in the photo the neck of the carriage sticks out of the belt farther than the ones in my 30-06 belt. So I pulled a 30-06 round out and inserted a 30-40 round and sure enough it does stick out further than the 30-06. Maybe there is something to it after all.
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My take is this. Brand spanking new 30-06 with turned rimbase = shiny as heck. Optical illusion. The original AP 30-06 we got years ago from SOG was seated like this, ALL the way in! Also, that looks like the M1 ball bullet to me , not a .30 krag pill. Plus the belt is filthy and probably as loose as a sixth-year sorority girl. I do like the azimuth ring tripod. Very nice. J
Only the cartridge case was 30-40 Krag. The bullet was pointed like the .30-06. I have found that the M1925 sub caliber round was intended to be fired from the 3 inch seacoast gun. The muzzle velocity was 1,990 fps Max range 4,300 yards. The cartridge was 3.19 inches long. The TM says "the bullet used is the M1 .30 caliber ball bullet formerly used in .30 caliber rifles and machine gun cartridges". The bullet weight was 172 grains. There were older .30-40 cartridges used for the same purpose that had the older round nose bullet and were known as "cartridge sub caliber , cal .30 OLD STOCK" The round nose bullet weight was 220 grains.
On the other hand could be .303 British. We made some of that in the US, I had some once from WCC. Don't know about 7.62 Russian. Or could be an optical illusion. We need to have someone set up the exact camera angle and lighting and see if we can duplicate it. Maybe we could get a grant from the government to do this. It is always fun to toy around with the possibilities.
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I don't think they are staged. I think they were part of an experiment. Train them the same as the men and see how they compare. They look posed in some, and other pics you can see natural disfunction.
An M2 was never designed for a woman or a whimp and takes considerable physical force to charge it. Without instruction, it appears to be a top grip. Yet a bottom grip yields better center mass ergonomics overcoming counter force.
Notice a larger lady on the 50. Notice she doesn't have the strength to operate the charging handle properly, determined; she is failing with her own two hand technique. In the next picture she is just sitting there with ammo she can't load waiting frustrated for the exercise to be over. At least that is what I see. It was designed for a man that is well in shape. I'm sure you can find the right woman who could operate a 50, but compatible soldiering a 50 is a totally different animal.
That said I don't see any problem they would have operating a 30, as long as they don't have to pic up the mount or filled water cooled and take it on a 5 mile hike. So maybe they could be the non carying gunner or ammo barer of two ammo cans. Obvisously this is not an exercise in soldiering, just functioning.
Aaron
An M2 was never designed for a woman or a whimp and takes considerable physical force to charge it. Without instruction, it appears to be a top grip. Yet a bottom grip yields better center mass ergonomics overcoming counter force.
Notice a larger lady on the 50. Notice she doesn't have the strength to operate the charging handle properly, determined; she is failing with her own two hand technique. In the next picture she is just sitting there with ammo she can't load waiting frustrated for the exercise to be over. At least that is what I see. It was designed for a man that is well in shape. I'm sure you can find the right woman who could operate a 50, but compatible soldiering a 50 is a totally different animal.
That said I don't see any problem they would have operating a 30, as long as they don't have to pic up the mount or filled water cooled and take it on a 5 mile hike. So maybe they could be the non carying gunner or ammo barer of two ammo cans. Obvisously this is not an exercise in soldiering, just functioning.
Aaron
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Almost certainly staged as most of the photos were in every country. Not unbelievable though - women were making bombs and loading ammo, shooting a MG is small potatoes in comparison.
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In my platoon of 41 MP's, Ive got several small females and a half dozen guys under 150 LBS. ALL of them can charge a M2, ground mounted, in less than 3 seconds.
ALL of them can charge a MK19, which takes twice the muscle and skill of a M2.
Its got NOTHING to do with gender, its got everything to do with technique. Underhand grip is mandatory for the M2, throw with your shoulder to unseat the bolt, roll your shoulder back and then do an exaggerated 'bicep' curl. Ive taught literally hundreds of Soldiers this method over the last 20 years. Ive got a 102 LB female who can rack a fifty faster than most men. The biggest problem I have between genders is the shear brute force it takes to lug full cans of ammo from the inner storage racks up to the turret.
Well, that and the friggen drama.
Photos have been staged since the civil war. You can't very well have a cameraman downrange of the weapon when they are actually firing as a couple of the pictures show. My Dad was telling me how they assembled his Engineer company and took them out to an obstacle course on a Saturday just so the army could take photographs for a training manual. The photo showed up 50 years later in Army Reserve Magazine. When I showed it to him he said the caption was wrong it was 1941 not 42 because he was in Panama when the war started. He's the one holding the wire and the rifle. He just passed at the end of September at 96.
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The photos were to show civilian workers in the ordnance field not soldiers.
Women did a variety of jobs in WWII formerly held by men. The late Pony Maples used to tell a story of having an Emmerson B24 nose turret on a powered factory test stand at a display years ago. A small elderly lady came up to him and asked if she could sit in it, once in she ran the turret through all the factory tests like a pro. Turned out she was one of the final inspectors at the factory that made them during WWII.
Women did a variety of jobs in WWII formerly held by men. The late Pony Maples used to tell a story of having an Emmerson B24 nose turret on a powered factory test stand at a display years ago. A small elderly lady came up to him and asked if she could sit in it, once in she ran the turret through all the factory tests like a pro. Turned out she was one of the final inspectors at the factory that made them during WWII.
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