Changing magazine

[GeoffQRF]

Question for the veterans, from my 9 year old, changing magazines on his two Nerf Recon guns….

When you change magazines, do you put the empty one in your pouch, drop it and pick it up later, forget it there are loads at home? Or does it depend on the circumstances?

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[John D Salt]

When I was first allowed out with a self-loading weapon on weekends at government expense, we still had SLRs with wooden furniture, and nobody would have dreamt of dropping a mag — probably it would have counted as “casting away arms”. Back in the pouch it went (or pocket, we did lots of night work, and that was mostly done either in skeleton order or no webbing at all). Never mind magazines, we tried to take all our brass home, there was a small sum paid to the company fund for returned brass. On shooting weekends we often returned more brass than we had fired ourselves.

All the best,

John.

[JozisTinMan]

I my personal experience sporadically from 1990 – 2011 you’d keep your magazine and police up brass in the training area afterwards.  I was never in combat, but I assume it would be much looser and discarding a magazine may not be unusual, unless you stay in and  control the engagement area after the firefight, then you’d probaby police up any friendly magazines, of course along with enemy weapons, etc.

http://jozistinman.blogspot.com/

[GeoffQRF]

That’s what I am interested in. There’s a difference between training and combat, but are magazines too valuable to discard, or perhaps valuable unless its life or death?

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www.quickreactionforce.co.uk

[Just Jack]

Geoff,

We didn’t drop magazines in the Marine Corps, not even in combat.  While ammo was always plentiful, extra magazines could be hard to come by, and if you were getting extra they were probably someone else’s banged up, unserviceable ones, and you didn’t want to leave anything for the enemy.  Not to mention, they are pieces of gear you are accountable for (signed for on an equipment hand receipt).  In the overall scheme of things, you really try not to drop anything at all, and (when possible) you do a run-through back over the fight location to police up anything and everything that is yours or might aid the enemy.

In terms of where you place the empty magazine, some guys put them back in the pouch (though this can be a bit aggravating if you didn’t cut the little cloth separators out), some guys would stuff them in their cargo pockets, and some guys took to carrying a bag on their hip (attached to their deuce gear), specifically for tossing empty magazines in.  Me, I didn’t really need to change rifle magazines all that often, I was too busy firing 40mm grenades 😉

V/R,
Jack

[GeoffQRF]

Excellent thank you. I thought that was the case, but when I went to say it I suddenly questioned myself!

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[Irish Marine]

There are two types of reloads; Tactical and Speed.  Tactical you can retain your mag and replace with a fresh mag, so if your in cover or another Marine is covering by fire you can retain your mag.  Speed reloads are done while in a gunfight were you drop your mag and reload as quickly as you can. Also we carry dump pouches so you don’t have to fight a regular mag pouch to retain your mags.

[John D Salt]

Some more thoughts and memories, all tending towards the “don’t drop it” principle:

Before I was even in the TA, in the Navy CCF, I did a kiddies’ cadet week of arduous training at CTCRM Lympstone (I had applied for the gunnery course at HMS Excellent again, but our CCF lieutenant/history master was a joker and said they couldn’t get places this year). One of the things they taught us — different from Army practice — was to carry all our gash in our pouches. Compo rations came packed in a fair amount of tin and cardboard, and this was not to be left lying around, not even “burned, bashed and buried”, but carried with you. The reason given was to deny information to the enemy, as Marines would often be operating behind enemy lines; I suspect it was really to keep the training area tidy. But after we had been taught how to make a 24-hour ration pack last 3 days (and only actually had to make it last 2) we had an inspection where every scrap of wrapping had to be produced. People this obsessive about not leaving traces are not likely to leave mags lying about.

One of the actions in the Final Assault Position (if you use one, we didn’t always) is to make sure you have a full mag. It is really not possible to charge mags in combat, so the way of making sure you have a full mag is to take off the one you have on now, and put on a full one. In principle you are supposed to know how many rounds you have in a mag at any instant because you are supposed to count the rounds, but, like counting paces, I never managed this for very long, and I suspect most people didn’t. Anyhow, it’s a bad idea to discover you need to change mags in the middle of fighting through the enemy position.

Finally, back in the real old-timey days, some weapons came with a set number of magazines, and obtaining additional ones was hard if not impossible (long before the days of the STANAG mag, obviously). I think it was the Tokarev or Simonov self-loading rifle of the late 30s that was issued with two magazines, with numbers matched to the weapon. Any additonal ammo would have to be carried as loose stripper clips in boxes or bandoleers. A couple of battle accounts I have read suggest that charging magazines (a skill-at-arms task timed for assessment in the British personal weapons test) is so difficult as to be impractical in the stress of combat, which is why ammo resupply to the pointy end should always be already in mags or belts (and one of my Dad’s RA instructors once pointed out to him, from his experience in the Western Desert, that it’s annoying if your battery is issued with Lewis guns and the ammo resupply comes in Bren mags).

One more vaguely related thing — I recall that when I was in the drill for firing the 66mm M-72 LAW included stamping on the disposable tube before you disposed of it. This made little sense for the coming war in central Europe, but it was based in US experience of using the LAW in Vietnam. They had been annoyed to discover that the local Viet Cong had thriftfully policed up discarded 66mm tubes, and used them to produce home-made mortars. I have seen North Vietnamese orbats and after-action reports where individual magazines were accounted for, as well as weapons. In many insurgent forces I think a magazine would be too precious a thing to throw away.

All the best,

John.

[Gaz045]

We used to stuff the empties inside our jackets….or stuffed into daysacks…..never discarded them as when it went quiet we would mag up with more ammo either extra that we carried or replenishment (replen) from resupply.

Stuffing the empty mags back into pouches could be tricky especially with others in there……..also didn’t want to faff with an empty whilst grabbing for a full one!

"Even dry tree bark is not bitter to the hungry squirrel"

[PatG]

I was a reservist in Canada in the early 80’s. Our combat shirts had purpose built pockets for 6 FAL mags though I never carried that many. As others have said,  we were expected to keep our empties and reload them with loose rounds when possible.   Now these magazines were well made of fairly thick sheet steel with a brazed on solid lug to engage with the weapon and a removable floor plate. We were told that there were war stocks of disposable mags, pre-loaded, made in one piece out of thinner steel and with the front lug simply punched out of the front of the magazine – these were supposed to be disposable. I never saw one of these war stock mags in person so this may be just a war story but I have seen pictures of FN mags that do fit this description.

[Darkest Star Games]

My pops did SF recon in Nam (Project Sigma and SOG), in his experience when they got into a firefight it was generally an all out fight for survival for their tiny teams.  And even so, they generally threw their empty mags into their shirts/blouses (they had their webgear on so the mags stayed inside and didn’t fall out) rather than drop them because if they had to run but managed to be able to stop for a bit they could reload them from loose ammo they carried in their packs.  Also, by not dropping  them they weren’t left for the enemy to use and left less of a trail.

"I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

[John D Salt]

Darkest Star Games wrote:

My pops did SF recon in Nam (Project Sigma and SOG)

Project Sigma? A minute’s googling tells me nothing. Tell us more (pulling up a sandbag and starting a fresh thread if necessary).

All the best,

John.

[Patrice]

Never thought that dropping away empty magazines was possible when I did my compulsory military service in the French Army (but it was many years ago)…

Actually we had to put rubber tape around our MAT 49 submachine gun (still in use in the early 1980s) magazines to prevent them from falling down on their own.

http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/

[McKinstry]

It would never occur to us to just discard a magazine. That was 46 years ago so while things may have changed, I cannot think of a reason or circumstance where you’d consciously risk not having magazines unless one is hopelessly bent.

On an interesting current note, on my son’s deployment to Afghanistan they wrote to a commercial manufacturer (IIRC – Magpul) and they were nice enough to donate new magazines to replace the standard ones in their 9mm pistols as they were widely considered garbage.  As pilots that was more about peace of mind than any practical need.

The tree of Life is self pruning.

[Darkest Star Games]

John D Salt wrote:

Project Sigma? A minute’s googling tells me nothing. Tell us more (pulling up a sandbag and starting a fresh thread if necessary).

Here’s an extremely brief and slightly incorrect synopsis: http://www.macvsog.cc/special_projects.htm

B-56 became SOGs CCS, while Omega became CCC.

Don’t want to swamp you with a deluge of info, but one great thing you can look up is about Roy Benevides and his MOH.  Keywords for searches: Detachment B-56, MACV-SOG CCS, Command Control South, operation Daniel Boon, Leaping Lenna, Salem House, Blackjack-31 through -33.

"I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

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