[9] Tom Mangold and John Penycate, authors of one of the definitive accounts of tunnel warfare during the Vietnam War, reported that the U.S. tunnel rats were almost exclusively soldiers of European or Hispanic descent, many of whom were Puerto Rican or Mexican American. I never aimed the weapon.

These weapons were used in against some of the most low-tech forces the US military had faced in a long time.

Sometimes while on the mission, a Tunnel Rat would meet a Viet Cong soldier, and would then have to engage in exceedingly close combat. In the condensed world of the tunnel rat, even the M2 carbine with a folding stock was nicknamed “The Cannon.” IN general, pistol suppressors were not available, and when they were, the tunnel rats found them to be long and made their handguns ungainly. Comments have not been generated for this article. This made shooting at the enemy impossible and also made grenades fairly ineffective. Viet Cong would also wait for a soldier to come out a trap door then kill them with stakes, guns, or knives. The Army LWL passed on the project to a qualified civilian contractor, Aircraft Armaments Inc. (AAI) of Baltimore, Maryland.

The ammunition did have an unusual safety problem inherent in its design. The areas usually searched by the tunnel rats were often little more than 30-inch wide tubes cut through the sticky earth. Needless to say, it was a dangerous job that only a special group of soldiers could handle. One tunnel rat wrote in an article, “In the tunnels, your adrenalin was pumping like a river. Most users trained for an hour or less with the new weapons, firing 30 or fewer rounds each during the session.

But the sound of the big .45 going off in the close confines of a tunnel was deafening. And even with a tight cylinder gap, the suppressor didn’t reduce the sound of the shot enough to be worth the trouble. At that point, the Vietnam tunnel rats’ role became much more involved. This resulted in a high (18 percent) failure to fire rate on the first weapons. To maximize available space for the ammunition design, the largest commercially-available revolver design was chosen for development into the tunnel weapon. In case of a round going off from heat or a blow, the shot would be moving at the same 750 foot per second velocity it would have if fired from the weapon. Generally, tunnel rats were armed with pistols, bayonets, flashlights, and sometimes explosives. The shot looked much like a round ball with a band around the center. Outside of the barrel, the main mechanism of the revolver was little changed outside of the cylinder. WEIGHT (LOADED) - 2.37 pounds In addition to their regular role, tunnel rats had to be extremely good at hand-to-hand combat. The tunnel rats’ first operation was part of Operation Crimp, carried out in January 1966, designed to destroy the bunker. The Tunnel Exploration Kit was abandoned in service, most tunnel rats wanted nothing to do with it, and it was quickly withdrawn.
By the 1960s, the tunnel complexes included hospitals, training areas, storage facilities, headquarters, and barracks. This was later used as part of the demonstration of the weapon to its users in Vietnam. Exchange a steel cartridge case for the open-ended cylinder, and a plastic capsule full of shot for the payload, and you have the heart of the tunnel weapon. I swear I could hear my heart beating.” –Jack Flowers, “Rat Six”, 1st Infantry Division.

The revolver decided on was the Smith & Wesson Model 29, .44 Magnum. Despite their extreme work during the Vietnam War, the tunnel rats are not a very well-known group but their job was one that made a huge difference during the war. One of the first major US search-and-destroy operations, where troops went out and tried to hunt down and exterminate the VC in their strongholds northwest of Saigon, was called OPERATION CRIMP. To increase hit probability in the dark tunnels, ammunition for the new weapons would be of the multiple-projectile type. The tunnels weren’t constructed in straight lines but with corners that had between a 60-degree and 120-degree turn. But the larger tunnels were usually in the deeper layers of the complex. On a very odd note, one of the Tunnel Weapons was reported lost in Vietnam. But another group of US forces liked the tunnel weapon - a lot. The “silent” quality of the tunnel weapon gave some of the users questions regarding its lethality.

When the gas-driven piston strikes a constriction at the open end of the cylinder, it is trapped and held in place.

Tunnel entrances were often little more than an 18-inch square camouflaged wooden trapdoor. Their motto was the tongue-in-cheek Latin phrase Non Gratus Anus Rodentum ("not worth a rat's ass"). [11] According to contemporary accounts, the U.S. Marine Corps and British Royal Marines were involved in similar work in the war in Afghanistan. QSPR (TUNNEL WEAPON) TECHNICAL DATA UNIT # 5 An additional coil spring was placed near the top of the mainspring to give the hammer additional power to hit the slightly recessed primers of the special ammunition. A number of other encounters with VC and NVA troops in tunnels resulted in wounded and disabled enemy forces, but they were not killed by the shot load of the Tunnel Weapon. The weapon in the kit was a .38 Special Smith & Wesson Model 10 (M&P) revolver with a 4-inch barrel, a small high-intensity aiming light and a muzzle mounted suppressor. That was enough.

The cap-mounted lamp slid around and either was pointing the wrong way, slipped down over the tunnel rat’s eyes, or gave the VC an aiming point that was almost guaranteed to be fatal. MUZZLE VELOCITY - 750 fps It hits the target just by using the pointing method. The “muzzle velocity” of the projectile, in this case the shot charge, is dependent only on the length of travel and pressure pushing the internal piston of the round. The men of the 3 Field Force, an Australian combat engineering unit that served in Vietnam from 1965-1966, have made a convincing argument that they were the first allied troops to enter the tunnels. Here’s a look at some of the other dangers Vietnam tunnel rats faced: Some of these dangers are self-explanatory but let’s take a look at some of the others. Through this trapdoor would go a tunnel rat equipped with a flashlight, handgun, knife, and bravery. The subterranean world of the tunnel rat was made up of tunnels dug through soil that was described by an engineer as being like natural, reinforced concrete. The "Diehards" of the U.S. Army's 1st Engineer Battalion, whose exploits are featured in Mangold and Penycate's book, later claimed a special place for tunnel rats in American military history during their rotation through the Cu Chi District of Vietnam in 1969.[10]. The company’s experience with firearms had them quickly applying the captured piston concept to the tunnel weapon project. This job fell on the Vietnam War tunnel rats. Soldiers quickly learned to scan the ceilings with their flashlights. Eventually, the tunnel complexes included hospitals, storage facilities, barracks, training areas, kitchens, first aid stations, and headquarters. RIM DIAMETER - 0.550 inch For starters, the tunnels were barely big enough for a 5’6” man to fit in so not just any soldier could do the job.

One user could hit a flying sparrow at 20 meters with a single shot. A tunnel exploration kit was developed in 1966 by the Limited Warfare Laboratory (LWL). Like green ferrets, Tunnel Rats would go into the dark, forbidding tunnels and discover whatever might be there.

Booby traps were an unfortunate danger for tunnel rats. Ceilings were no greater than 1.8 meters high, and much more often closer to the minimum 0.8 meters high. SOUND LEVEL - 120 Decibels at 1 meter from muzzle, This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V5N9 (June 2002)and was posted online on February 14, 2014. The precision sights of the Model 29 were useless with the new ammunition and the rear sight was removed, leaving a square slot in the top of the revolver for rough aiming if desired. Once he cleared that area, the second tunnel rat was sent in. All tunnel rats were combat engineers, soldiers trained to perform construction and demolition tasks in combat.

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