Next time you ask us a question your fingers better be bleeding from all the typing you've done searching for the answer yourself.

You could have easily found your own answer concerning the above question.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...5.htm#sectioni

Next time consult the FM before you ask stupid questions.

Team Sergeant

Works a lot better with MG battalions and companies with semi-permanently emplaced, water-cooled guns using 250 round belts. Steel rain.

Not sure how you can use RPGs like that, since all of the ones I have seen had a self-destruct feature that detonates them at around 1,000 meters.

TR

I learned the basics of it in Advanced Machine Gunners School using .50 cals.

It is very difficult to set up and have effects on target within a short period of time.
A normal section of six 240's, in the offensive role, will be hard pressed to have effects on target before ammo requirements become an issue.

The only advantage to indirect fire is that the support by fire can be in full or partial defilade.

In the defense it may be useful, but only if there is the time and means to preregister the targets. Terrain and amount of guns permitting.

Thank you everyone for your answers, and the information, personally I think that'd be pretty cool to see a line of Machine Guns bursting down like that... That'd be insane to be going into a field, and all of a sudden have Machine Gun fire coming down on you out of nowhere... I can't imagine what that would be like...

LOL

blueO2hd 2/75? (right on!)

and Team Sergeant, I personally didn't think to look into the Machine Gun FM... (Because at that point in time, I was going for human sources who have greater expertise and experience then a "book" because of a Lieutenants remark of them not being direct fire weapons) personally I didn't even know it existed until last night.

I greatly appreciate all of the input you QPs have put down, thank you.

Thank you.

:lifter

That "book" (FM) is written by former soldiers and is the very book I learned from......

There was a VC or NVA RR crew that used to zip a few rounds into camp indirectly from out in the bush.
They managed to kill some people.
Made a hell of a noise incoming, but very fast and hard to duck.
Doubt if the method was in any manual.

Beaten Zone or Beating Zone
 

I recall the term "beaten zone or beating zone" used to describe indirect fire from an M-60, or machine gun. It was indirect, plunging fire used either for recon by fire, or if we had spotted some folks that were in range, but not from direct fire weapons, and we could not get a fire mission quick enough. I seem to remember he would traverse the area, and it appeared from the tracers that he got ok coverage in a small area arcing or lobbing the rounds in. The only other time I saw this used was a Quad .50 worked over a valley below a small fire base I was on. They had literally a ton of ammo in the bunkers, and it impressed me.

Noslack

Indirect Machine Gun Fire
 

In my mini-museum (china cabinet in my office) I still have an original Firing Table for the M-60 Machine Gun. Just like the firing tables for artillery, it gives range vs. elevation (in mils) for the M-60 MG.
That's why there are flats machined into the top of the M-60 barrel, they are for the gunner's quadrant.

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc...c=GetTRDoc.pdf

The beaten zone is the area of the ground upon which the cone of fire falls.
The beaten zone applys to all classes of fire with respect to the ground, but is easier to identify when it is plunging fire as opposed to grazing fire.

Indect fire is a means of employment, not a class of fire.

Some of the terms concerning employment, characteristics and classes of fire are being confused for one another in this thread.

Yes indirect fire with a 240 and M 2 is possible
 

You need to look for TR 240-15 Machine Gun Techniques of Machine Gun Fire, Indirect Laying, 1925

This is the bible of the lost art of indirect fire with machine gun. Firing overhead, firing over mask, laying in more than one gun.

It opens up more of the battle space to the SBF positions.

Post WWI was the high point of machine gunnery and it carried into WWII. It fell off after that

Indirect Fire with the M-60 Machine Gun
 

This is an old post, recently reactivated.

There are Firing Tables for the M-60 machine gun.
The nomenclature is "FT-7.62-A-2".
We had them 38 years ago in Korea. I guess they are still in the Army publication system.
They were thin booklets, about 8 pages, with the orange/brown cloth cover.
Inside were the elevation required to hit a target at a given range.
You will find the reference to the Firing Tables in the back of the operators manual.
(See image).
Supposedly, the tops of the gas port on the barrel were machined flat, so as to be parallel to the centerline of the bore (See picture of M-60, note arrows).
Then, by looking up the range desired in the firing table, the gunner would determine the elevation required. The necessary elevation would be dialed in the gunners quadrant (see image), the quadrant would be laid across the flats, and the gun elevated with the Traversing and Elevating mechanism on the tripod until the bubble was centered, not unlike elevation for a mortar tube.
Azimuth/deflection was a matter of compass work.

In theory, my six M-60's (I had a Recon Platoon, with six "Rat Patrol" gun jeeps, each with an M-60 with tripods) could be laid for direction in defilade, elevated, and commence fire towards a target without the gunners ever seeing their target.

We never even practiced it. Seemed like a huge waste of ammunition.

I've observed this in action. It was used to lay a helicopter trap and downed three Soviet helios (including one of the first 'flying tanks'). Three M1917A1s configured in .303 were situated where the helios were expected to make a gun run on a village. They flew into a steel rain squall. First two crashed landed within a klick, the third pulled up into one of the sheets of rain and dropped like a stone backwards to the ground.

Used a USAAID child's protractor, a plumb bob, and the FT.


Lots of goat for dinner that night.

Allegedly...

Afghanistan in the '80s?

I love this forum.