80's 90's dump poutch?

[Keithlag]

i always put my ones down the front of my smock if not back in a ammo pouch the right way up.

 

[Tommikka]

2 hours ago, Cyberlawyer said:

 

Let's just say if your CQMS is good at his job he will be owed enough favours that he will rarely be buying his own drinks. Definitely a case of looking after the troops and they will look after you.

 

 

Originally the idea was that magazines would be shipped preloaded and disposed off after use, so every ammo resupply would also replace the mags. The yanks did this in Vietnam where the ammo was supplied in preloaded mags in the bandoleers and the mags were considered disposable. The bean counters did away with this and we instead got stripper clips in bandoleers and plastic speed loaders. The biggest problem with this was that the build quality of the magazines was not significantly improved when it was decided they were going to be reused, hence the cheap springs that were originally going to be a single use item would loose tension following repeated reuse and cause stoppages. This resulted in the fairly common practice of only loading 28 rounds in each mag (or wherever possible stealing colt mags when on joint exercises with the US as they were far superior).

‘Originally originally’, further back in time, magazines were fixed giving greater capacity than one shot, and there were some rifles that had a single removable magazine on a wire to avoid soldiers losing them.

Today they are relatively a lot cheaper, but still need a fair bit of work to produce a magazine making them much more expensive than stripper clips etc, but logistics remains a key issue as well as the cost of disposable magazines.

[Adolf Hamster]

3 hours ago, Tommikka said:

there were some rifles that had a single removable magazine on a wire to avoid soldiers losing them.

 

you mean the early lee rifles? iirc werent they 2 magazines- one chained to the gun and 1 spare.

 

idea being you single loaded it unless you needed the magazine for a cavalry charge or such.

[Cyberlawyer]

5 hours ago, Tommikka said:

Originally originally’, further back in time, magazines were fixed giving greater capacity than one shot, and there were some rifles that had a single removable magazine on a wire to avoid soldiers losing them.

True, the Lee Enfield 303 (British Number 4 rifle) had a magazine that was intended to be fixed in normal use and ammunition was loaded through the breach on stripper clips with the feed for the stripper built into the receiver,

but that was a design choice that was common at the time and the magazines were made with this in mind to the appropriate quality.

 

Ironically today’s AR style magazines (Magpul and the like) are relatively expensive compared to the cheep aluminium shells with a couple of moulded bits of plastic and the worlds cheapest spring that were standard British fare in the 80s and 90s and both economically and from a build quality perspective are totally appropriate for reuse. This wasn’t the case with the early SA80 mags that were originally specified to be disposable and then weren’t properly re-specified and re-engineered when this changed.

 

Not sure the logistics are that much different between stripper clips and disposable mags. Obviously the ammo boxes would be larger and heavier (or carry fewer rounds), but I have never heard of any reported concerns about this, although the only actual conflict I am aware of where disposable magazines were standard issue is Vietnam (although I am happy to be corrected on this point if anyone is aware of any others).

Edited July 30, 2021 by Cyberlawyer

[Danno46]

Like the others have said the ‘Brecon pouch ‘ was the way I was taught straight down the front of your jacket until you get to ‘re~org’ and you could sort your kit out 

[TheFull9]

Is your gun empty and the bad guy pretty damn close?  F**k retaining the mag, drop it like it's hot, get the gun fed and do your best to live, think about picking the mag up if and when you have the chance.  As distance and available cover increases you've got more time and opportunity to retain the empty during the reload process.  With an exception to be noted momentarily, dropping empties has never been official UK doctrine afaik whether with rifle or pistol, even doing CQM for deployments (not that I've seen every service/unit's range SOPs by a long shot), but the fact is it's fast so do what you gotta do if that time comes is my stance - which for me it almost certainly never will but I sure hope I come through if it does.

 

I don't know the details during the SLR days, but basic evolution of british ammo feeding the last 100 years (primary rifles only) has been Lee-Enfield 5rnd clips -> FAL 20 round mags -> RG 'disposable' paper thin aluminium 30 rounders -> HK Steel very-much-not-disposable 30 rounders -> Magpul 30rnd EMAGs.  As mentioned we tried to copy the US in the 80s but bureaucracy caused an issue with the L85A1 and those cheap, weak mags were a large factor amongst the many problems that rifle had.  The magazine is one of the most vital links in the chain of reliability for a firearm.

 

Dump pouches have never really been the most popular thing for stashing empties for militaries anyway if you take a holistic look at things.  I've never personally seen one that was standard issue for us, the yanks, canada or anyone in Europe, I'm sure they exist but I've never seen one on anyone on ex, in theatre or in a deployed picture anywhere.  I'm quite sure there's various exceptions, but it's not the norm.  They're pretty good for airsoft, they're good for just stashing 'stuff' you need to shove somewhere right that second, saw a good bit of use for 'SSE' in the middle east for some cooler blokes than me, but they have a lot of drawbacks and aren't all that necessary.  I'd call them more a result of the 2000's explosion in more modernised and high-speed shooting courses available for civilians in the US and the gigantic growth in the tactical gear industry that was going on at that same time.