I posted this years ago on the old site ,hard one to put a finger on what's actually being shown.Photo taken at the Winchester Repeating Arms research lab two rounds caught in flight with high speed camara. Bullets too close to be automatic fire ? Duplex load ? Anyone ?
It could be two flashes of the strobe, but they would be awful short flashes for that date. If it were a spinning strobe there might be more than two bullet images, depending on when the exposure started.
It was supposed to increase the probability of a hit for less capable marksmen. I guess it proved to be unsuccessful since they weren't widely adopted.
There were a lot worse places than Phu Bai and they weren't all in Viet Nam.
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Winchester made M198 (aka Duplex ammo) for the US military in the early-to-mid 1960s. Little known factoid is that Duplex ammo was used back in 1967 in Vietnam by a US Army Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) unit. The article was in the January 1968 edition of American Rifleman. They had a few dozen improvised M14A1 sniper rifles that used a combination of M118 match and M198 Duplex ammo. From Lee Emerson's excellent book:
"Prior to 1968, a sniper detachment was created within the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) Company of the U. S. Army 4th Infantry Division in Viet Nam. The LRRP Company sniper detachment tested the following rifles for use as a sniper weapon: Winchester Model 70, Remington Model 700, M14, M16A1, and three versions of the AK47. The M14 was chosen because it was reliable, capable of long distance shots and could deliver volume of fire if needed. These M14A1 sniping rifles were used in the Central Highlands of the Republic of Viet Nam and configured as follows: 1) all Harrington & Richardson models 2) equipped with M14E2 stocks 3) equipped with M84 2.2 X scopes 4) lighter M16A1 bipods mounted on the gas cylinders just forward of the spindle valves and 5) the selector switches were installed. The M14A1 proved sufficiently accurate for sniping use. It was found that experienced shooters could easily hit Army E type silhouette targets at 700 meters from the prone position. This was equivalent to shooting a man that was kneeling at 700 meters. Snipers equipped with these scoped M14A1 rifles took nine magazines of ammunition with them. The nine magazines were loaded to eighteen rounds each. Two magazines contained M118 match grade cartridges and the other seven magazines held M198 duplex ball rounds. Should the three man sniper team get into a firefight, snipers would remove the match ammunition, insert a magazine of duplex rounds and switch to automatic for suppressive fire."
I am making a replica of that rifle (attached). I have searched for two years to find an empty display box of M198 Duplex ammo, but never found one. I have only 5 rds of that ammo. It's headstamp is WRA and it's dated 1964. Just some random factiods.
I'll admit I've never heard of such a round. I'll also admit if someone brought it up before today, I'd say it would never work and was a fool's idea. My argument would be that the second round is the one that pushes or very closely follows the first round out of the barrel, there is no way for the lead round to accelerate and pull away from the trailing round, so you'd just have one long unstable bullet going downrange. I would be highly concerned about a squib, then the next shot of two rounds would cause quite the damage. Obviously I am wrong because it's been done with success.
The older I get, the more I realize "life in prison" is not that much of a deterrent.
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Originally Posted by Sustinemus
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