The Stoner Machinegun: A Navy Seal Remembers

in its day this added to our firepower like no other weapon could have once you got used to it and you fell in love with the weapon you'd been really carried anything else in 1962 Eugene M stoner developer of the ar-15 m16 assault rifle began work on a new weapons concept he envisioned a new design to give a fighting man more firepower in a lightweight versatile compact package a Cadillac gauge company engineering team had advice doner spent the next year designing a revolutionary weapon system that would become known as the stoner 63 the heart of the stoner 63 was the multi-use receiver which could be configured into six different weapons to rifle variations were possible a folding stock carbine and an assault rifle three of the four machine gun versions were belt-fed the light machine gun a tripod mounted medium machine gun and the solenoid operated fixed machine gun for aircraft or vehicular use the fourth variation was magazine-fed from the top the carbine and assault rifle models were select file and operated from a closed bolt position these air-cooled gas-operated weapons fed 5.56 millimeter ammunition from a staggered 30-round curved magazine this was a 50% improvement over the m16 removing four internal parts and inverting the rifle receiver configured the stoner 63 for firing fully automatic from an open bolt this conversion disabled the select fire option and the weapon could be setup for a top magazine feed similar to the British Bren gun offset sights were designed so the operator could see past the vertical magazine this option gave the gunner a lower profile while engaging targets from fixed positions as a belt-fed solenoid operated weapon the stoner 63 could be mounted in a vehicle or aircraft an aerodynamically designed pod was available which carried three of the solenoid operated stoners the lightweight 5.56 millimeter high-velocity rounds were easily deflected and made aircraft mounting of the stoner impractical the gun saw little use in this configuration mounting the stoner and a special adapter cradle for the m2m 120 to tripod configured the weapon for its role as a medium machine gun removing the cradle and tripod converted the stoner to a light machine gun by 1966 stoner production had moved from Costa Mesa California to Warren Michigan approximately 2400 weapons had been manufactured testing had been conducted by the US Army and Marine Corp to determine the stoners suitability as a replacement for the m16 rifle his testing led to refinements in the original stoner design resulting in the upgraded stoner 63 aid although none of stoners configurations one favored with the larger military establishment in the light machine gun mode this innovative weapons system achieved legendary status in the hands of the Navy SEALs the US Navy had classified the stoner 63 a light machine gun as the mark 23 mod o for its SEAL Teams in Vietnam by 1967 these elite warriors took advantage of the massive firepower the stoner offered in a light weapon as unconventional warfare experts SEALs combat tested every possible configuration of the stoner 63 a light machine gun retired SEAL veteran Lieutenant Commander Michael J Walsh remembers his introduction to the stoner my first experience with the stoner was in 1968 in those days we had UDT training and the SEAL course was separate so you went through 18 weeks of UDT training carrying an m1 garand and then when you got orders to a SEAL team you started your six-week sealed basic and Doctrine ation and then you actually saw most of your first weapons serious weapons training began then in those days when you first saw the stoner it was like nothing else around it was different it didn't look like anything else and if you had any weapon savvy at all you knew that right away that this was an awesome weapon and usually the first thing you saw was on the desert firing range you've got a firepower demo which is very impressive this is the stoner 63 alpha light machinegun by five six millimeter linked and this is the primary machine-gun that the seal platoon is used during the Vietnam War its gas-operated air-cooled it had three firing speeds adjusted with this gas port from 750 nine hundred and a thousand rounds a minute new developments during the Vietnam War was this flash suppressor and the the gentleman that invented this was Eugene stoner who also was the man that invented the m16 rifle brand new technology for its day all right headspace and timing a preset which was right along with the m60 machine gun a very desirable feature is the cocking lever was underneath the weapon just bring her back like that bring her forward which also allowed you to take the barrel out and you could see the grooves these are the cooling grooves of the weapon which actually gives the weapon more surface area allowing it to cool faster just pop it right back in make sure she's locked and you were basically at this point when she was loaded ready to fire safety is right behind the trigger guard this is the ammunition box the they came packed with a hundred rounds of five five six linked in there and had the same basic cover look very similar in many respects to the m60 like machine gun the slings were placed on top of the weapon so that you could just rest the weapon slung over your shoulder to read a map or get a drink of water and that was as individual as the people the use of the the front sling actually obscured your vision but we learned at this point to fire instinctively with the weapon so you never really use the front sight unless some guys would bend this down on the right side so that the the slink down here using front sight focus method which is the rear sight became useless but a very accurate weapon delivered a lot of fire in a very short amount of time the stoner handled really smoothly at that point it was the smoothest weapon I had fired fully automatic very little recoil you just lean into it you let the let the handguard rest in your left hand and it was a very smooth weapon low flash at night all the right stuff the platoon structure was such that there were 14 man seal platoons - seven man squads each squad had an officer and the in your standard basic army infantry setup point man radio man patrol leader automatic weapons men rear security and there was usually only one corpsman per platoon the my particular squad on that first trip with the Vasile team one we had three stoners two em 60s I carried the a K and the radium and carried the the car 15 that's a significant amount of firepower that the particular platoon that I recalled we had six of these three in each squad which basically it gave a seal platoon the same firepower as an infantry company in an instance of that as three stoners and two m60 machine guns per 7 man squad small seal units working deep in enemy territory made efficient use of the increased firepower that the stoner could deliver mission briefings included expected enemy positions terrain and other intelligence information the patrol leader would also assign ammunition and ordnance loads for each SEAL team member at his marques but we need to refine our intelligence picture that far the province pick up his 15 year old PC that came the two boys center here the day when the Sun blown off it seemed heinous but he got hit by a few of eight nights right but he got killed he knew this area so he was scared lonely injured and soon he fed up the whole mess has been I do leave the drops in the area and the immensity will pass out from files the material of there easily - anyway he sick leaves up someplace he came on in at the two boys there he was informed about the cash value 11 they still find it he said he couldn't agree deal not for more 11 the cat didn't graveyard contains an ak-47 about MV 40 rocket making cluster bomb some lightning caps documents and stuff like that the area is heavily - we're going in during the daylight the kid makes you know is the way to the minefields we booby-trapped I want that intrusion to be extremely slow it's a fireball long after the bank controlled office close to the river so we get all the firepower in the world like behind us on the boat we spend most of time watching where you step we won't be sitting up a primer that's fine too many minds I'm one that waits on first then family I'll be in in then the rest was na'ka'leen formation I can't press call in two months they're gonna be stripped wires and springs of pain raids and we could set lots of cluster bombs like the one where last catch went into everybody attempt deal just because it start birthday out in a while don't get lakhs and start enjoying the scenery we don't like mother a bunch of casualties as weapons learn is you guys it's over take four and 50 rounds what there's many things thinking about 450 if you got the radio you can take the m16 about you underground Johnny's 1839 about 34 rounds I think the sudden 6 - sniper and somebody better bring a shovel that's working occasions the free throws she'll be free when Timothy will be ramrod in Malibu linen quarter look for the Navy off on the LGPL he had to go to 1300 each seal improvised his own method for carrying the large number of rounds the clandestine operations required some men improvised with standard-issue combat gear what worked really well was canteen pouches empty canteen pouches the the regular m16 battle pouch that that had a tendency to shrink a little bit as time went on because it was wet dry wet dry and it shrank a lot but the regular u.s. canteen pouch worked great you just snapped it when you need an ammo you just pulled out a hundred round belt you could have those 200 rounds ready to go right away some people Ward under their Cammy shirt so you had rounds there and you didn't glow in the dark it the average load was about 500 rounds per man in the continuing quest for more firepower seals sought to increase the capacity of stoner magazines early efforts included this adaptation of an enemy RPG drum later field modifications led to a higher capacity plastic box we also found that we needed more than the original hundred rounds so some of these boxes were actually cut right at this end and another half again length of box was applied to it it came to about here which gave us roughly a hundred and eighty rounds you had latitude to try new things if something didn't work you tried something else one Operator stacked two of the black plastic boxes to carry nearly 200 rounds of the five point five six millimeter high-velocity ammunition this particular seal carried extra rounds in an ak-47 chest pouch others preferred the metal drums that cadillac gage introduced during the war these cylindrical magazines were designed to hold 150 rounds of linked ammunition [Music] [Music] [Music] I did see a wire stock on this the the wire type stock but this was the predominant stock particularly on the west coast group and the East Coast guys did have a wire stock occasionally I saw that once or twice I don't recall ever seeing that any more than that but and once I saw somebody without without the stock the weapon is way out of balance you need the stock to fire it from the shoulder bad habit to get into in my opinion of operating without a stock you have a tendency to fire very widely an ammo when you only have 500 rounds you you have to husband that resource to use it when you need it see it just without the stock you're throwing the balance of the weapon off wait see you the one that one is the weight but having having the wire stock is wait but but when you have a weapon of like this it's not like a submachine gun this is a light machine gun you need to start there for balance that's what's going into your shoulder you're gonna lean into that and if you don't have that to lean into it's like trying to fire it this way it's more difficulties you want to be able to bring it up and engage cooperation between Cadillac gauge and the Navy SEALs began early in the field use of the stoner 63 a SEALs found cadillac gage engineers very receptive to new ideas the warren michigan factory received performance reports directly from seals in vietnam you could see two or three major changes in this weapon within a year the fact it was real responsive cadillac gage quickly implemented a modification following a tragic accident during a seal mission this is the now infamous Deadman pen which was developed after an accident where this pin had a tendency to drift out it vibrated out and the initiate when the weapon was first introduced the the guy carrying it was killed because he was sitting in a boat with the muzzle right here into his chest and this in this pin which became the Deadman pin had drifted out which caused the weapon to separate right here the receiver group separated right here which there was nothing to hold the sear and he he put considerable bullets into himself and he died so this this was the first major modification that I remember they they put a double screw in here and there was a look a little detent in it locked it never happened again although the stoners advanced features endeared it to many seals the weapon had its problems drum fed weapons would occasionally jam from spin back when ejected casings re-entered the chamber a pair of small parts in the feed mechanism were a common cause of difficulties in early belt-fed stoners fee poll that was the one part that consistently broke and you had to end if there was no time to replace it you brought home a 13 pound Club so it was maintenance intensive which was an undesirable feature of it you had to baby it you had to get the carbon out of this area back out of the the bolt group in here and there in the receiver end the ammo came in hundred round belts the boxes came packed like they are it was not uncommon to see bandoliers Chris cost across people with not only the stoner but the m60 as well the feet race similar the latch cover similar to an m60 in a great many respects this was the hundred round ammo box it came in five five six linked ammunition which we'll put into the weapon you loaded this before you went anywhere when you were ready to go you simply put your protective cover back on your belt protector put the safety on the weapon is ready to fire [Music] [Music] [Music] I saw stoners trips 2 3 & 4 the first trip I wasn't in the teams yet I I was writing Swift boats based out of camera on Bay the trips with the Phoenix program and the seal platoon trips yes the last trip was an intelligence trip didn't see any stoners there but when operating in the seal mode yes in the pure seal platoon or Phoenix advisory role mode yeah season stoners were a daily part of life one of the unsung uses of the stoner was in supporting the SEAL advisors who were in the Phoenix program which is where a seal and Phoenix support really shined because that seal pru advisor could always get support from the platoon you put any number of stoners and or m60 s online the provincial reconnaissance unit would just drive these people in an l-shape ambush right into you and it was devastatingly effective under the right conditions good operation planning good OPSEC it worked and that's where outside of normal seal use the stoner really shined and it actually became the norm for seal platoons to support the Phoenix program and it 1:1 helped the other and then as these individual seals came out of the Phoenix program and went back into platoons our whole intelligence collection effort and smartness just grew by leaps and bounds it's like each platoon got smarter with each trip I that kind of learning curve has never been repeated we've never learned as much as fast one platoon briefed another the information transfer was enormous and sometimes there wasn't enough time to write it all down so the the intelligence department his time went on began to try to document some of this intelligence and operations began to try to click a little bit together and it depended on who was in the Operations Office a good ops boss good notes from the platoon commanders the CEO debriefed the platoon the officers were debriefed with the platoon and then again separately I I became a believer in the debrief method early on very early in my career and in the value of gathering your own intelligence there the platoons could gather intelligence process intelligence and then react on that same information and this is where the Naval Intelligence liaison officers known as Nilus there another unsung group of people that deserve a lot of credit those officers coordinated the platoon intelligence collection effort very smart people the Navy did a good job in picking those folks they they're directly responsible for the value of our intelligible oh and they in the Phoenix advisor if he was a seal that was a perfect triangle and we all work together we verified intelligence the Nilo could give us too it give it to us and we can react to it that night beautiful beautiful way to do business and you have to remember you'll hear a lot of critiques here and there there was no rulebook SEAL team was still just six or eight years old the rulebook was still being written and with each platoon that came back added a volume to that which got us to where we are today but those every one of those lessons sadly most of them were written in blood [Music] [Music] [Music] a normal jungle Patrol you could cross 12 or 13 streams a night easy so if you saw a monkey bridge you went across it but one way or another you would cross 12 or 13 streams and it was nothing to go down 12 feet of riverbank crossed a river at low tide go up another 12 a 13 foot vertical mud wall so the advantage of the point man was that he was the first one up and then basically from that point on you pulled everyone else up the wall you get asked about balance and balance was important particularly in the jungle environment the longer barrel gave some guys better balance some men and preferred the longer barrel even with the the encumbrance of that length in the jungle this became very popular the shorter version and and balance is important because you're you and you're crossing a monkey bridge you going across the monkey bridge fairly fast you want your load balanced and you're tiptoeing across a bamboo pole about like this at night and the first guy across is the lucky guy because everybody else tracks their mud across it the real the real art form is for their the m60 man whose rear security to get across that bridge without falling off because you know noise compromises you so you're you're tiptoeing across balancing your weapon so it was a question of you know just necessity and we trained to light in various swamps in Southern California and the salt and sea being one that comes right to mind we we erected monkey bridges and just had people run across it with their equipment that's the only way to train most seal operations in Vietnam didn't go past one evolution of darkness and most of the time you never carried food all your carried was a little water and you'd go and you didn't eat till you got home so and operations would run about a 24 hour cycle you go out at night come back sometime the next day even in daytime patrols rarely did people carry rations I mean sometimes they did but mostly it was just water to get you through that the classic example of the one-handed stoner shot is a seal squad inserting on a forward command post deep in hostile country a single gunship mission seven seals and an interpreter and as the helicopter is landing we're flying nape of the earth and the helicopter is coming into the target right in front of the command post you just hear this wawk wawk wawk we're at this angle relative to the ground and the point man picks that stoner up and engages an enemy soldier while he's running blew his brains were not even on the ground yet landed on the ground this guy comes out of the helicopter tumbles rolls is on his feet and the weapon worked amazingly well that's a rare example but this this guy was an extremely good shot with this weapon and that's that's the only time I'd ever seen anything like that of course we were engaged right away the other squad got pinned down by another enemy squad so it got real intense there for a few minutes but that this thing performed really really well if you were inside hooch and come out and you would get engaged by conventional forces dug in you could suppress some fire this brought you time if you were wise until the gunships got overhead if I were to sum up the stoners role visa V Navy SEALs in Vietnam wouldn't be any one thing it would it greatly increased our firepower again if you had six stoners and for EM 60s in a in a 14 man seal platoon you've got company sized firepower just with machine guns alone you could lay down a tremendous base of firepower you could protect the insertion craft on the way back so if you if you were fired on not only was there 150 caliber going back at them you had that all the platoons firepower instantly engaged which is a significant base of firepower and that got you home the Navy SEALs ability to carry out clandestine missions is now legendary their early history originated in the jungles and mangrove swamps of South Vietnam SEAL Teams one and two waged war on the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army was such cunning and stealth that the phrase men with green faces struck terror in the enemy an important factor in the success of the Navy's new elite fighting units was the tremendous firepower they could deliver the devastating light machine gun version of the stoner 63 a played a crucial role in the creation of that legend [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: B

Views: 581,058

Rating: 4.906518 out of 5

Keywords: Stoner 63, Machineguns, Arms of the 80s

Id: uwjx7NA1HQs

Length: 31min 41sec (1901 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 01 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Hoonin_Kyoma]

Saw this somewhere else the other day (r/guns maybe?)... it’s a long video but it’s actually pretty informative. Yeah, it sure looks dated and the music sounds that way too, but I learned a lot.