I thought you folks might like to see a few pictures of an early S&W Model 60 that ‘served’ in Viet Nam (VN) in most of 1967 and part of 1968. The gentleman who owns it was kind enough to let me take these pictures and make ‘sanitized’ scanned images of the paperwork he had to obtain to bring it back to the States when he departed (he used the term DEROS’d) VN. He told me that when he purchased the piece in late-1966 he had to give the gun store a copy of his orders sending him to VN, which he believed was forwarded on to S&W so they would allocate one of them (Model 60) to the store / him. Unfortunately the piece didn’t arrive before he left for VN, but it was sent to his parents. His mother wrapped it up in aluminum foil and enclosed it in a large box of oatmeal-raisin cookies and mailed it to him. It came through just like it was supposed to – he still remembers having a hard time deciding which he was happiest to get -- the Model 60 or the cookies!
In one of the pictures you’ll notice a small cloth bag, similar to the one he used to carry his spare ammo. According to him, at that time there weren’t any speedloaders or Bianchi speed strips available, so the bag was the easiest solution to carry his spare ammo. He said that he usually carried the Mod 60 in the upper right breast pocket of his fatigue shirt, with the spare ammo (in the cloth bag) in his left front pants pocket. On occasion (when, he said, he didn’t want to look too lumpy), he’d tuck it inside the waist-band of his pants, behind his right hip, where it would be covered by his fatigue shirt.
He said he never had occasion to ‘use’ it, but the one time when he thought he might, he felt woefully ‘undergunned’ – during TET in Jan / Feb 1968, when the 199th Infantry Brigade Main Base camp came under attack he was made platoon leader of a provisional rifle platoon made up of clerks, cooks and mechanics. He said there was not a rifle to be had anywhere – NObody was giving up a perfectly good rifle to a clueless Lieutenant!
This model 60 has an approximately 1/10th of an inch wide front sight with a correspondingly narrow rear sight channel. As can be seen in a couple of the pictures both the trigger and the hammer have a dark brown (or antique bronze) finish. He said that is the original finish, as the only changes he made to the piece were to use a ‘magic marker’ to try to blacken the serrations of the front sight and to add the Tyler T-Grip adapter, which was added well after his return to the U.S.
In so far as ammunition was concerned, he used the standard GI .38 Special M41 ball ammo. He did mention that he acquired some .38 Special tracer rounds, and he carried one round in the cylinder, positioned to be the last round fired so he’d know when he had run ‘dry’.
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