The M-79 Thumper

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sigp220.45

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The M-203 was the standard by the time I came in the service, but I have had the chance to fire a few practice rounds with the M-79. It seemed like a great concept - I'd love to hear the opinions members who had more experience with this weapon.

 
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I have no experience to share, but I sure would like to have one. Seems like a good tool to sort out those pesky little interpersonal issues.
 
A couple years back our Armory was cleaning out old gear and TMs. I managed to find a brand new TM for the M79 in the trash being thrown out. I gave it to a Highway Patrol friend who served with 1st Marine Division in Vietnam cause he told me once how he loved the M79. We also found one of the old Flak Jackets, brand new still in plastic, and gave it away to another guy as a retirement gift.
 
The M-79 was a great gun for sure. It was good for close range or out to 300 meters. Very accurate and versatile.

As CC on my V-100 I chose to be the driver. My main gun was an M-79. Ammo for it could be HE, Buckshot, Flechette, flare, or tear gas.

One problem with the design was the automatic safety. Guy had to be nuts when he put that in. Every time you broke the barrel the safety was set. Removing the 1 little bar of steel fixed that though.

Later while on night town patrol they said carrying a shotgun was against the Geneva Convention. So I carried an M-79 instead. If you rested the butt on your hip, the muzzle was pointing right into the eyes of whoever you were confronting in a bar etc. That 40mm tube looked like the Lincoln tunnel and of course buckshot loads for the most part.
 
I got qualified with the M-79 and rode "shotgun" on a convoy a couple of times on ole highway one when I was a FNG in Vietnam. The anti personnel rounds were devasting, memory is a little short on this one but I think they held at least 20 fairly large bbs, short little dudes with a green cap. I fired alot of flares while on boat duty, when our number came up in rotation. I could put a round just about anywhere I wanted to, the same with a flare. One night a buddy of mine was busting my onions about how good I thought I was and maybe I could put my money where my mouth was. The Koreans had a small ammo barge out in the harbor that was just at the outer edge of flare range which was a little over 300+yards. I told the gluy I could drop a flare right on the deck, even with a cross wind. He pulled out a $20 note and said "Your on". I went to the back of our deck and checked the wind, loaded a white flare, checked the distance, brought it up and fired. It popped out over the barge up wind and landed on the deck just perfect. The little ROK Marine walking guard duty on the barge was busy kicking it off the deck, hollering across the water.
For our uses it was great but it did have its drawbacks in the field that were later fixed by using an under barrel launcher that allowed its user more protection at close range targets. I'm sure the guys in the field with more combat experience can attest to its excellent range and fire-power, we mostly used them as flare guns in the same manner that we used concussion grenades to keep swimmers in the water at bay. Each boat in rotation would be charged with tossing concussion grenades while on watch, as well as firing the odd flare...If we had a red alert we stepped up the exercise.
 
The advantage of the M79 over the M203 is the ability to use longer rounds. There isn't enough space between the breech face and the chamber mouth in an M203 to load some rounds.

Newer 40mm grenade launchers which can be mounted under barrel on rifles open to the side to fix this problem.
 
Did you know:
You can fire a hand-flare from a M79. Especially effective when shooting at your buddies in the bunker next door.
You can use it for a mortar & it'll shoot a lot further than 300 meters.
You can fire an M79 from the back of a Chinook without the pilots hearing it.

Best buddy (still) Matt Casey, Crew Chief, 129th AHC (Bulldogs), 1st Avn. Brigade. Sometime in 1970, II Corps.
M79 was his choice for a personal weapon since his greasegun was confiscated when his door gunner almost shot his foot off (no safety on a greasegun except closed dust-cover). He put a HE rd. thru the window of a lighthouse from a moving helicopter. Removed the projectiles from buck-shot rds. & replaced them with flechettes from anti-personel rockets.
Nasty stuff!
 
Although never actually issued one, I remember Ol' Thumper quite well. 1972-74 Ft. Hood, TX. I was in a Chaparral anti-aircraft unit with 2nd AD. Each crew had one man armed with a M-79 to help protect the launcher. Everybody was required to qualify with it. I liked it and always enjoyed range days.
Hand held artillery at its finest. :D
 
Roadtrash said:
The Thump Gun was a marvelous invention.
Click to expand...
...of the Germans who first used the "high-low pressure" ammunition principle in the Panzwer Abwehr Wurfer 600.

It's why the M79 and M203 have such tolerable recoil.

I've never fired one, but I've read that the Soviet/Russian BG15 grenade launcher doesn't use that principle, and has pretty nasty recoil.
 
I also got my introduction to the M-79 at Fort Hood in the early 70's. The soldiers that had it also had the pleasue of carrying an M-16!! Our unit went to the range and I was pretty good at shooting it, plus it could shoot that grenade a lot further than I could throw one!!
 
After Boot Camp in 1971 we went to "ITR" (Infantry Training Regiment) at Camp San Onofre, located inside Camp Pendleton, and I think at its northern terminus.

We got to shoot the M79. I was "stoked". I had seen pics in the magazines covering the Vietnam War and had read about their use. When handed the "cartridge" I figured, "This thing is gonna kick!" It did not. A comfortable push and a sound akin to a "Poomp!" The round downrange did not make the large fire and smoke, and loud, explosion like in the movies. It made almost no noise and you had to look hard to see the puff of dirt. We were firing fragmentation rounds if I remember.

We were lined up along the firing line about 10 feet apart and about 15 or so of us on line at a time. As I was there, with my fellow "shooters" we were ordered to lock and load. Then something happened, either on the firing line or behind us, and we were ordered to "Stand Fast", keep the loaded weapons pointed down-range, and await further instruction.

Now we had all just finished 13 weeks of Boot Camp and "should" have known to do as told, shut up, and wait as instructed.

Except for a "good-ole-boy" from Oklahoma (they exist in every state but he was from there). After only a few minutes he decided he wanted to know what was going on so he turned around with the M79 locked and loaded and held at his waist with one hand, dead level fore and aft, finger on the trigger. He looked right at a knot of five troop leaders (essentially D.Is) and weapons instructors and asked...."So wut r we gunna do now?" With his M79 pointed right at them.

They scattered like quail, ordering him to freeze in position, and not move. Then one of them approached him from the side, quietly asked him to take his finger off the trigger and then removed the M79 from "Oklahoma"s" hands.

The rest of the troop leaders and range officers all met the first one on the backside of the berm with "Oklahoma" in tow, and beat him into next Sunday.

Then we got to shoot our M79's. "Oklahoma" did not.
 
In 1970 I was in Gitmo, Cuba with a rifle company at the rifle range one day. Off to one side out about 200 meters was a large billboard sign painted orange with yellow stripes, it read: Do Not Shoot Beyond This Point. (Communist Cuba was on the other side, a short distance off)
A salty E-4 just back from 13 months in Vietnam, picked up the "blooper" and fired from the hip - John Wayne style, blowing up the billboard.
 
I was assigned one while I was in Germany 1970-1971, in typical Army fashion I never fired it. Like the shotgun, a very effective weapon, and, like the shotgun most people who carried and used it never received proper training.
 
Back in 1967 I was the summer relief dispatcher for the local state highway patrol radio. We had one of those, or something nearly like it, in a wooden case with a dozen or so tear gas rounds. I remember our lieutenant bringing it down from our storage room the night the riots broke out in Waterloo.
 
The terms thumper, blooper and bloop tube are interchangable for the M-79. I guess its one of those things that just depended on where you were stationed.
At Ft. Hood, we called it Thumper. ;)
 
CW Spook said:
Back in 1967 I was the summer relief dispatcher for the local state highway patrol radio. We had one of those, or something nearly like it, in a wooden case with a dozen or so tear gas rounds. I remember our lieutenant bringing it down from our storage room the night the riots broke out in Waterloo.
Click to expand...
S&W used to make a tear gas launcher.
 
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