John_234 wrote:Incidentally, I hear a lot of guys in Afghan started humping 60mm mortars without the base plate or bipod, using the sights with the tube braced in the ground as a counter-ambush weapon.
They use a smaller base plate designed for the handheld mode. It's about the size of a large ammo can lid. You -have- to have a foot or a knee on the base plate in handheld, or the bottom of the mortar will recoil back and take out your nut sack. There are no sights used in handheld firing. The shooter uses a little ranging scale (basically a black BB in a bent tube) to get the range to the target, and lines up the top of the tube with the target to get the gun on target.
Handheld firing is half science, half art. You're generally shooting for "close enough". One of our mortar guys came up with an alignment tool that could be attached to the tube with pipe clamps. It was counterbalanced, so the sights were always flush no matter what angle the tube was at. It could also be tightened down to allow the shooter to line up on targets at or from a higher elevation. It took the 224 from "close enough" to "JESUS CHRIST! IT'S GONNA HIT ME IN THE CHEST!" As with all things in the Marine Corps, it worked, only cost $20, was for the Infantry, and was not designed by someone on the Gunners Board or a contractor... so it was rejected.
