Скачать или смотреть Japanese Were Terrified When One Marine's Quad .50 Cals Wiped Out 400 Troops in 8 Minutes

The morning of February eighth, nineteen forty-five. Luzon, Philippines. A Marine sergeant named Thomas Riley crouched behind the steel hull of his M sixteen halftrack, watching through predawn darkness as Japanese soldiers assembled in the tree line four hundred yards distant. He could hear them. The rhythmic chanting. The clatter of equipment. The unmistakable preparation for what every American in the Pacific had learned to dread—a banzai charge.
Riley was twenty-three years old. He'd been in the Pacific for eleven months. He'd seen combat on Peleliu, where Japanese defenders had fought from caves and bunkers with a ferocity that still invaded his dreams. But this was different. His weapon was different. Mounted in the armored tub behind him sat four Browning M two fifty caliber heavy machine guns arranged in a square—the M forty-five Quadmount. Americans called it the Quad Fifty. The Japanese had another name for it. They called it the sound that meant you were about to die.
The M sixteen halftrack with its Quad Fifty mount had been designed for one purpose: shooting down aircraft. Each of the four machine guns could fire five hundred rounds per minute. Together, they could deliver two thousand rounds per minute—more than thirty rounds every second. The system had been developed in nineteen forty-three by the Maxon Corporation specifically to destroy low-flying German and Japanese aircraft. But by February nineteen forty-five, there were no aircraft to shoot down. American air superiority over the Philippines was absolute. Japanese airpower had been systematically destroyed. So these anti-aircraft weapons, sitting idle around captured airbases and supply depots, had found a new mission. They were being used against ground targets. Against infantry. Against human beings.
The weapon system Riley commanded weighed nearly twenty thousand pounds fully loaded. It sat on an M three halftrack chassis—wheels at the front, tracks at the rear. The vehicle could move at forty-two miles per hour on roads, fast enough to reposition quickly when Japanese forces counterattacked. The four machine guns were electrically powered, capable of traversing three hundred sixty degrees and elevating from minus ten to plus ninety degrees. A single gunner could aim all four weapons simultaneously using handles mounted directly in front of the gunner's seat. The system had been engineered for tracking fast-moving aircraft at altitude. But Japanese soldiers charging across open ground moved far more slowly than aircraft. They moved at perhaps five miles per hour. For the Quad Fifty, they were stationary targets.
Each fifty caliber round measured five point four five inches long. The bullet alone weighed seven hundred six grains—nearly one point six ounces. Muzzle velocity was two thousand eight hundred forty feet per second. Muzzle energy exceeded thirteen thousand foot-pounds. A single round could penetrate nearly one inch of armor plate at two hundred yards. It could punch through concrete blocks. It could disable vehicle engines. What it did to human tissue was devastating beyond description. The round had been designed to destroy machines. Against flesh and bone, the effect was not combat. It was obliteration.
Riley's crew consisted of three men. Riley himself served as vehicle commander and gunner. Corporal James Mitchell was the driver. Private First Class David Chen was the assistant driver and loader. They had trained on the weapon for six weeks at Camp Pendleton in California before shipping out. The training had focused entirely on anti-aircraft procedures. Tracking fast-moving targets. Calculating lead angles. Managing ammunition supply during aerial engagements. Nobody had taught them how to aim at human beings. Nobody had explained what would happen when four synchronized heavy machine guns fired simultaneously at infantry formations.