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The venerable Remington 870 shotgun is taken into account by many to be the very best pump-action shotgun ever produced. Dependable in all varieties of climate, with an motion that hardly ever jams, and simple to disassemble, clear, and reassemble. There are a whole lot of variations of this common shotgun throughout Fremont County.
Whereas it’s a common sporting gun, it has a navy historical past as nicely.
A pair of fight veterans with ties to Fremont County witnessed the effectiveness of the 12-gauge mannequin of the 870 on the rivers and within the highlands of Vietnam within the late Nineteen Sixties.
One October afternoon, a neighbor was raking up piles of cottonwood leaves in his yard on Eastview Drive in Riverton. A sudden gust of wind got here up and shifted all these leaves round his yard. His next-door neighbor was cleansing out his chimney with a multi-section chimney brush on the identical time when the gust blew the ladder leaning towards his second-floor roof to the bottom.
“Give me a second Pete, I’ll put that ladder again up for you,” the neighbor mentioned.
“Don’t fear about it,” Pete mentioned, and he jumped the 18 ft or so off the roof, rolled on the bottom, and walked over to the sting of their boundary fence with a smile.
“When you’ve been to leap faculty, it’s not so dangerous,” he mentioned.
That afternoon, the neighbor realized that Pete Brown had been a U.S. Navy SEAL in Vietnam.
Hollywood all the time options the M16 in movies about Vietnam. Sometimes, you’ll get a glimpse of an M60 machine gun in motion, or extra typically, pictures of a helicopter gunship flying into fight, dripping 7.62 mm shell casings like drops of heavy rain in a downpour from its mini-guns.
You’ll have to observe carefully to see the weapon favored by many troopers, Marines, and sure, Navy SEALs like Brown.
Brown had many experiences in South (and later, in North) Vietnam.
As a SEAL, he was generally despatched to patrol the Mekong River and its tributaries for weapons being smuggled from the North or from Cambodia, destined for the Viet Cong.
His SEAL staff traveled the river on a Patrol Craft Quick (PCF) higher often called a Swiftboat. The 50-foot-long, aluminum boat was designed to work in shallow water and have become the logo of the Brown Water Navy as the boys who patrolled the numerous rivers of Vietnam grew to become recognized.
His PCF had a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the bow. They used it to interact snipers from shore however by no means fired on one other boat with it.
His staff was alert for explosives hidden in boats on the Mekong. They may very well be as small because the tiny basket boats utilized by fishermen, or as massive as a motorized sampan.
“You needed to be cautious in the event that they opened up on you whenever you intercepted them,” Brown mentioned. “In the event you hit them with an M60 or a deck gun, they could simply blow up, taking you with them.”
His most well-liked weapon for any such project was a stainless-steel, “Marine” mannequin Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun.
The Nineteen Sixties model of the 870 might maintain a half-dozen 2 ¾” shells in its journal, and when loaded with 00 buckshot, was a formidable weapon. The .33-inch shot contained in the shell is roughly the identical measurement as a 32-caliber pistol projectile and will be filled with eight to 16 buckshot, relying on the scale of the load.
Excessive brass shells had been normally loaded with the utmost of 1.5 ounces of shot, 16 complete, with a muzzle velocity starting from 1,100 to 1,600 ft per second.
“Buckshot wouldn’t set off explosives, and you possibly can hammer away with that Remington pump fairly quick,” Brown mentioned.
A shotgun all the time makes an impression, whether or not in a navy setting, in dwelling protection, or in police work.
Dave Orbell, a U.S. Military M60 gunner preventing within the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1969, had comparable respect for the facility of a shotgun in fight.
“A place subsequent to ours was overrun,” Orbell mentioned. “We had been despatched over to again them up.”
As Orbell’s unit moved out, they regrouped with the survivors of the unit that had been overrun by North Vietnamese Military regulars, and the joint group moved again towards the unique place of the unit that was overrun.
“A man from the opposite unit had a 12 gauge 870, and he was within the lead,” Orbell mentioned. “We moved into the doorway of their bunker, and he put his shotgun inside first. There was a blast of AK47 fireplace, and the man with the shotgun was knocked again and swung round by the sling on the shotgun.”
An NVA soldier simply contained in the bunker fired his weapon and made an ideal gap by way of the facet of the barrel, simply above the entrance of the slide on the 870. The 7.62 spherical punched a clear gap proper by way of the shotgun barrel. The drive knocked the gun out of the soldier’s palms, and because it hit the sling, it threw him backward.
A shotgun was used to clear a path like a avenue sweeper in darkish, tight areas, however no one wished to attempt getting one inside that entrance once more.
“We helped him up, regarded again on the entrance, and determined we weren’t getting into there,” Orbell mentioned. “I had a white phosphorus grenade I used to be dying to eliminate. That’s nasty stuff, and also you by no means knew how far it might attain in case you didn’t get a great throw, however it was tight, and I didn’t need that stuff on us. As a substitute, we threw 4 typical grenades within the gap and took out the NVA gunner.”
That 870 was out of fee for some time, however the ease of changing barrels on Remington’s hottest shotgun had it again in motion just some hours later.
It’s the identical shotgun you should purchase at nearly any sporting items retailer in America. The one distinction is the journal can pack extra shells since they weren’t required to have a plug to restrict the variety of rounds it might carry as is remitted in waterfowl looking.
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