17-013 Garand Picture of the Day - Hitler's Hearse

[Mark in Rochester]

Sharing the horror of Omaha Beach with the GIs of the 29th were men from the 1st Division slated for the adjoining section , called Easy Red. The LCT with Bill Behlmer and his antitank platoon had never returned to port after the one-day postponement on June t. "We rode out the weather. It was so bad you had to look up to see the water. Everybody, including the navy crew, was seasick. My halftrack, Hitler's Hearse, was at the front of the LCT. We were to be first off and I was to lead my platoon on Omaha Beach. My driver, Stan Stypulkowski, who had come all the way through North Africa and Sicily, sat and talked with me all night. We Knew this was it for us.

Excerpt from "June 6, 1944: The Voices of D-Day

Stanley A Stypulkowski
Birth: 1909
Death: 1970



William D Behlmer

Birth: Apr. 18, 1919
Death: Sep. 20, 1998

Inscription:
1st Division US Army
D-Day Survivor

Information

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[browningautorifle]

hearing loss

We all suffered some from regular exposure to .50 or mortars, or anti tank guns.

Looks like finger on trigger too. Bolt forward???

I think he probably knows what he's doing, not really a novice now is he?

a mag attached to his helmet

No, it's just the sun on his helmet band. The angle of light.

[CINDERS]

Jim are they 250 round bins (mags) for the quad as I am just looking at their re-fill capacity of another 1000 so it puts 2000 rounds available to the crew guess that is a lot of lead coming your way when it opens up on you did they carry more as it would not take to long to dispose of that lot. I know one thing a full one would be quite heavy bet they put plenty of backs out.....

[browningautorifle]

Yes, I think those are the tombstone cans. If the guns are standard .50 then they run about 550 RPM each, and you have four. I'd have loved to have one of those at times, very useful. They would have found favor in Afghanistan for suppressing fire at times. Transporting them would have been an issue...

[Bob Seijas]

Getting the timing right on four at once must have been fun

[browningautorifle]

Getting the timing right on four at once

Well, I'm guessing you've done H&T on an older .50...so they'd be done each in turn and then they'd just perform as a gun...except there's four together. It's not like there's some sequence and if one stops the rest stop. They'd be electric fired is the only difference but we still did H&T as a normal gun. The solenoid was installed and wire sealed on.

[Paul S.]

Getting the timing right on four at once must have been fun

Getting the timing right on one at a time can be a bugger as well. I saw an APC crew in Vietnam work on their .50 BMG for an hour trying to get the timing set and give up with it still firing single shots.

[browningautorifle]

Getting the timing right on one at a time can be a bugger as well.

Nothing could be further from the truth. A proper machine gunner can set them up correctly, and they'll run. I did lots for years. Lots of people fiddle though. The .50 was about as reliable and simple to set up as they came. Not calling you a liar as what you saw, I just doubt those guys had any idea what they were doing.

[CINDERS]

Bolt forward???

The Thompson fires from the open bolt position as this eliminates the risk of "cook-off", which can sometimes occur in closed-bolt automatic weapons.

[CINDERS]

I have often wondered about the Thompson in the fact of being carted around in all sorts of conditions when stuff was going down and if they suffered from the ingress of debris into the action I know it was too late for WWI but I just wonder how the Thompson would have gone in a place like Flanders or the Somme in winter given the very tight tolerances it was made to also did the MP - 40 & PPSH fire from open bolts TIA