Haiti

[Bob Seijas]

Here a shot we couldn't use in the Journal because it's too small... print requires much larger photos than computer screens.
Attachment 93862

Information

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[Brian Dick]

Many of the M1 Rifles that were in Haiti were dumped in the ocean during our incursion there in the 1990's under the Clinton Administration. I knew some soldiers from the 20th SFG USANG who were directly involved with disposing of weapons down there.

[browningautorifle]

Many of the M1 Rifles that were in Haiti were dumped in the ocean

Might have been the safest thing...some of them might not really have been safe any more.

[Snowman1510]

I didn't think to take photos of it at the time, but years ago my family went on a trip to South East Asia. We were in Viet Nam, and they have a museum at the Cu Chi Tunnels. They had created trails for tourist to freely roam upon without a guide and along these trailers were multiple huts. There was nothing in these huts except locked rifle racks. What were in these rifle racks you might ask? NOTHING BUT M1s! There must have been 100 or more M1s interspersed throughout the huts on the trail. Now these M1s must be dogs I couldn't see them well enough as there was no lighting in the huts but I remember seeing one rifle with a giant portion of the front handguard blown off. I assume from that the rifles were in very poor shape as the huts were made out of vegitation and the racks rattled easily and had a thin piece of plexiglass covering the rack which could move if you touched it. Should'a took photos!

EDIT: I forgot, they had a weapons range there as well. They gave you 10 rounds to fire out of a full auto AK, M-60, M-16, M1919 .30-Cal, Garand, and a few others which escape me at the moment. There are photos of the range on google. (Added photo of what they had captured and was available to shoot.)

[twh]

James McCollum used to have a photo album of pictures of weapons that were turned over after the US involvement and there was a stack of about 20-30 m-1s in a pile and all the butt plates you could see were solid without traps. I believe that they were all fed into Captain Crunch.

[MGMike]

Many of the M1 Rifles that were in Haiti were dumped in the ocean during our incursion there in the 1990's under the Clinton Administration. I knew some soldiers from the 20th SFG USANG who were directly involved with disposing of weapons down there.

Several thousand of those M1s --probably most of those in Haiti--were stored in the basement of the Presidential Palace in the late 1980s. I saw them there. They came predominantly from two sources. The first was a purchase from Jordan --many had colorful fabric slings still attached; one was noted with a replacement barrel made in W. Germany. The second was via the U.S. Military Assistance Program; these were mostly fresh from rebuild. Additionally there were many other weapons, including some AR18s, Korean M16 variants, bolt-action FN "Armee d'Haiti" marked rifles, etc. A separate room in the palace contained a huge unsorted pile of arms of every description, allegedly seized from the Ton-Ton Macoutes. On the palace grounds was a barracks for a company of army guards principally occupied in playing vollyball, 8 or 10 U.S. M5 light tanks --all derelict, but deployed to look frightening-- a scattering of machine gun emplacements, and a large motor pool of vintage armored vehicles (all minus batteries, so none of them had run for some while). Parked there was also a battery of U.S. 105mm howitzers, seemingly brand-new, complete with canvas muzzle covers, and a bizarre collection of ancient pre-WWI U.S. artillery refitted with Jeep tires.

Most if not all of these arms were confiscated by U.S. military forces when we landed there and ultimately consigned to destruction at Anniston, which made Jimmy Carter very happy. The palace itself was utterly destroyed in the most recent earthquake.

M

[CINDERS]

Was there in VN Cu Chi in Nov '17 No AK fired the AR-15, 1919 Browning and the Garand but the Garands firing pin broke after 13 rounds so shot the remaining 3 out of the 1919 not sure but there did not seem to be any H/Guns, no rifles in the huts just in the range building all behind glass locked cabinets but there were scads of them Garands & M-1's, I too forgot to take pics was more interested in getting in first before all the others decided to have a shoot.

We did do the 40m underground crawl my wife & I she got a bit scared as it was damn dark & hot I was ok as training in B/A gets you used to confined areas, as for the tunnels apparently they had widened it 30% as during the war most of the VC only weighed around 56 kilos so were small in stature.
If anyone is going to VN I recommend the Cu Chi tour there.

About 9 years ago my brother inlaw went there to the tunnels at Cu Chi the chap at the range was quite impressed by the way Merv knew how to handle the AK-47 and said so to him.
To which Merv replied in true aussie laconic fashion "Last time I was here in Vietnam I wasn't a tourist."

[old tanker]

... "Last time I was here in Vietnam I wasn't a tourist."

But I did spend a couple of nights here.

[armabill]

I wouldn't go back, once was enough.