Jan 012010
A couple shots of a few of the SPIW prototype rifles at the Rock Island Arsenal museum. These examples are pretty rough… the museum has better.
4 Responses to “Rock Island SPIW”
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A couple shots of a few of the SPIW prototype rifles at the Rock Island Arsenal museum. These examples are pretty rough… the museum has better.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
While the flechettes would certainly give the weapon great range and penetrating power, how much damage would they do on impact? Would they just drill a very small hole through the body rather than transmitting much stopping energy into it or creating much hydrostatic shock? I can’t picture a single hit stopping someone in a hurry, particularly if it didn’t penetrate a vital area.
Now, if it weren’t for the Geneva Conventions, you could poison the little darts and make sure you got a kill with every hit, even if it were on a arm or leg. The CIA currently uses a suicide pin that that kills painlessly in around ten seconds, and a few twelve gauge shotgun rounds full of those could really mow down a large enemy human wave attack in no time flat.
Pat Flannery,
Have you seen this book,
‘The SPIW The Deadliest Weapon That Never Was’
ISBN 0889350338
No, I’ll see if I can get it through inter-library loan, as the concept interests me (another one I want to read is this:
http://www.amazon.com/Billion-Misunderstanding-Collapse-12-Stealth/dp/1557507775 ).
The CIA suicide pin was developed to replace their “L-Pill”, a glass ampule of cyanide coated in rubber, as that led to a very unpleasant death that took 15 minutes.
Some info on the poison pin here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913459,00.htm
And the toxin it uses: http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/stx/saxi.htm
It’s the toxin associated with “red tide”.
One problem with poison dart guns is what happens to the darts that miss the intended target; as unless you use some sort of toxin that quickly goes inert after firing, the darts are going to be lying around ready to kill anyone who picks one up, like a miniature version of the landmine threat.
In 1962, John Garand was photographed holding Item #5818, the Springfield SPIW Concept #1 prototype. Garand books constantly misidentify it as a T31. It is unlikely that additional Concept #1 rifles were built as the next generation of Springfield SPIW bullpups were based on the SPIW Concept #2 prototype.