That's an old fashioned canister round. It used something like 1,000 tungsten balls, not sure what caliber. From what I've read, even though it was very effective, it is being replaced by a "multipurpose" round. That just means some thing far more expensive than the canister and other rounds it is replacing.
@@Thane36425 canister rounds were cool, the little balls would bounce off hard objects like roads, like skipping stones off a lake... You'd see dust kick up from the impacts, a space of 100 meters, more impacts space of 50 meters more impacts. Yeah, don't wanna be downrange of that.
5 thousand of these coming out of a 105mm howitzer does a job on "troops in the open". We called the round Beehive and referred to the flechettes as nails.
So I have heard. Were they placed inside the canister round point forward, in rows, or just poured in? I imagine they'd be hard on the rifling if loose, potentially penetrating the sabot or cannisters.
@@lifeisa.smalllesson333 Have you ever seen what a more "conventional" artillery round will do to unprotected personnel in the open? It isn't what you would consider "humane" either by any stretch of the word. Come to think of it, the types of wounds that high-velocity FMJ rifle bullets can inflict are definitely not "humane" either--especially since most shots taken in combat are not aimed with the same precision and care that a hunter uses when sighting in on a game animal. (This isn't because soldiers are inherently sloppy marksmen, but rather because most hunters typically don't go after game that is actively trying to kill them first.) In short, my point is that a lot of wounds from small arms on the battlefield are likely not going to be in places that will cause instant death or incapacitation, but where the bullets can inflict terrible tissue damage. War is hell.
The only way I can see there working is by completely redesigning these. Maybe a tungsten tip, aluminum shaft and tail, and launched (via mass accelerator, of course) at speeds slower than 1125 fps or whichever speed to get the maximum velocity without creating any sort of turbulence or air pressure wave. The most important criteria being the piercing end being heavier than the tail and shaft combined.
The Lazy Dog bomb used in the Vietnam War were the nearest thing to a working flechette type system. It was very effective, apparently. I know it's not a discarding sabot, but it's the only viable system I could think of.
That is what I thought when I first saw these as a teenager at a gun show. Somebody was selling them by weight though he let me have a few along with another item I purchased. They certainly did look like they could have used a tip of some kind.
my thought as well. arent most arrow/dart type weapons light in the tail heavier in the tip, so the weightier tip leads the flight? or is it the lighter tail keeps the tail in the back? I cant recall witch is which? is weight more important, or drag?
@@wills5159 Basically the centre of mass needs to be in front of the centre of drag. So you need more weight at the front or more drag at the rear. Or both.
Rubymass090 it was during Project Salvo and the SPIW project where companies developed rifles that fired special high velocity flechette cartridges. They had burst fire capabilities with like a 3 round burst at over 2,000 RPM to maximize hit probability at range
@@sandervanduren2779 project salvo was the nuclear bomb powered ICBM wasn't it as well as the 9ne looking at duplex bullets and hit probability that led to the one ar15 variant I actually want the colt Mars with the shortened 5.56 that had a crazy rof wasnt it? SPIW was the flechette one with THE gorgeous but weird AAI thing that looked like a scifi prop.
I remember the flechette round being very effective out of the 90mm. Our weapons platoon would fire them occasionally, would have been very effective against enemy personnel. I remember the flechettes being shorter than the ones you’re using. A lot of us old Rangers would have one stuck behind the Ranger tab on our patrol caps.
@Kneon Knight I have a friend who has a 10 gauge blunderbuss that he's fired all kinds of crazy stuff out of, including a load of watch batteries and cat "stuff". He described that load as his "might not kill you right away, but you're going to die and it won't be pleasant" load.
I remember seeing fletchetts for sale in bulk when I was a kid, and I thought they'd be awesome in a shotgun, but thanks to you guys, I now know better! Keep up the good work!!
There's a reason why militaries abandoned flechette rounds. The precision required in machining, construction and gunpowder load was not worth the effort. Every single military flechette round had some weird gunpowder/sabot system to make them work. And even those had failures. Duplex and triplex rounds were always more effective anyway. >__>
Flechettes were used as an improvement over traditional shrapnel in direct fire anti-personnel artillery and rocket rounds. Artillery eventually replace them with standard high explosive using a time fuse set at a mini,mum time because it was found that the enemy could infiltrate underneath the lethal pattern produced by an APERS/flechette round, but air-bursting high explosives produced a 360:degree pattern of fragments crawling alone did not mitigate
@@douglasmorgan9873 That is something i've see a lot of people say about them but i have never found a basis for it. The best i was able to find was that they are considered controversial but nothing about them being banned from use in war, nothing with any sources to back up the war crime claims at least.
Right. Throwing darts fly straight because all their weight is up front. Add in supersonic speeds and these things are not going to work for sure. These rounds are just total crap design.
Just need to cut off the stabilizer fins. At high velocity in a group, the fins are messing it all up. The parallels of the flechettes cylinders need to remain flush against eachother packed tightly
4:13 right side of frame, the aluminum disc hits a glob of water dead on, looks cool. 9:28 Look at that, none of the buck shot key holed, good results ;)
If I remember correctly, these were packed in 2.75 rocket warheads, backwards. They were banned for "nailing" people to trees. But that is all hear say.
In Vietnam I’ve read the 2.75 inch flachette was very effective fired from Cobras. Was more like a shotgun Shell really. The Rockets would fly a set distance before they would explode sending the flachette down Range to sweep the exposed enemy off a position.
My two cents: the round they're testing needs to be refined as the darts are instable in flight, likely a center of mass issue. Shift the weight foward, they'll fly more straight.
@@demoncet1998 that would just add spin to the shot as a whole, not to the individual pieces, so when it leaves the barrel they all spread out because of the centrifugal force. Same reason birdshot/buckshot is fired from a smoothbore.
This is not how they were designed to function. They are a 'anti personnel' weapon where several hundred to a few thousand flechettes were layered around an explosive charge, usually in a 2.75, M255 warhead of the rocket propelled munition where they would fly in all directions. Not in a shotgun shell.
When my dad worked at Whirlpool they were making those in the 70's during the Vietnam War. They where shot out of canisters from helicopters by the thousands. He actually made a tie clip out of one of them.
In WW1 the equivalent of "flechettes", a handful of steel darts, was tested as a way to weaponize airplanes. It worked kind of but was inefficient. I've heard plenty of veterans adamantly testify to the power of flechette rounds ... out of helicoptes and naval cannons. It's taking what kind of worked in WW1 and increasing its efficiency.
Nice touch showing the Veterans Hotline card. I've got a bunch of them and I randomly leave one in any place where I know another Vet could find it. We never know when one of those will make the difference for someone.
In military science fiction a common weapon is a flechette rifle. Seeing this, I think like the gyro-jet it will remain more popular in science fiction.
Those are saboted rounds from a rifle. In theory they could work and have been tried. They tend to have higher velocity but are light so they have less energy especially at range. They are also less accurate. Gyrojets are interesting but won't really come into their own until they get guidance systems. Even then they'll be very expensive and probably specialty weapons. Larger rockets with a guidance system would make more sense.
Most of the time, that is a single, heavy flechette in a sabot. The Steyr ACR prototype made it work, but the cost was ruinous and while it could penetrate, it was like stabbing the test media with a knitting needle.
@@Thane36425 One thing I never see in scifi, is meta stable metallic hydrogen. If you were to fill a bullet with it, and detonate it on impact, it would be destructive.
@@josephburchanowski4636 You don't see steam much in science fiction either. If you fill a bucket with steam at about 500 PSI and detonate it on impact, it is pretty messy too.
@@josephburchanowski4636 There are easier and more stable ways of making explosive bullets. They are currently banned for use against people though. However, when they were used they could be brutal. Modern armor might make render them moot though.
"Terrifying" 7:45 I absolutely agree. A small package of random damage and death. Up close, or at distance, with a deflection spread of up to 60 degrees.
Happy Independence Day Brothers in arms. Love the video , those were much deadlier coming out of the rockets on the attack choppers. Those are also used in artillery rounds called bee hives. Great job and as always GOD BLESS AMERICA
I read a book once mentioning about an American army encounter with either Vietnamese or Koreans...the camp was getting over run till they opened op with a howitzer or similar loaded with those things...they just decimated the enemy and kept the Americans alive
They were designed to throw metal through dense vegetation in Vietnam they used to load rockets with roofing nails one chopper had enough nails to build a three bedroom ranch house with garage
It depends. The ones thrown from planes in ww1 were alot bigger. Atleast 4 times as long and 20 times as heavy. In ww2 they got the Lazy dogs, smaller but there were more per bomb. Around Vietnam these were developed, the smallest. These were developed for artillery and tank cannon rounds. But some crazy army man loaded them into shotgun shells. Which worked well enough.
@@SuperFunkmachine The first Lazy dog bombs were from ww2. As early as 1941. First used in combat in 44. The ones shown in the video where used in early rockets and APERS artillery shells as small as 105 to 203 MM variants. But were also used in 90mm tank cannons, 105mm tank cannons and the 106mm recoilless rifle. Aswell as the Carl Gustav later. The early 2.75 inch rockets had around 1300 of these smaller flechettes in the war head while the modern Hydra 70 can be equipped with a APERS war head containing some 1,179 larger flecchetes.
Flechettes do work in artillery shells, like the Beehive round in Vietnam. Many use more blade like projectiles than darts which might be more effective
I noticed the tips of the flechettes looked like they went through the same cheap sharpening method nails do. Half the leading edges look chowdered up, and the tail fins look like they were pressed out into shape, much like nail heads. Very economical to make, but the quality is garbage. I'm willing to bet the machine that pumps these out has a more than passing resemblance to the machinery that makes nails.
@@nottelling6598 You'd be correct. All the flechettes in this vid [& any other commercially-loaded "specialty round" I've ever heard of] are from de-milled Beehive artillery rounds; they're not intended for this use at all. I'm just glad that Tao filmed this at his top secret AZ firing range, since flechette rounds are "Nyet! Off to the gulag archipelago with you!" behind the Granola Curtain...
I'd say they can but it's more like they need so high quality control standards that it's not practical or economically viable to do so. I'd say scaling down ETC guns to rifle size would be a more practical option than saboted rounds in a small arm.
they were originally put in boxes of thousands and dropped in a strafe along german trenches. they were longer and heavier and apparently were scarily effective. went through the helmets and anyone caught in the beginning of the strafe looked like a run over hedgehog. there were fat ones called lazy dogs that basically were big bullets with fins on the back put in a shrapnel bomb or artillery shell.
Sure they work. They are contained in a rifle grenade kind of device. Easy to attach and easy to remove but I must admit that they have really never seen much use although they should have because in my experiences they are pretty devastating in close quarters. Forest, bush, urban environment. And they are use to quickly suppress enemy ambush for just some seconds until you get cover. Of course, I dont know the latest news but we used them a lot ~20 years ago.
@@2Potates ETC = electrothermal chemical, i.e. the newer higher-velocity systems being considered for tank armament? To be honest, I can't see any applications for ETC munitions in rifle calibers. Consider that cartridges like .45 ACP are still being used in modern combat despite their extremely sluggish velocities--you don't need that much muzzle velocity to incapacitate, much less kill a human being. Second, ETC munitions themselves are quite likely a _very_ bad idea for rifle-sized weapons. The small arms we have today offer safe, reliable, durable, and largely weather-proof weapon systems. I don't think you would get all that with something that relies on electrical energy to prime and fire cartridges. Still, I am curious about ridiculously overbore and hypervelocity cartridges, though... I can't help but wonder about the terminal effectiveness of a 5 grain projectile going at 10,000 fps or something crazy like that.
To be fair, those flechettes weren't meant to be shot from a shotgun in a sabot at close range. They were designed for tank guns and recoilless rifles, but were also used in other weapon systems, including aerial rockets, 81mm mortars, (Navy) 40mm grenades, and small howitzers, for direct fire engagements against enemy infantry. The projectiles that were fired from tank guns, had a mechanical time fuze, with a muzzle action feature not found on other projectiles. The functioning of the fuze would blow apart the ogive, and set off a base charge in the shell that pushed the stacks of flechettes forward, and out of the shell body. The rotation of the spin-stabilized shell would disperse the flechettes in a cone. When set for muzzle action, the minimum distance to a horde of enemy soldiers, would normally be 100 meters or more, to get proper dispersal and allow the flechettes to stabilize. The MT fuze could be set to function as far as 4,000 meters. A dye pack was installed in the ogive to give the gunner/tank commander and indication of where the round functioned, to increase or decrease the next round's detonation range. Considering that a typical (medium to large) flechette round carried anywhere from 1,300 to 8,000 flechettes, they were devastating when fired at the proper ranges, with the fuze set correctly. The darts would often bend upon impact with bone, and the flechette would then take a wild path through the flesh, leaving a nasty boo-boo. Part of the tail, or the entire tail can break off, leaving a second wound channel. They were often used just to clear a swath through the jungles of Vietnam, so the tank crew, could see farther. The Korean War showed that flechettes were key in repelling or stopping the massive waves of Chinese. Canister is more effective at short ranges, since it doesn't have a fuze that has to be set correctly, and they pack more punch for damaging APCs, trucks, and other vehicles, but the effective range is only in the 100 to 500 meter range. Flechettes, being very light, lose velocity quickly, something like 300 to 400fps for every 100 yards of travel, while canister balls lose less than 100fps per 100 yards. Some canister rounds held cylindrical shot, instead of balls. You all know that the weight of a projectile and its velocity, is what contributes a lot to its effectiveness on a target. Flechettes in a 12 gauge shotgun is just another gimmick.
There is nothing magic about the "magic bullet". The head should be fairly still or even pushed towards the shooter by the spray of brain matter + bullet out of the exit hole. It is not a solid target like a brick of lead, where most of the kinetic energy is dumped to heat and the bullet and lead brick simply continue forward at a much slower speed. The motion of the head is too rapid on the zapruder film and looks like it is accelerating; that just looks like a muscle jerk.
Hi guys . Great vid as always !! But come on... at 7:55 at least 16 arrows flying out of the ballistic "awful" 😂 looks like a porcupine. This is amazing!!! Dany did a great job to hit that "Jelly Con Vally, square something" 😎 Great job guys !!!!
Thinking back on an old video of yours, I bet the “sonic deflection” happening at speeds over the sound barrier are causing the flechettes to knock each other around after exiting the barrel. Perhaps the objects being shaped as shafts to try to stabilize is countered by their flight path being potentially more easily altered by the individual shockwaves slapping each of them around at slightly different rates and angles.
If I remember right, flechettes were ideal for soft target penetration and cover destruction. Plant matter would shred for quite a distance from the firing location, ideally with minimal stability loss/ stopping power loss. Let alone, if you were hiding and taking cover in the bush, idk who wouldnt jump or yell after having been shot with a glorified nail gun
About 12 years ago I had gotten ahold of 2 pounds of Vietnam era fletchets and me and a couple of friends over the period of a month Tried Every way we could think to get it to work out of a 12 guage and we Never got it to be any more effective than a ringer or a slug while Everything else was completely useless.
@@richmeisterradio yeah I'm not making an argument one way or the other. I just know those flechette rockets cleared out the jungle better than agent orange lol
In Vietnam the US started using tubes that looked like rocket launcher tubes mounted to helicopters that would be muzzle loaded with these steel flechettes. These things were deadly to the enemy with stories of ground troops finding VC and NVA troops solidly nailed to trees with flechettes. They also had a 40mm grenade round and 12 gauge round loaded with flechettes.
Tao, if you’re up for trying new ideas, try making your own flexhettes, these ones are build like arrows should be, balanced all around, but what if you made the points the heaviest part and made them slightly bigger? Maybe actual frills for fins?
Anyone else remember the Bruce Dern movie where he tries to launch a bunch of these at the super bowl crowd via the goodyear blimp? Swear its a real movie!
I think i thought of a design for a round that would interest you. How hard/how much of a hassle is it to send you something from Austria? Would really love seeing one of you guys try it out some day. :)
Jeff, have some 3d printed sabots made that will house one flechette dart. I'm thinking 3/4 oz overall weight when leaving the mass accelerators muzzle. Looking forward to this vid. I BET you the dart will pass through a 2 inch lead plate and several kevlar vests with the right powder load and whatnot at 15 yards. Love your vids and science. Remember make this vid happen!!! The results might suprise you!!!
My father a Vietnam vet 68-69 told me the cannoneers used to load " Beehives" or flechettes in the 8 inch cannons if overrun by enemy troops. He proclaimed they were very destructive to say the least. He said as a grunt those " Beehive rounds " earned every bit of respect .
Great test guys. I appreciate your willingness to complete these test so the rest of us can just buy Hog Balls and hit everything we aim at, twice for every trigger squeeze.
It might work a little better with a smaller number of slightly larger projectiles that have larger fins. As well the alignment of the flechettes inside the sabot might improve performance if its straightened up. Just my two cents though.
Flechettes are classified as a felony in California. 2019 California Code Penal Code - PEN PART 6 - CONTROL OF DEADLY WEAPONS TITLE 4 - FIREARMS DIVISION 10 - SPECIAL RULES RELATING TO PARTICULAR TYPES OF FIREARMS OR FIREARM EQUIPMENT CHAPTER 1 - Ammunition ARTICLE 1 - Flechette Dart Ammunition or Bullet Containing or Carrying an Explosive Agent
I'm intensely grateful for you posting three veteran's crisis line number. Veteran suicide is an important issue to me and I'm always bursting with joy when people bring light to it.
The important part for precision and consistency is having the "perfect ratio" of weight, center of mass and drag. It's difficult to calculate in advance so the easiest way of creating good flechettes is likely just trial and error. Also depending on the design and how much wind there is they could react very differently (deviation not linear, seemingly pretty random) so the decision to simply stick with buckshot is, in my opinion, not very far fetched at all.
Bulk pack them in a shot shell, i think still works better. More of 'em But where they really shine is as shrapnel in explosive devices. I was in the military as a munitions specialist when they decided to "outlaw" them and most of the guys in the bomb dump still "decorated" their hats with them. I still have some from back then. If you get enough of them moving with some force, I guarantee that you do not want to be down range of them. They're pretty nasty when they're on target. And, yes, they'll go right through you.
The flechettes were actually used in a head for the 2.75 FFAR rocket. About two thousand of them were packed around an explosive charge, and coated in an oil carrying zinc oxide to prevent corrosion. The charge gave an imparted velocity greater than 12,000 (twelve thousand) feet per second. The "primary intent" was to defoliate trees and brush so the enemy could not hide there. Being so small, flechettes would not likely cause a mortal wound, even with multiple hits. However, the corrosion preventative entered the blood stream, causing many problems for the victim.
I have to tip my hat to you for sharing the vet crisis line I have a close combat vet who is as close as brother the crisis line saved his life a few years back when he tried to commit suicide. The current suicide rate in vets is 22 a day let’s support our vets like they deserve!
The 105 mm APERS round (M494) had five thousand flechettes stacked heel to toe. The round would detonate three meters out the end of the gun if left set on M/A (Muzzle Action) or seventy-five meters prior to the indexed range with a puff of yellow smoke to aid in subsequent fire commands. One could only set the range three times (and one could not turn it CCW). The fourth attempt to set the fuze locked it in M/A. They were not precision ground. The round was abandoned because masses of infantry at range were simply not doctrine by anyone anymore. I've spoken to Vietnam vets (Armor types) and was told that if used correctly one could see NVA/VC carcass' stuck to trees. Each 105mm tank round used a separate powder (except HEP and WP) recipes and configuration.
I can't even imagine being underneath one of the beehive barrage. You probably wouldn't even know it, instantly a pink cloud of what used to be a grunt. Love ya brother, Danny is in my thoughts, he is missed.
We used flechette rounds through a 106mm Reckless Rifle (SF Weapons Committee), of course those rounds had 9000 flechettes each, and they would tear some stuff up, but they were designed to repel an attack by massed troops.....but I would still stick to the buckshot rounds for my shotgunning....
The ones I saw used in Vietnam were fired from 105MM Howitzer's. When an artillery unit was attacked it was what they used to defend themselves, and they worked. No one wanted to be in front of that muzzle when that round went off. Oh hell yeah they worked.
For flechettes to work Ina shotgun round, the flachettes themselves need to be in a symmetrical, blade-like shape, not darts which are axis dependent with respect to aerodynamics. With a symmetrical, blade-like shape, the flechettes are then able to tumble in their trajectory without losing effectiveness like with a dart shape.
Nice video! I like tests with fleshettes. They just SEEM like such a GOOD idea (and a cool one) I like to be reminded occasionally that they have never seemed to actually work in any test I've ever seen video of or read about. Kinda sad since they just seem like such a neat idea. Maybe some modern whiz-kid can find a way to make 'em actually work. As to what good they'll be ... well ... who knows? I'd just love to see 'em work! Oh, insofar as the long-range shooting with those Federal Flite-control rounds, I've seen 8 pellet Tactical Buck with Flite-Control wads fired at 50 and 40 yards and all but 2 pellets stay in the scoring area (what in olden times we called "the kill zone") of an FBI Q anatomy target. The two stray pellets were still on the body of the silhouette just not in the kill zone. This happened when, just prior to retiring, I was having night shift at my old PD qualify and a grumpy shift sgt. who didn't want to carry or qualify with a shotgun to start with (waaaaahhh! LOL) screwed up and loaded buckshot for the slug portion of his qualification. He fired one round from 50, two from 40, and two from 25 yards. When we first got those flite-control rounds I was massively impressed with them and still keep a few handy. ;)
In Vietnam, they found the key to making these work... It involved firing a big can of them out of a tank's gun. That way, it didn't matter if they didn't fly straight or accurate, as it would achieve "areal saturation".... They found that they were good for clearing vegetation overgrowth, primarily. It seems like a bunch of plain rods, made from spring steel, would do just as well for a fraction of the cost.
Shoot it at a subsonic velocity. At supersonic and transonic velocities, a shock wave ahead of the flechettes forces air out and away from the projectiles, and prevents it from sliding through the fins and stabilizing them. This causes them to tumble around, and as they tumble, they come into contact with the shockwaves, causing them to veer off course. At lower velocities, the shockwaves are nonexistent, so the airflow is in contact with the surface of the flechettes, allowing the fins to be able to stabilize them.
My dad told me they worked real good out of 105 mm or whatever the Marine's main battle tank was in Vietnam. Said one round cleared a two lane road(highway one) for about 300 yards. Maybe that's the key factor more mass and velocity? You gotta understand,these weren't a precision round. They were made to shoot into an advancing group of bad guys. Not a sniper round,a room/trench sweeping ,group thinking round.
In Vietnam, the SEALs used to use an experimental 40mm flechette grenade design. Now, of course, that had a lot more R&D, and, engineering behind it. They were reported to be very effective, especially at penetrating heavy jungle foliage, and, still penetrating targets.
Circuit board materiel is G10 and it's actually quite dense and strong. G10 is sometimes used instead of carbon fiber for the frames of petrol fueled industrial helicopter drones because it's both strong and ductile which help damp vibrations.
Flachette’s are really designed to be brought up high and back down to earth under gravity. In WWI pilots would fly with buckets full of them and dump them on the battle field. In Vietnam they were loaded into artillery shells and the like and fired in a upwards direction where they would be released and fall back to ground and were pretty effective at getting through the dense foliage. Its about having a massive amount of flachettes raining down on the target. They weren’t developed to be used in shotgun shells. People just want them to work that way. For maximum effectiveness out of a shotgun you could shoot them upwards at an angle, but only having 19 in the shell they would be very hard to find imo.
Flechettes do work... just one at a time and larger out of an Abrams tank lol
They can work pretty well from a bow too. Of course people call them arrows then.
That's an old fashioned canister round. It used something like 1,000 tungsten balls, not sure what caliber. From what I've read, even though it was very effective, it is being replaced by a "multipurpose" round. That just means some thing far more expensive than the canister and other rounds it is replacing.
I guess my sarcasm was lost...
General Dynamics makes both. Canister and APFSDS. Fin stability doesn't work well in a grouped projectile.
@@Thane36425 canister rounds were cool, the little balls would bounce off hard objects like roads, like skipping stones off a lake... You'd see dust kick up from the impacts, a space of 100 meters, more impacts space of 50 meters more impacts. Yeah, don't wanna be downrange of that.
5 thousand of these coming out of a 105mm howitzer does a job on "troops in the open". We called the round Beehive and referred to the flechettes as nails.
So I have heard. Were they placed inside the canister round point forward, in rows, or just poured in? I imagine they'd be hard on the rifling if loose, potentially penetrating the sabot or cannisters.
Actually wouldn't nails work better
How is that not considered inhumane?
@@lifeisa.smalllesson333 Have you ever seen what a more "conventional" artillery round will do to unprotected personnel in the open? It isn't what you would consider "humane" either by any stretch of the word. Come to think of it, the types of wounds that high-velocity FMJ rifle bullets can inflict are definitely not "humane" either--especially since most shots taken in combat are not aimed with the same precision and care that a hunter uses when sighting in on a game animal. (This isn't because soldiers are inherently sloppy marksmen, but rather because most hunters typically don't go after game that is actively trying to kill them first.) In short, my point is that a lot of wounds from small arms on the battlefield are likely not going to be in places that will cause instant death or incapacitation, but where the bullets can inflict terrible tissue damage.
War is hell.
@@Schwarzvogel1 I'm a war veteran and was injured by a 155 mm artillery shell in oif!
Ah flechettes, the projectile everyone wishes would work. (Even Paul Harvey apparently.)
lol
TAOFLEDERMAUS do you know when you get the 12 gauge from hell?
They work from cannons and rockets because the deployment mechanism they use can be made to work properly and they are delivered in mass quantity
The only way I can see there working is by completely redesigning these. Maybe a tungsten tip, aluminum shaft and tail, and launched (via mass accelerator, of course) at speeds slower than 1125 fps or whichever speed to get the maximum velocity without creating any sort of turbulence or air pressure wave. The most important criteria being the piercing end being heavier than the tail and shaft combined.
The Lazy Dog bomb used in the Vietnam War were the nearest thing to a working flechette type system. It was very effective, apparently. I know it's not a discarding sabot, but it's the only viable system I could think of.
Well my two cents worth says... if Danny has trouble hitting with them, the rest of us are screwed! Thanks for an awesome video Jeff and Danny
Might be better off using a slingshot
I think the problem might be they need more weight on the leading edge of the dart. A hunting arrow is average of 14% forward weighed
That is what I thought when I first saw these as a teenager at a gun show. Somebody was selling them by weight though he let me have a few along with another item I purchased. They certainly did look like they could have used a tip of some kind.
there’s a video about arrows used with medieval longbows.
my thought as well. arent most arrow/dart type weapons light in the tail heavier in the tip, so the weightier tip leads the flight? or is it the lighter tail keeps the tail in the back? I cant recall witch is which? is weight more important, or drag?
Just what i was thinking
@@wills5159 Basically the centre of mass needs to be in front of the centre of drag. So you need more weight at the front or more drag at the rear. Or both.
Man I had such high hopes, maybe just one in a huge sabot could be tamed to be actually good, as wasteful as that is.
The US Army tested prototype rifles in the 50’s that fired single hyper velocity flechettes. Apparently they had a point blank range of like 400 yards
@@sandervanduren2779 ????
Rubymass090 it was during Project Salvo and the SPIW project where companies developed rifles that fired special high velocity flechette cartridges. They had burst fire capabilities with like a 3 round burst at over 2,000 RPM to maximize hit probability at range
Rubymass090 one of the cartridges was the XM110 5.6x53mm flechette
@@sandervanduren2779 project salvo was the nuclear bomb powered ICBM wasn't it as well as the 9ne looking at duplex bullets and hit probability that led to the one ar15 variant I actually want the colt Mars with the shortened 5.56 that had a crazy rof wasnt it?
SPIW was the flechette one with THE gorgeous but weird AAI thing that looked like a scifi prop.
Could you make a wax slug out of them? Give them chance to fly strait, break up on impact and penetrate?
😮
Ewe , that would be nasty .
Thats what I was thinking. More like a big ass hollow point rather than buckshot.
🤔
Great idea. You could double the number of flachets that way.
I remember the flechette round being very effective out of the 90mm. Our weapons platoon would fire them occasionally, would have been very effective against enemy personnel. I remember the flechettes being shorter than the ones you’re using. A lot of us old Rangers would have one stuck behind the Ranger tab on our patrol caps.
You need to find a blunderbuss to test with.
Justin Leeds if the guys fancy a trip to Scotland, I've got one they're more than welcome to use!
Now THAT'S an idea! Although framing nails would probably be more effective 😈
I have a .75 cal black powder smoothbore you can borrow.
@Kneon Knight I have a friend who has a 10 gauge blunderbuss that he's fired all kinds of crazy stuff out of, including a load of watch batteries and cat "stuff". He described that load as his "might not kill you right away, but you're going to die and it won't be pleasant" load.
Those flettes look like the ones fired out of 90mm and 106mm rr so about 9lb 18 lb of flichets
I remember seeing fletchetts for sale in bulk when I was a kid, and I thought they'd be awesome in a shotgun, but thanks to you guys, I now know better! Keep up the good work!!
JunkyardStarts Same here.
There's a reason why militaries abandoned flechette rounds. The precision required in machining, construction and gunpowder load was not worth the effort.
Every single military flechette round had some weird gunpowder/sabot system to make them work. And even those had failures. Duplex and triplex rounds were always more effective anyway. >__>
They outlawed those because they contradicted the statutes of the Geneva Convention
Flechettes were used as an improvement over traditional shrapnel in direct fire anti-personnel artillery and rocket rounds. Artillery eventually replace them with standard high explosive using a time fuse set at a mini,mum time because it was found that the enemy could infiltrate underneath the lethal pattern produced by an APERS/flechette round, but air-bursting high explosives produced a 360:degree pattern of fragments crawling alone did not mitigate
I know in the vietnam war they packed 8000 flechettes into shells called beehive rounds. They would rip apart the jungle and any people within.
As painful as it is to say, just regular old lead balls get it done.
@@douglasmorgan9873 That is something i've see a lot of people say about them but i have never found a basis for it. The best i was able to find was that they are considered controversial but nothing about them being banned from use in war, nothing with any sources to back up the war crime claims at least.
I would really like to see a version of these with a weighted tip, so that they'd be more likely to fly tip-first.
Right. Throwing darts fly straight because all their weight is up front. Add in supersonic speeds and these things are not going to work for sure. These rounds are just total crap design.
Just need to cut off the stabilizer fins. At high velocity in a group, the fins are messing it all up. The parallels of the flechettes cylinders need to remain flush against eachother packed tightly
Turn em more into Roman Plumbata, fat lead weights on the dart head shaft.
@@gravetruth8719 I suspect fewer darts with paper between would perform better than lots of darts crammed in together.
Exactly. Need more weight in the front
4:13 right side of frame, the aluminum disc hits a glob of water dead on, looks cool.
9:28 Look at that, none of the buck shot key holed, good results ;)
Ya was just about to post about the Disc, that was pretty kewl.
Buckshot is round. How would you know if it keyholes?
@@828enigma6 that's the joke.
Are you absolutely stoops stupid? They all did!
jay sullivan 😂👌
If I remember correctly, these were packed in 2.75 rocket warheads, backwards. They were banned for "nailing" people to trees. But that is all hear say.
In Vietnam I’ve read the 2.75 inch flachette was very effective fired from Cobras. Was more like a shotgun Shell really. The Rockets would fly a set distance before they would explode sending the flachette down Range to sweep the exposed enemy off a position.
The poor farmers going to be pulling these things out of his tractor tyres for the next 20 years .
✌🤣👍
Ikr 😂😂😂
😆
And wondering what they are.
They're not large enough to cause a leak at least.
My two cents: the round they're testing needs to be refined as the darts are instable in flight, likely a center of mass issue.
Shift the weight foward, they'll fly more straight.
Or just use pointed diabolo-style pellets... Same penetration, but they all fly pointy end first!
@@nunyabidniz2868 or put them through a rifled choke or barrel
@@demoncet1998 that would just add spin to the shot as a whole, not to the individual pieces, so when it leaves the barrel they all spread out because of the centrifugal force. Same reason birdshot/buckshot is fired from a smoothbore.
I agree. test a few different manufacturers
Well, 1925 FPS = definitely supersonic. Drag stabilized projectiles don't work well at supersonic speeds.
There's your problem.
yeah at those speeds they would have a better chance just being sharpened rods.
@machi-gence HEY !!! . . . take Ur ScYunce and ... oh wait, that's a good point you're making.
What about APFSDS in tank rounds? Those fuckers fly at 1700 m/s
@@TheKevKev12321 note the F in that. It stands for fin. Fin stabilised is not the same as drag stabilized.
@@darthkarl99 Flechettes have fins tho...
This is not how they were designed to function. They are a 'anti personnel' weapon where several hundred to a few thousand flechettes were layered around an explosive charge, usually in a 2.75, M255 warhead of the rocket propelled munition where they would fly in all directions. Not in a shotgun shell.
Correct
america did trial them in shotguns during the vietnam war i believe , loaded almost the same way oddly enough LOL
They work in Afghan from Apaches
@@melin1969 a 40mm grenade with flechette was reported efficient
When my dad worked at Whirlpool they were making those in the 70's during the Vietnam War. They where shot out of canisters from helicopters by the thousands. He actually made a tie clip out of one of them.
In WW1 the equivalent of "flechettes", a handful of steel darts, was tested as a way to weaponize airplanes. It worked kind of but was inefficient.
I've heard plenty of veterans adamantly testify to the power of flechette rounds ... out of helicoptes and naval cannons. It's taking what kind of worked in WW1 and increasing its efficiency.
they still have Hydra Rockets with them, also they even made guns that fired them but they didnt get accepted
Bad ass !
Your dad is a war criminal lmao
Nice touch showing the Veterans Hotline card. I've got a bunch of them and I randomly leave one in any place where I know another Vet could find it. We never know when one of those will make the difference for someone.
Thank you for doing that. I'm a Veteran myself. 👍🏻. 🇺🇸😎
might be neat to fill one of the flechette shells with wax
Seconded
Last flechette vid they did that
Oh cool.
Ammo that's the embodiment of "Random bullshit, go!"
In military science fiction a common weapon is a flechette rifle. Seeing this, I think like the gyro-jet it will remain more popular in science fiction.
Those are saboted rounds from a rifle. In theory they could work and have been tried. They tend to have higher velocity but are light so they have less energy especially at range. They are also less accurate.
Gyrojets are interesting but won't really come into their own until they get guidance systems. Even then they'll be very expensive and probably specialty weapons. Larger rockets with a guidance system would make more sense.
Most of the time, that is a single, heavy flechette in a sabot. The Steyr ACR prototype made it work, but the cost was ruinous and while it could penetrate, it was like stabbing the test media with a knitting needle.
@@Thane36425 One thing I never see in scifi, is meta stable metallic hydrogen. If you were to fill a bullet with it, and detonate it on impact, it would be destructive.
@@josephburchanowski4636 You don't see steam much in science fiction either. If you fill a bucket with steam at about 500 PSI and detonate it on impact, it is pretty messy too.
@@josephburchanowski4636 There are easier and more stable ways of making explosive bullets. They are currently banned for use against people though. However, when they were used they could be brutal. Modern armor might make render them moot though.
"Terrifying" 7:45 I absolutely agree. A small package of random damage and death. Up close, or at distance, with a deflection spread of up to 60 degrees.
Yeah if I was on the other end I'd rather get hit by buckshot than those flechette rounds. They'd tear you up far worse.
Happy Independence Day Brothers in arms.
Love the video , those were much deadlier coming out of the rockets on the attack choppers. Those are also used in artillery rounds called bee hives. Great job and as always
GOD BLESS AMERICA
To you as well partner. LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC!
I read a book once mentioning about an American army encounter with either Vietnamese or Koreans...the camp was getting over run till they opened op with a howitzer or similar loaded with those things...they just decimated the enemy and kept the Americans alive
They were designed to throw metal through dense vegetation in Vietnam they used to load rockets with roofing nails one chopper had enough nails to build a three bedroom ranch house with garage
They were designed for WW1 recon pilots to toss over the side onto enemy trenches.
It depends. The ones thrown from planes in ww1 were alot bigger. Atleast 4 times as long and 20 times as heavy. In ww2 they got the Lazy dogs, smaller but there were more per bomb. Around Vietnam these were developed, the smallest. These were developed for artillery and tank cannon rounds. But some crazy army man loaded them into shotgun shells. Which worked well enough.
@@atomicgamernl3671 Lazy dogs where a post ww2 weapon.
The ones used in missiles an shell where just to add range to fragments and often bigger.
@@SuperFunkmachine The first Lazy dog bombs were from ww2. As early as 1941. First used in combat in 44. The ones shown in the video where used in early rockets and APERS artillery shells as small as 105 to 203 MM variants. But were also used in 90mm tank cannons, 105mm tank cannons and the 106mm recoilless rifle. Aswell as the Carl Gustav later. The early 2.75 inch rockets had around 1300 of these smaller flechettes in the war head while the modern Hydra 70 can be equipped with a APERS war head containing some 1,179 larger flecchetes.
that explains all those double garages in Vietnam then.....
Flechettes do work in artillery shells, like the Beehive round in Vietnam. Many use more blade like projectiles than darts which might be more effective
To be honest I never seen any flettchette that are not blades. So darts came as surprise.
try loading finish nails to see if you get same results. you could say you "finished them off" 🙃
Nailed it.
I noticed the tips of the flechettes looked like they went through the same cheap sharpening method nails do. Half the leading edges look chowdered up, and the tail fins look like they were pressed out into shape, much like nail heads. Very economical to make, but the quality is garbage.
I'm willing to bet the machine that pumps these out has a more than passing resemblance to the machinery that makes nails.
@@nottelling6598 You'd be correct. All the flechettes in this vid [& any other commercially-loaded "specialty round" I've ever heard of] are from de-milled Beehive artillery rounds; they're not intended for this use at all. I'm just glad that Tao filmed this at his top secret AZ firing range, since flechette rounds are "Nyet! Off to the gulag archipelago with you!" behind the Granola Curtain...
@@nunyabidniz2868 lol, im gonna have to look up these beehive shells if they exist
Or use framing nails if you want to frame them ;-)
Thanks for showing the card guys.
The military abandoned these decades ago. They simply cant work from conventional handheld firearms.
I'd say they can but it's more like they need so high quality control standards that it's not practical or economically viable to do so. I'd say scaling down ETC guns to rifle size would be a more practical option than saboted rounds in a small arm.
they were originally put in boxes of thousands and dropped in a strafe along german trenches. they were longer and heavier and apparently were scarily effective. went through the helmets and anyone caught in the beginning of the strafe looked like a run over hedgehog. there were fat ones called lazy dogs that basically were big bullets with fins on the back put in a shrapnel bomb or artillery shell.
Sure they work. They are contained in a rifle grenade kind of device. Easy to attach and easy to remove but I must admit that they have really never seen much use although they should have because in my experiences they are pretty devastating in close quarters. Forest, bush, urban environment. And they are use to quickly suppress enemy ambush for just some seconds until you get cover. Of course, I dont know the latest news but we used them a lot ~20 years ago.
@@2Potates ETC = electrothermal chemical, i.e. the newer higher-velocity systems being considered for tank armament? To be honest, I can't see any applications for ETC munitions in rifle calibers. Consider that cartridges like .45 ACP are still being used in modern combat despite their extremely sluggish velocities--you don't need that much muzzle velocity to incapacitate, much less kill a human being.
Second, ETC munitions themselves are quite likely a _very_ bad idea for rifle-sized weapons. The small arms we have today offer safe, reliable, durable, and largely weather-proof weapon systems. I don't think you would get all that with something that relies on electrical energy to prime and fire cartridges.
Still, I am curious about ridiculously overbore and hypervelocity cartridges, though... I can't help but wonder about the terminal effectiveness of a 5 grain projectile going at 10,000 fps or something crazy like that.
That's why Europe puts 20kg (40lbs) of this stuff in their bombs. In that way theyre devastating
To be fair, those flechettes weren't meant to be shot from a shotgun in a sabot at close range. They were designed for tank guns and recoilless rifles, but were also used in other weapon systems, including aerial rockets, 81mm mortars, (Navy) 40mm grenades, and small howitzers, for direct fire engagements against enemy infantry.
The projectiles that were fired from tank guns, had a mechanical time fuze, with a muzzle action feature not found on other projectiles. The functioning of the fuze would blow apart the ogive, and set off a base charge in the shell that pushed the stacks of flechettes forward, and out of the shell body. The rotation of the spin-stabilized shell would disperse the flechettes in a cone. When set for muzzle action, the minimum distance to a horde of enemy soldiers, would normally be 100 meters or more, to get proper dispersal and allow the flechettes to stabilize. The MT fuze could be set to function as far as 4,000 meters. A dye pack was installed in the ogive to give the gunner/tank commander and indication of where the round functioned, to increase or decrease the next round's detonation range.
Considering that a typical (medium to large) flechette round carried anywhere from 1,300 to 8,000 flechettes, they were devastating when fired at the proper ranges, with the fuze set correctly. The darts would often bend upon impact with bone, and the flechette would then take a wild path through the flesh, leaving a nasty boo-boo. Part of the tail, or the entire tail can break off, leaving a second wound channel. They were often used just to clear a swath through the jungles of Vietnam, so the tank crew, could see farther. The Korean War showed that flechettes were key in repelling or stopping the massive waves of Chinese.
Canister is more effective at short ranges, since it doesn't have a fuze that has to be set correctly, and they pack more punch for damaging APCs, trucks, and other vehicles, but the effective range is only in the 100 to 500 meter range. Flechettes, being very light, lose velocity quickly, something like 300 to 400fps for every 100 yards of travel, while canister balls lose less than 100fps per 100 yards. Some canister rounds held cylindrical shot, instead of balls. You all know that the weight of a projectile and its velocity, is what contributes a lot to its effectiveness on a target.
Flechettes in a 12 gauge shotgun is just another gimmick.
3:06
On the bottom right corner of the plate.
Seems to defy physics.
Perhapps this is how the "magic bullet" was able to hit back... and to the left.
Good eye
“Back and to the left..... a clown *shakes head*”
looks fine to me, the flechette breaks apart at the join between the fins and the main body as it hits the table, and goes spinning off end over end
There is nothing magic about the "magic bullet". The head should be fairly still or even pushed towards the shooter by the spray of brain matter + bullet out of the exit hole. It is not a solid target like a brick of lead, where most of the kinetic energy is dumped to heat and the bullet and lead brick simply continue forward at a much slower speed. The motion of the head is too rapid on the zapruder film and looks like it is accelerating; that just looks like a muscle jerk.
Good video as usual. I don't recall ever seeing a video of flechettes working. Thanks.
This is neat. That close shot on the gel is a nightmare! Id love to see a shell full of mini diabolo shot
Hi guys . Great vid as always !! But come on... at 7:55 at least 16 arrows flying out of the ballistic "awful" 😂 looks like a porcupine. This is amazing!!! Dany did a great job to hit that "Jelly Con Vally, square something" 😎 Great job guys !!!!
Thinking back on an old video of yours, I bet the “sonic deflection” happening at speeds over the sound barrier are causing the flechettes to knock each other around after exiting the barrel.
Perhaps the objects being shaped as shafts to try to stabilize is countered by their flight path being potentially more easily altered by the individual shockwaves slapping each of them around at slightly different rates and angles.
I gave this a thumbs up simply because you showed the Veteran's crisis line card. 22 veteran suicides per day is too many!
"Better than hollow points" might be a better marketing strategy after seeing the ballistics gel.
I was told flechettes work great in Vietnam.
But of course that was out of a 105.
Somebody is gonna be driving through that field and be confused AF when they wind up with one of those things in their tire!
I was thinking the same thing. I wonder what the guy who mows along that road will think of them when his tractor tire finds one.
If I remember right, flechettes were ideal for soft target penetration and cover destruction. Plant matter would shred for quite a distance from the firing location, ideally with minimal stability loss/ stopping power loss. Let alone, if you were hiding and taking cover in the bush, idk who wouldnt jump or yell after having been shot with a glorified nail gun
I've experimented with these and have never found a range or velocity at which they would stabilize.
About 12 years ago I had gotten ahold of 2 pounds of Vietnam era fletchets and me and a couple of friends over the period of a month Tried Every way we could think to get it to work out of a 12 guage and we Never got it to be any more effective than a ringer or a slug while Everything else was completely useless.
They weren't meant to be shot out of a gun.
Dad talked about how crappy these were in Vietnam..
Vc wouldn't even duck if they knew these were used . They would start mooning and giving California hellos .
They worked wonders in rockets in vietnam.
@@joshstock6591 there where thousands in those rockets though. And they where explosion accelerated, not sabot.
@@joshstock6591 I heard that too.
@@richmeisterradio yeah I'm not making an argument one way or the other. I just know those flechette rockets cleared out the jungle better than agent orange lol
In Vietnam the US started using tubes that looked like rocket launcher tubes mounted to helicopters that would be muzzle loaded with these steel flechettes. These things were deadly to the enemy with stories of ground troops finding VC and NVA troops solidly nailed to trees with flechettes. They also had a 40mm grenade round and 12 gauge round loaded with flechettes.
RUclips recommended me this 19 minutes after upload!
Wow... do advertisers on RUclips really think somebody's going to sit through a (this time) 40 minute commercial while watching a 10 minute video?
The hog will take you out .... once you pissed him of enough with these things!
A like just for supporting suicide prevention let alone supporting the Vets.
Tao, if you’re up for trying new ideas, try making your own flexhettes, these ones are build like arrows should be, balanced all around, but what if you made the points the heaviest part and made them slightly bigger? Maybe actual frills for fins?
Anyone else remember the Bruce Dern movie where he tries to launch a bunch of these at the super bowl crowd via the goodyear blimp? Swear its a real movie!
Black Sunday and I think it was more like a bathtub sized claymore mine.
I think i thought of a design for a round that would interest you. How hard/how much of a hassle is it to send you something from Austria? Would really love seeing one of you guys try it out some day. :)
You can't fit a cuckoo clock thru a 12 gauge barrel ...Unfortunately
@@rohypnotist6263 that's Swiss not austria
@ ruclips.net/video/2F35iTxzzA4/видео.html
@@elliotschka Aren't cuckoo clocks a german thing?^^
@@rohypnotist6263 Is this a dare? ^^
Still wouldn't want to get hit with all that shrapnel-OUCH! 😫
"Is it better than buckshot?"
"Not yet!"
Jeff, have some 3d printed sabots made that will house one flechette dart. I'm thinking 3/4 oz overall weight when leaving the mass accelerators muzzle. Looking forward to this vid. I BET you the dart will pass through a 2 inch lead plate and several kevlar vests with the right powder load and whatnot at 15 yards. Love your vids and science. Remember make this vid happen!!! The results might suprise you!!!
Jeff, how’ve you been so successful at hiding that table from your wife for all these years?
It's kept in the back of OGs cruiser!
Good to see Danny in this video, my deepest condolences to his family.
My father a Vietnam vet 68-69 told me the cannoneers used to load " Beehives" or flechettes in the 8 inch cannons if overrun by enemy troops. He proclaimed they were very destructive to say the least. He said as a grunt those " Beehive rounds " earned every bit of respect .
Great test guys. I appreciate your willingness to complete these test so the rest of us can just buy Hog Balls and hit everything we aim at, twice for every trigger squeeze.
The tank version of the flechette, the APFSDS works perfectly though.
I know the full acronym, and I can't decide if i'm proud or disappointed in myself.
Isnt it canister shells, which are small tungsten rods fired out of a 25mm shell?
It might work a little better with a smaller number of slightly larger projectiles that have larger fins. As well the alignment of the flechettes inside the sabot might improve performance if its straightened up. Just my two cents though.
I'm so impressed that this channel has endured new content restrictions and can still make A+ content
I think putting them in wax would make a big improvement, nothing but love guys please keep doing what you do.
9:36 someone call Paul Harrell! It's a ninth pellet flyer!
Flechettes are classified as a felony in California.
2019 California Code
Penal Code - PEN
PART 6 - CONTROL OF DEADLY WEAPONS
TITLE 4 - FIREARMS
DIVISION 10 - SPECIAL RULES RELATING TO PARTICULAR TYPES OF FIREARMS OR FIREARM EQUIPMENT
CHAPTER 1 - Ammunition
ARTICLE 1 - Flechette Dart Ammunition or Bullet Containing or Carrying an Explosive Agent
Thank you for showing the vet crisis card. Like me, I'm a vet, and shows that you are thinking about others
I'm intensely grateful for you posting three veteran's crisis line number. Veteran suicide is an important issue to me and I'm always bursting with joy when people bring light to it.
Impractical and also banned by name in Florida.
Thanks RINOs!
🎩
🐍 no step on SNEK! 🇺🇸🇭🇰
I hope you and the crew are safe and healthy Jeff. Thanks for the video.
The important part for precision and consistency is having the "perfect ratio" of weight, center of mass and drag. It's difficult to calculate in advance so the easiest way of creating good flechettes is likely just trial and error.
Also depending on the design and how much wind there is they could react very differently (deviation not linear, seemingly pretty random) so the decision to simply stick with buckshot is, in my opinion, not very far fetched at all.
Flechettes work great in a 105 mm Howitzer.
Most amazing demo in Marine Corps boot camp
Bulk pack them in a shot shell, i think still works better. More of 'em
But where they really shine is as shrapnel in explosive devices.
I was in the military as a munitions specialist when they decided to "outlaw" them and most of the guys in the bomb dump still "decorated" their hats with them. I still have some from back then.
If you get enough of them moving with some force, I guarantee that you do not want to be down range of them. They're pretty nasty when they're on target. And, yes, they'll go right through you.
so glad you tested the buckshot! good comparison.
The flechettes were actually used in a head for the 2.75 FFAR rocket. About two thousand of them were packed around an explosive charge, and coated in an oil carrying zinc oxide to prevent corrosion. The charge gave an imparted velocity greater than 12,000 (twelve thousand) feet per second. The "primary intent" was to defoliate trees and brush so the enemy could not hide there. Being so small, flechettes would not likely cause a mortal wound, even with multiple hits. However, the corrosion preventative entered the blood stream, causing many problems for the victim.
I have to tip my hat to you for sharing the vet crisis line I have a close combat vet who is as close as brother the crisis line saved his life a few years back when he tried to commit suicide. The current suicide rate in vets is 22 a day let’s support our vets like they deserve!
The 105 mm APERS round (M494) had five thousand flechettes stacked heel to toe. The round would detonate three meters out the end of the gun if left set on M/A (Muzzle Action) or seventy-five meters prior to the indexed range with a puff of yellow smoke to aid in subsequent fire commands. One could only set the range three times (and one could not turn it CCW). The fourth attempt to set the fuze locked it in M/A. They were not precision ground. The round was abandoned because masses of infantry at range were simply not doctrine by anyone anymore. I've spoken to Vietnam vets (Armor types) and was told that if used correctly one could see NVA/VC carcass' stuck to trees. Each 105mm tank round used a separate powder (except HEP and WP) recipes and configuration.
I can't even imagine being underneath one of the beehive barrage. You probably wouldn't even know it, instantly a pink cloud of what used to be a grunt. Love ya brother, Danny is in my thoughts, he is missed.
We used flechette rounds through a 106mm Reckless Rifle (SF Weapons Committee), of course those rounds had 9000 flechettes each, and they would tear some stuff up, but they were designed to repel an attack by massed troops.....but I would still stick to the buckshot rounds for my shotgunning....
I mean - it would be GREAT for old-school blunderbuss ship boarding! The ammo of choice for the pirate? Hahaha
The ones I saw used in Vietnam were fired from 105MM Howitzer's. When an artillery unit was attacked it was what they used to defend themselves, and they worked. No one wanted to be in front of that muzzle when that round went off. Oh hell yeah they worked.
For flechettes to work Ina shotgun round, the flachettes themselves need to be in a symmetrical, blade-like shape, not darts which are axis dependent with respect to aerodynamics. With a symmetrical, blade-like shape, the flechettes are then able to tumble in their trajectory without losing effectiveness like with a dart shape.
Happy 4th of July guys. Keep on keepin on.
Nice video! I like tests with fleshettes. They just SEEM like such a GOOD idea (and a cool one) I like to be reminded occasionally that they have never seemed to actually work in any test I've ever seen video of or read about. Kinda sad since they just seem like such a neat idea. Maybe some modern whiz-kid can find a way to make 'em actually work. As to what good they'll be ... well ... who knows? I'd just love to see 'em work!
Oh, insofar as the long-range shooting with those Federal Flite-control rounds, I've seen 8 pellet Tactical Buck with Flite-Control wads fired at 50 and 40 yards and all but 2 pellets stay in the scoring area (what in olden times we called "the kill zone") of an FBI Q anatomy target. The two stray pellets were still on the body of the silhouette just not in the kill zone.
This happened when, just prior to retiring, I was having night shift at my old PD qualify and a grumpy shift sgt. who didn't want to carry or qualify with a shotgun to start with (waaaaahhh! LOL) screwed up and loaded buckshot for the slug portion of his qualification. He fired one round from 50, two from 40, and two from 25 yards. When we first got those flite-control rounds I was massively impressed with them and still keep a few handy. ;)
In Vietnam, they found the key to making these work... It involved firing a big can of them out of a tank's gun. That way, it didn't matter if they didn't fly straight or accurate, as it would achieve "areal saturation".... They found that they were good for clearing vegetation overgrowth, primarily. It seems like a bunch of plain rods, made from spring steel, would do just as well for a fraction of the cost.
Shoot it at a subsonic velocity. At supersonic and transonic velocities, a shock wave ahead of the flechettes forces air out and away from the projectiles, and prevents it from sliding through the fins and stabilizing them. This causes them to tumble around, and as they tumble, they come into contact with the shockwaves, causing them to veer off course. At lower velocities, the shockwaves are nonexistent, so the airflow is in contact with the surface of the flechettes, allowing the fins to be able to stabilize them.
My dad told me they worked real good out of 105 mm or whatever the Marine's main battle tank was in Vietnam. Said one round cleared a two lane road(highway one) for about 300 yards. Maybe that's the key factor more mass and velocity?
You gotta understand,these weren't a precision round. They were made to shoot into an advancing group of bad guys. Not a sniper round,a room/trench sweeping ,group thinking round.
Video came out 3 days ago and I'm just now getting notified about it
Thanks for doing these tests. Very informative and saves alot of folks wasting their money. Hard to beat buckshot at nominal range.
Like Danny said "No bueno"
Not bad, but I'm still sticking with
buckshot lol
Hog balls were devastating
In Vietnam, the SEALs used to use an experimental 40mm flechette grenade design. Now, of course, that had a lot more R&D, and, engineering behind it. They were reported to be very effective, especially at penetrating heavy jungle foliage, and, still penetrating targets.
My theory is the manufacturer of those flechettes used to be a carpenter and didn't want his old supply of nails to go to waste.
Ah, them ol´flechettes. All too familiar with them. they got their own place,. Think, directed blast direction. Great video, as always. Stay frosty!
Circuit board materiel is G10 and it's actually quite dense and strong. G10 is sometimes used instead of carbon fiber for the frames of petrol fueled industrial helicopter drones because it's both strong and ductile which help damp vibrations.
It depends what your plans are with the darts
It's comforting to see that in a way Danny achieved immortality
Flechets are extremely effective, when fired out of the appropriate weapon system such as a Zuni rocket. A shotgun just doesnt do them justice
These work with RIFLED BARRELS. The spin helps the darts fly better before leaving the barrel. With no rotational spin they fly erratically.
Looks like what someone could use in a Mossberg 500 Chainsaw while fighting your way through an apartment lol
Flachette’s are really designed to be brought up high and back down to earth under gravity. In WWI pilots would fly with buckets full of them and dump them on the battle field. In Vietnam they were loaded into artillery shells and the like and fired in a upwards direction where they would be released and fall back to ground and were pretty effective at getting through the dense foliage. Its about having a massive amount of flachettes raining down on the target.
They weren’t developed to be used in shotgun shells. People just want them to work that way. For maximum effectiveness out of a shotgun you could shoot them upwards at an angle, but only having 19 in the shell they would be very hard to find imo.