Use of silencers during the war

Thats why they called them silencers

 

the actual term used is surppressor not silencer

 

Ever had one of those days when you look for one thing on the web and find anything but? The result is I found an image of a Nagant pistol with silencer.

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Steve

 

that was probably a post war thing cause do you really think the russians would waste there time on something like that while fighting for there homeland

 

anzer:

 

an interesting weapon they have there, although from what i know using a silencer on a revolver is generally futile (due to the gas escaping between the cylinder and barrel).
you can see videos of people shooting with modern silencers on youtube or liveleak, they have them even for the M-4 assault rifle and they are very quiet, indeed. These are factory made and use special baffles inside that wear out after only a few shots, anything from 10 to a couple hundred shots and then the silencer is nt silent anymore.
But note also if you really want to silence a weapon you have to have ammo that is subsonic (bullet velocity below about 960 fps) due to the "crack" of the bullet negating your silencing effect. So this means either you start with some caliber already subsonic (most pistol calibers incl 9mm and 45) or you have to load some special ammo if you want to use a larger caliber.
Sometimes snipers use a silencer only to quiet the muzzle blast and dont care about the bullet noise, in this instance they are pretty sure the enemy will know they are being shot at but they just want to make themselves (sniper) harder to locate.

The US Air Force issues its pilots a special M9 beretta pistol that is equipped with a silencer in case they are shot down and need to escape and evade.

 

This may be the Revolver 612(r) [Nagant 1885]: (add on silencer) prototype only mentioned in J.C. Falkenberg IIIs post #6 or the NKVD suppress Nagant in Triple C post #7.

As mentioned by Triple C. the Nagant was almost unique in that on cocking the hammer the cylinder moves forward to seal the gap between itself and the barrel, thus flashover common in other revolvers is not a problem, why they went to this effort I don't know, perhaps to maximise power from a comparitively low power cartridge.

Steve

 

You are confusing baffles with wipes. Wipes were rubber or urethane discs that the bullet penetrated and the resulting heat sealed the disc. You can get ~ 2 mags before there was a permanent hole in the disc requiring replacement. The 90s to present designs moved away from wipes as advances in metallurgy (courtesy of NASA) and baffle design greatly improved performance. My GemTech M4-96D only has 4 baffles yet meters a 30+dB reduction with "full-power" ammo.

Use of a suppressor will confuse enemies outside of grenade throwing range. Enemies in front of the muzzle will follow the sound away from the shooter. However, anyone behind the shooter will be able to locate him.

 

the most effective firearm suppression method is the sealed cartridge, althought it is limited to firing buckshot and other shotgun-type projectiles. a sealed cartridge can be fired from a revolver or a shotgun, so it's not an absolute rule for revolvers not to be silent.

however, sealed cartridges are a mostly a post-war innovation.

 

Not true, silent 40mm grenades were developed during Vietnam (I doubt any were ever procured for operational use). Also, the Russians developed a captive-piston cartridges using "normal" bullets for various weapons-- including a derringer. Try Google...

 

yeah, well, i should have mentioned the silent mortars and grenade launchers were based on the same principle. but there's little advantage to firing full-caliber slugs with the method since the velocity would be too low. better fire buckshot or a slug in sabot.

 

At the short distances that this type of weapon operates, you can achieve a degree of accuracy over slugs and/or buckshot. That would allow the operator to engage targets not just in confined areas (like a tunnel). Now a sentry in a guard tower could be engaged. Just another tool for the toolbox...