Why did US soldiers use the M79 when they had access to bullet

>>31840690
Because it's a whole fuck of a lot easier to carry only a dedicated weapon than it is to carry a rifle then a bunch of heavy ass rifle grenades. So glad your stupid ass was here to post this thread and take up bandwidth OP, that's why we have these stupid fuck adds all over now.

>>31840704
> easier to carry only a dedicated weapon than it is to carry a rifle then a bunch of heavy ass rifle grenades

The m79 wasn't a dedicated weapon. Many US soldiers cut the stock to make a more portable weapon. With the M79 they would have been forced to carry a dedicated weapon, the m79, and ammo for both.

If the US were to use rifle grenades during Vietnam, they could have issued just 1 per soldier and it would have likely improved coordination.

>>31840704
also a anti-personnel and anti-vehicle rifle grenade doesn't even weigh 1 pound

>MUH HEAVY GRENADES

easier to handle, easier to aim, feels more consistent from shot to shot. low pressure grenade launchers just makes more sense for standard jungle/urban combat ranges.

Because rifle grenades are fucking horrible to use and take up much more space than a 40mm.

>>31840690
Because rifle grenades were difficult to load, difficult to aim, difficult to fire, and had very short effective ranges. The M79 basically beat them in all of those categories. Just about the only fault of the M79 was that they made it a single shot weapon and never adopted the pump action version.

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>>31840745
>Just about the only fault of the M79 was that they made it a single shot weapon and never adopted the pump action version.
Pretty sure it was opposite. Success came because M79 was reliable, portable and handy.

>>31840735
>>31840745
That's more understandable but the m79 was only issued at 2 per platoon, while rifle grenades could have been issued for the entire platoon. Also, the more modern rifle grenades could be twisted on and were also bullet trapped. They could be placed on a rifle in a few seconds.

Why didn't they adopt both?

>>31840717
Nope, most men who carried the M-79 didn't carry a rifle, so they the could carry more grenades.

>>31840767
All indications seemed to be that the China Lake worked as advertised, but it was restricted to SF teams and so few were actually made nobody really knows how well it worked before underbarrel launchers made the M79 obsolete.

>>31840770
Because then you'd have to give soldiers highly specialized grenades that they can't otherwise use like regular grenades, and they'd have to be specially trained to learn how to fire them with any modicum of accuracy, because the recoil on rifle grenades is so high that you actually have to brace the rifle against the ground and fire it like an ad hoc mortar.

Whereas with the M79 you literally just pointed it where you wanted it to shoot at and fired.

>>31840770
Ultimately, to zoom out a bit, it comes down to the general trend of specializing > generalizing.
Having one guy who's good with an M79 beats having N guys who were mediocre to competent with rifle grenades
Same reason why today we still don't have everyone running around with UGLs

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>>31840770

Underslung grenade launchers were on their way already.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM148_grenade_launcher

>>31840795
>>31840745
The issue with the "China Lake" launcher was that it was as heavy as, if not heavier than, an M60. That's a lot of weight to carry around on patrols. Also lets not forget that having a (relatively) rapid fire grenade launcher poses an issue in your platoon's grenadiers just pumping out large numbers of expensive grenades in the general direction of the enemy instead of properly aiming their shots. Not only would that make it far harder to keep the grenades supplied to the troops, but it would also increase the likelihood of blue-on-blue casualties from under-trained draftees chunking them everywhere.

>>31840690
So, my dad carried one of these back in Vietnam. Before they got the M79, his patrols would have to carry around an M14 in addition to their M16's because it was the only thing that could fire a rifle grenade. He fucking loved the 79 once he got it, but >>31840780 is wrong, at least in this case. He always carried a rifle in addition to the grenade launcher. Said he tried just carrying a 1911 instead of a rifle but gave that up pretty quickly.