Stinger: The Hacked Machine Gun Of Iwo Jima

February 3, 2020 by Tom Nardi 55 Comments

During the Second World War, the United States was pumping out weapons, aircraft, and tanks at an absolutely astonishing rate. The production of military vehicles and equipment was industrialized like never before, and with luck, never will be again. But even still, soldiers overseas would occasionally find themselves in unique situations that required hardware that the factories back at home couldn’t provide them with.

Which is precisely how a few United States Marines designed and built the “Stinger” light machine gun (LMG) during the lead-up to the invasion of Iwo Jima in 1945. The Stinger was a Browning .30 caliber AN/M2, salvaged from a crashed or otherwise inoperable aircraft, that was modified for use by infantry. It was somewhat ungainly, and as it was designed to be cooled by the air flowing past it while in flight, had a tendency to overheat quickly. But even with those shortcomings it was an absolutely devastating weapon; with a rate of fire at least twice that of the standard Browning machine guns the Marines had access to at the time.

Six Stingers were produced, and at least on a Battalion level, were officially approved for use in combat. After seeing how successful the weapon was during the invasion of Iwo Jima, there was even some talk of putting the Stinger into larger scale production and distributing them. But the war ended before such a plan could be put into place.

As such, the Stinger is an exceedingly rare example of a field modified weapon that was not only produced in significant numbers, but officially recognized and even considered for adoption by the military. But the story of this hacked machine gun actually started years earlier and thousands of kilometers away, as Allied forces battled for control of the Solomon Islands.

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Prop WWII Machine Gun Courtesy Of Home Depot

May 16, 2018 by Tom Nardi 7 Comments

There’s perhaps nothing worse than working on a project and realizing you don’t have the part you need to complete it. You look through all your stuff twice, maybe three times, on the off chance it’s hiding somewhere. Perhaps even reach out to a few nearby friends to see if they might have something you can use. Forget local stores, what you need is so specific that nobody’s going to keep it in stock. You’re stuck, and now everything has to be put on hold.

That’s precisely what happened to [Nathan Cragun] recently. He needed a Japanese Type 96 Light Machine Gun for a particular scene in the independent World War II film he’s working on, and couldn’t find one anywhere. Out of options, he ended up building a replica with parts from the hardware store. OK, so it isn’t exactly like being short a passive component or two on that new PCB you’re putting together. But while we can’t say a project of ours has ever been short a 70+ year old Japanese machine gun, we can definitely relate to the feeling.

To start his build, [Nathan] printed out a full size diagram of the Type 96 and starting placing PVC pipes on top of it to get a sense for how it would all come together. Once the basic tubular “skeleton” of the weapon was completed, he moved on to cutting the rest of the parts out of EVA foam.

The major pieces that needed to be made were the stock and receiver, but even small details like the spiral ribbing on the barrel and the sights were created to scale using pieces of foam. In a particularly nice touch, [Nathan] even made the magazine removable. If we had to guess, some Japanese soldiers will be shown reloading the weapon onscreen for added authenticity.

The important thing to remember with a filming prop like this is that it doesn’t need to look perfect, just close. It might be used in the background, or seen only for a second during a fast pan. Even in professionally produced TV and movies, many of the props are little more than carved foam. With the excellent job [Nathan] did painting and weathering this build, we have no doubt it will look completely believable in the final production.

We’re no strangers to prop builds here at Hackaday, but they are generally of the science fiction or video game variety, so a historical build is a nice change of pace.

Firing Bullets Through Propellers

April 25, 2018 by Steven Dufresne 39 Comments

Early airborne combat was more like a drive-by shooting as pilot used handheld firearms to fire upon other aircraft. Whomever could boost firepower and accuracy would have the upper hand and so machine guns were added to planes. But it certainly wasn’t as simple as just bolting one to the chassis.

This was during World War I which spanned 1914 to 1918 and the controllable airplane had been invented a mere eleven years before. Most airplanes still used wooden frames, fabric-covered wings, and external cable bracing. The engineers became pretty inventive, even finding ways to fire bullets through the path of the wooden propeller blades while somehow not tearing them to splinters.

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Feed The Fun With A Semi-automatic Cheesy Poof Rifle

May 23, 2016 by Dan Maloney 18 Comments

At Hackaday we think that hackers have the power to make the world a better place with their builds. This air-powered cheesy-poof rifle is not one of those builds, unless making the world a little more fun and slightly messier makes it a better place.

The principle of [NightHawkInLight]’s design is simple – an electric leaf blower provides the power, and a big vat o’ poofs provides the ammo. Getting the two together and providing a barrel is a matter of some simple plumbing with 1″ PVC pipe and fittings. But wait – lest you think this hack, like the ammo, is just a delicious bit of fluff, there’s something to be learned about fluid dynamics here. With a plain tee fitting, the leaf blower would only pressurize the magazine, making it difficult to chamber a round. But by adding a small restriction to the incoming air flow, the Venturi effect actually sucks ammo into the chamber and down the barrel, to the delight of hungry wildlife for yards around. Science!

There’s plenty of room for improvement to the design – something along the lines of this gas-powered, tube-fed snowball gun would be keen. As it stands, the cheesy-poof gun seems like good, unclean fun.

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Snowball Machine Gun

March 9, 2016 by Jenny List 24 Comments

[Mark Rober] is an uncle to three nieces and nephews, and when there is snow on the ground he faces the relentless onslaught of three elite juvenile snowball aces. Lesser men would face the fact that they are over the hill when it comes to snow-based combat, but not [Mark]. He has brought technology to his aid, and with the help of his brother created a snowball machine gun capable of firing 13 snowballs at the unruly youths in half a second.

Power for his creation comes from a leaf blower, and the gun itself is made from ABS pipe fixed onto the blower outlet. Magazines made from pipe with its top section cut away are loaded via a 45 degree junction fitting, and the rate of fire is set by how fast the operator pushes the line of snowballs with a wooden block. He has made full build instructions available as a PDF, so assuming you are reading this in a part of the world where it snows, what are you waiting for! Those of us who live in paces where it rarely snows and what snow we get is wet and slushy can only look on with envy.

The video below has the full story, complete with gratuitous destruction of fruit, youngsters cowering in their snow forts, and finally [Mark] receiving his snowy comeuppance.

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