While my sample group is small, every fucking tunnel rat I ever met was crazy. Like, off the wall, bugshit bonkers lol. Zero fucks given about anything.
this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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Considering what their job was, I would be more worried about the ones that aren't completely whacko.
One of them said, "man, if I hadn't been a little fucked up, I never would have done it. But if I hadn't been fucked top when I started, I sure as fuck would have after the first one."
I was born in the 70’s. I’ve met a lot of vets but never met a tunnel rat. I only met one helicopter door gunner.
I found out later, they didn’t last long. That’s why i only met one.
Nice guy but he never left the war. He lived in his car but had plenty of money. He threw newspapers for a living back when you could make a living doing it.
Tunnel rats typically were mostly if not all volunteers. So that makes sense.
Exactly!
Near Ho Chi Minh city there are some tunnels like this which they let tourists go into and crawl along for a few hundred meters before coming up somewhere else. They were very very skinny, some of the tourists could not fit. Utterly terrifying places, when you think about the context they were used in.
Afterwards I paid $50 to fire a few shots from an AK-47. Surprisingly loud. Hard to imagine coping with several of them going off all around.
Is that a silencer? On a revolver. As I understand it, it can work but generally won't.
I couldn't find a source with enough details on this picture to confidently say. It might just be a blast can.
1911A semi-automatics like the one the Rat below is carrying were disliked because of the muzzle blast that temporarily blinded and deafened them in a tight tunnel. That’s why many Rats preferred silencer-equipped .38 Specials.
It makes sense that they'd favor the .38s if they wanted to suppress them as a gunsmith can convert a non threaded revolver into one easier than they could with a 1911 (assuming they didn't have threaded 1911 barrels at hand).
I can't imagine the horror of being in a tunnel that's effectively a trapped enemy base blinded, deafened, and having alerted everyone to your presence.
Also for anyone unfamiliar with what I meant above by blast can here's a picture. I realized that outside of the US commercial market they may be fairly unknown. They have no baffles and only direct the blast forward. Which could be handy in a tunnel.
I just now linked a report in another comment, the silencer is part of the 1966 experimental kit, and it was found to be largely ineffective.
If there is any reason for bias towards a revolver over a 1911, I suspect a more plausible explanation either in absolute fact or in perception is that a Brown style action like in a 1911 can be pushed out of battery and made inoperable if the barrel is pushed on. It isn't normally a concern, but you can imagine why a tunnel rat might worry about it. That is just speculation.
Is that a silencer?
Yes.
On a revolver.
Yes!
As I understand it, it can work but generally won’t.
You are three for three.
This revolver is from the 1966 Tunnel Exploration Kit. It is a .38 Smith & Wesson, with a supposed reduced cylinder gap and a silencer.
The final report on the kit was that 3 of the 4 units using it found that the silencer gave no appreciable advantage. Report here.
What a terrifying job that must have been.
We're the Tunnel Rats, that's us, and we rule!