I think if it were HE and not chalk, you would have gotten him just about every time. Close enough for horseshoes as they say

It's alright Ian, "close" actually does count with horseshoes and grenades.

My friend has always dreamed of shooting a China lake even with chalk rounds, he's got stage 4 melanoma and has been trucking along like a champion with experimental treatment. Random internet outreach, we're out in Utah and if the viewer who has this China lake sees this I'd love to see if there's a chance I could surprise him with getting a chance to shoot this.

I worked in an arsenal and made 40 mm rounds. When we test fired them, they were never on the target, but when we retrieved the target, they were riddled with holes. The rounds hit about 6 or 7 feet from the target but were still lethal.

I really like the split screen between firing and the target.

I've read about these in a few books by Vietnam war era SF guys. They said the weight was also a factor in them not using it. An experienced M79 operator could lay down faster fire for a longer duration while carrying more rounds for the same weight.

The M79 was my carry gun in Nam, but I only carried 4 grenades for it. the other three bandoliers were smoke, gas, and flares. I also had another two bandoliers with all my medical supplies, because I was not about to carry a Unit One and become a primary target. I have to say it was significantly easier to load.

I dont know why, but seeing Ian shouldering this thing makes me realize how ridiculously huge this thing really is compared to what it looks like in video games

I didn't realize how comically huge it would look like when you were shooting it. That thing is ridiculous for all the right reasons!

Yes, a single shot M79 in the hands of a skilled user is more practical in the long run but the China Lake was for specific applications, mainly to put down an instantaneous burst of grenades at a moment's notice. China Lake users reported they could put all 5 rounds heading downrange by the time the first round was impacting. That's pretty devastating in the first critical seconds of an ambush.

I am after visiting the war remnants museum in Saigon last week. The China Lake is still there. This time it's called the "reformed M79 grenade launcher". It's an improvement over my last visit, when they simply called it an M79.

"I wasn't running the slide... violently enough" Ian, remember your training! Run that thing like it owes you money!

Keeping in my kind that the original China Lake launchers were probably even *smaller* scale production, you have to think, "Maybe there's a *reason* the China Lake just sort of died on the vine..."

The China Lake had quirks, but generally was fond of 2 ammo types, HE and Shot (My dads friend said his Sarge called is Canister), there was Phosphorus and a few other options like mentioned here such as a flare charge and a flachet round (The Artillary version was "Bee-hive" ammo). Out of all this he said they were trained to use "special" loads on the fly with Breech loading style, they put a new round in the tube direct after cycling the action otherwise you had malfunctions consistently. The field soldiers often would make there own warheads using the "Ranging" rounds he said. He never explained what that consisted of, but he said it helped a lot in specific situations when you needed more charge on range then you needed ranging charges. Do note I'm not defending it, he was trained in the field and said he was not the designated grenadier. He took the position till a replacement came in a few months later. He said the action got tricky on ranging rounds and flare charges. He did say that suddenly being told to carry such a thing sucked as he was still using the M14 which was heavy. His opinion of the Grenade Launcher was that it was cumbersome, but in a fight its "a Piece of Hell that's on your side"

With how many issues it has loading from the tube magazine, you'd probably get a higher rate of fire just loading straight into the chamber from the ejection port each time.

The two shells flying out at the same time killed me after all that time struggling 🤣🤣

A handful of people have made a functioning 37mm version of this with a 3d prints and steel tubing.

Big thanks to the owner offering this opportunity. Why do they make the chalk ones that much larger when they colour code them anyway?

In the summer of 1969, I worked at a Martin Marietta plant in South LA. One of the products was inert 40x46mm practice rounds for grenade launchers. The grenade portion was solid aluminum that was supposed to be the same weight as a real 40-millimeter grenade.

Nothing like coffee and watching Ian fire a Vietnam-era pump action grenade launcher in the morning, lol.

Seeing the 40mm pump action grenade launcher makes me wonder, is there a lever action grenade launcher out there? Please make one!

Remember the rage you felt when you spent your last 950 points on the box with no ammo in either gun and the China Lake popped up

Charles "Patches" Watson was a Navy SEAL in Vietnam and he was involved in the creation of that 40 mm pump gun. And in one his books "Walking Point" or "Pointman" he claims to have come up with the idea. I read both books a few decades ago and they were great as I recall. He was Richard Marcinco's pointman. Dick wrote "Rogue Warrior" and started SEAL team 6, and he confirmed some of Watson's story. Their books are all worth reading.

So, there's a trick with GLs, you pull the chalk projectile and replace it with a piece of fluorescent plastic that is the same shape and roughly the same weight as the HE rounds. You should be able to find them and reuse them. Also useful for handloading. Does take a bit of machining, but they're plastic, so not a big deal.

Horseshoes and hand grenades. Would have been fun to see how close you could get at a 200-300 meter target.

Gotta love it.... "Oh drat my China Lake isn't running right...guess I'll have to bust out the m203.."

1:23 - "They had a really hard time running anything except high explosive." A very important point from Ian that a lot of comments seem to be ignoring in their conclusions on this. Also a lot of "Oh a skilled X could do Y" Ok, you can say that about almost anything, a magazine's always going to be easier to use than single loading, it's kind of the whole reason why magazines exist. This video tells you how chalk runs in it, nothing more can be concluded from it, except that Ian looks like he's having good fun.

Extra rounds, stopping power, and easily concealable. Might be my next EDC

The secret to 40mm HE is you only need to lob the things within 5m of the target to be effective, so a 10m group at any range does the trick. Even Ruger owners could be effective 40mm grenadiers

Never thought I would hear the words "grenade launcher" and "carefully" in the same sentence.

Learned the bloopgun and the M-203 in the early '70s. I was amazed by the simplicity of the task of launching such a large diameter slug (or shot, etc.) from it without creating problems from having to use small quantities of propellent which, in a rifle might wander forward or back, creating varying states of finicky ignition. The solution was an elegant one, as you know. I preferred the blooper, as it had all the reliability of a ball peen hammer while the 203 could let you down in a number of ways. Sorry you could not be allowed any silver or gold tips. they can really make things jump. Regarding the loading probs on that China Lake model, just be glad there is no Chiappa Triple version...

Pump guns are fun but a break action still has its benefits. Either way, glad you had the opportunity to use and show us this thing

I am glad you did the comparison with the M-203 at the end, it was pretty much what I was thinking while I watched you struggle with the feed the whole way along.

Definitely seems like a special forces weapon for those situations when rapid fire is needed over all else, I'd imagine if you trained with it long enough you'd figure out the quirks of the action but unless you need the rate of fire the m79 seems more practical in every other regard.

Oh man, you always get to have all the fun, Ian. Thanks for sharing it with us.

"Close" is perfectly adequate when it comes to grenades.

in the future "nooooo you can't show up at 3 gun match with a 40mm pump action granade launcher" ian: "eheh china lake goes thump thump thump thump"

I started grinning when Ian said he was contacted by the owner, I was still grinning at the end 👌

thank you Ian for bringing us new content almost every single day and giving us history behind some of the coolest firearms!

The idea of this weapon system is defiantly great. Even if it can only fire HE, image raining down rapid fire three rounds of HE onto a target. That would be rather effective. Does not fully replace the M79 though as that can fire all kinds of other odd rounds, is lighter, and works for most 40mm tasks.

I grew up on China Lake in the late 1960s and 1970s where my dad was an engineer. He was a civil engineer, so he built targets instead of weapons, but he may have crossed paths with that.

There are some crazy stories about the MACV-SOG guys using these on operations in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Instead of HE, the SOG mad lads would put together their own jerry rigged 40mm buckshot cases, remove the HE rounds and reload the 40mm shell with said buckshot cases. One of those 40mm buckshot shells would absolutely shred that thick triple canopy jungle they found themselves fighting in, so it was sometimes to being used to create clear fields of fire and deny the enemy cover in a dense jungle where it was impossible to see more than 5 feet in front of you. But it wasn't necessarily just the jungle foliage being shredded. There's an account of an NVA soldier getting blasted with a China Lake loaded with buckshot from around 5 meters away when a SOG recon team initiated an ambush somewhere in an area called "the fish hook", the account noted it looked as if a Great White Shark tore a large chunk out of the guys abdomen. Absolute devastation.

I spent a lot of time as the squad grenadier, and the M-203 rocks once you get used to it. For training, we used dummy rounds that had the same shape and mass as the M433 HEDP round. Shooting on a flat trajectory defeats the purpose of a 400mm GL, which is to drop rounds on targets the rifles and machine guns can't hit.

I was looking forward to this one coming out. Sorry to see you had ammunition trouble at the range. I think I would be machining up some correct weight inert solids if I owned it.

"Yes, yes I do" The most absolute example of an appropriate response.

Thank you to the owner who provided this opportunity.

I can see why man portable MGLs went in a different direction than pump-action. In the time it took to rack those rounds an M79/M203 could have put down twice as many grenades down the range

Ian has a lot more patience than I do, I would have started single loading them after one magazine!

The perfect sidearm for a space marine.

The china lake with the shotshell rounds for the 40mm would be epic.

Planning to replay some New Vegas soon, Ian convinced me to bust out the China Lake for the run

"Significantly short" Not words you wanna hear on a Pro Pipe range

Very cool! My only experience with the China Lake is in video games (lol) and seeing you hold the real deal made me realize it’s a bit larger than I had imagined. Thanks for the video!

TBF, with a grenade launcher you don't usually have to actually hit the target precisely.

I ran an M203 on my M16A4 and M4A3 rifles in the Army, loved that thing. The China Lake is a good idea in concept, but seems to have just a few too many quirks (and weight) to make it practical nowadays (chalk round size/ shape aside).

My experience has been that the HEDP outperforms the chalk round in every measurable way. They fly further, with more accuracy, and the chalk rounds rarely travel to the distance on the sight, whether you're using a quadrant and leaf sight.

So, just like an 870, you fight a poorly designed elevator! The model 37 Ithaca elevator/ejector fingers are brilliant.

Awesome. I've been waiting years to see this in action. Gun Jesus shooting the holy grail.

Huge fan, proud of you for following you passion for years and years

Got to use a M79 in basic and it was very accurate and being fairly heavy didn’t have bad recoil. Hit the corner window frame of a deuce repeatedly and into a 12x12 window from a hundred yards away. I carried the 203 in my service days to me more is always better if your trying to continue to live in a bad situation.

Has Ian ever played Hotdogs, horseshoes, and hand grenades on VR? If not, I'd really like to see his reaction to it.

We used to call those practice rounds “Smurf” rounds. That would have probably worked better if it were chambered in 20 mm.

5:29 had me in stitches. That has to become a meme. The reaction is just gold.

Thank you for shooting one of my dream guns, and thank you for making the best content on KZfaq.

John Plaster addresses this contraption in his MACV SOG photo book and notes the same issues with reliability. Plainly the Bloop Tube was faster and more reliable

When you shoot the M-79 enough you get an “eye” for the distance. Yea that was a while ago.

Something about that humongous cartridge bopping up on the ammo elevator just cracks me up. I think if the mechanism was refined and worked as reliable as your average pump-gun (well, assuming it doesn't work with HE any differently then it did here) it would be pretty devastating. A single guy could lay down a significant amount of firepower in short time and then just switch to shoving the grenades in the barrel through the open breech for continuous fire.

I had a toy one when I was a kid for a Christmas present, it fired tennis balls and worked really well and was great fun.

In your previous video on it you stated that there were reports that when it was running well a skilled soldier could unload a full gun into the air before the first shot hit the ground. Clearly it really does prefer the HE.

Ian's really out living his best life. Living the dream really.

i never actually thought that the nades are as "slow" as in something like call of duty so seeing that go across the arc in a second or so made me really happy as if i were to ever get ambushed and id have a china lake id be off good as i am a noob tube enjoyer

I'm envious of your amazing job !

This is an excellent reminder about practicing with your tools. You do NOT want to figure out how to load and cycle the action when time or lives are on the line.

"safety is on fire" Well, you'd better put it out then! I'll show myself out...

So cool to see such a classic in action

My only experience was with the M203 Grenade Launcher under an M16A2 when I was in the Army. That thing was a blast.

Always wanted to see one in action! Ian is on point with these!

It would be great to see this with a little bit of tuning to get it running perfectly. And the M230 is so much nicer to shoot on a platform like a M16A2 with all the extra grenadier hand guards and sights.

You get a instant like for putting firing right at the beginning, hell yeah

The shell wiggling around at the beginning made me laugh more than it should've

I think the M203 is faster and just easier to aim, load, and inherently more accurate.... But just doesn't have the name & the cool factor the China Lake does. Nice video 😊📸

So basically, if you properly design and finish the pump action version, you could make it run a lot faster, considering it works as it should.

Wow! So cool, Ian. Thanks a bunch, buddy.

This is one of the coolest this that I have seen recently

Nice one, hell of a bit of kit.

yeah, chal rounds breaking is incredibly fun. I've always enjoyed it immensely when I or my troopers had it happen while training with our grenademachineguns. So much fun >_>

Bout time dude, I recall us wanting this video for years.

I love how the video splits up to show both Ian and the target.

I thought we'd never see him fire the China Lake

I'm always fascinated by oversized guns. Just watching you load that big Remington action is mesmerizing.

looks like great fun, they should work on a practice round that is a more precise clone of the regular rounds though. maybe a thicker plastic bullet weighed down with a core of sand.

the split screen between firing and target should really be the norm from now on.

I'm somewhat curious, loading seemed to be a pain in the ass, but the lifter also appeared to raise when you pumped the action back. Could you retract the pump, and load the tube while the lifter is raised, add one on the lifter and use it that way?

This, the UMP, and the AA12 are 3 guns I always dreamed of owning.

I fired a lot of HE rounds out of the M203 I always used the Quadrant sight. Very accurate and fast with a bit of practice. I was a 19D4H Cav scout instructor. We burned through pallets of ammo on the ranges.

Great thing about proper 40mm. Close enough works just as well, your previous 8 shots would have made the 9th pass through a cloud of dude mist.

The M79 was much simpler to use, although I would have liked to see a two barreled M79. I recall one range training day when our target was a blue painted barrel: we had a female soldier who was quite good and she lobbed a practice round right into the barrel from 200 meters.

This looks like a real struggle to load and operate. I'm wondering if this a general thing with this system or an issue with this exact gun?

Quite a beautiful piece. One problem i have read is that the China lake's disassembly pin could be triggered by slamming the pump into the pin, by the trigger guard causing it to come apart while under duress. I have also read that most of the originals were hand made & it was pretty damn hard to fix them because of that.

Watching this makes it infinitely clear why Milkor went with a rotary mag for their MGL