Fleechets?

K

krieg Jaeger

New Member
I know they've been used in explosives and as weapons in general since World war one (dropped from bi-planes, capable of penetrating helmets with ease), though I was curious about the effectiveness of Fleechets when weaponised into a projectile? Ie, the 12 gauge buggers they appearently tested back in Vietnam with 20 one inch nails with fins in a canister.
Brutal.

So, my question pertains to their usage with pistols, rifles, and other weapons of the sort. A single fleechet was known to lose it's rigidity upon striking the target and hook in a direction, as well as the fin section usually breaking off to plow a secondary trail of destruction through it's victim. I can't imagine them being incredibly complex in terms of generating mass quantities...and I can only imagine them being far more stable than your average projectile (though I have no extensive knowlege concerning ballistics).

Has anyone attempted to weaponise them before? Any luck in doing so?
 
In tank shells they are very very lethal. A 105 or 120 shell has 5000 flechettes in it and opens to a 70 meter wide killing zone.

As i recall in rifles and small arms they failed to produce good stopping power whic is why they were dropped.
 
Korea and Vietnam Artillery used "Beehive" rounds in the 105mm howitzer to hit troops overrunning their lines. I believe the 106mm Recoiless Rifle also had a flechette round.
 
The only thing I have heard of regarding small arms is using a plastic/nylon sabot to fire 5.56/223 projectiles in 30 calibre rifles.
 
It's "flechette", from French fléchette, means little arrow.
The US used a type of small bore flechette weapon during the Vietnam War, 12 gauge combat shotguns with shells consisting around 20 flechette per shell.
 
Flechettes haven't proven to be very effective in smaller caliber weapons, i.e. 12-gauge. They are sold as novelty rounds and should be treated as such, the same as Dragon's Breath(r). I and another member of a forum did a test and dissection of several 12-gauge flechette rounds in response to a question posed. Our findings were very disappointing. You can read the whole story HERE or just read the "Cliff Notes"..... 1. The flechette shells contained approx. 20 flechettes each, with half being packed in tail-fin forward (backwards). As soon as those 10 flechettes reached open air the completely blew the pattern apart as they attempted to swing around and become stable. 2. The instability caused patterns of around 6-8 feet at 15 yards. That's about 40 square feet, quite a bit of dead space between those deadly flechettes, isn't it? 3. Because of aerodynamic instability, the vast majority of flechettes were observed to hit the target backing paper at right angles, keyholing. 4. For those flechettes that did hit plywood, the penetration was about 3/8 inches. If you held an ice pick in your hand, how hard would it be for you to stick the point 3/8 inches into plywood? Not too hard, is it? 5. For those flechettes that managed Not to keyhole and actually penetrated the vest (a grand total of ...2...) one just barely poked into the vest, the other penetrated all the way up to the tailfins. Think about that one for a moment; these needle sharp pinpricks penetrated a total of about .75 inches into a Level III vest. Not really a cop-killer there either, is it? Bottom lined.... poor performance, poor patterns, not at all worth the premium over buckshot, much less birdshot. At least birdshot will still have a pattern at 7 to 15 yards. Sorry about the formatting, for some reason paragraphing won't work
 
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A system packing flechettes both ways seems bound to not go well. I'd think there must have been some better idea.

A few years ago there were some assault rifles designed to use flechette in a mode a bit like the discarding Sabot tank rounds. An advantage was that smoothbores could be used along with higher velocity. A slim 'dart" can be very aerodynamic,so you can get a flatter trajectory. For an assault rifle, less weight was the main advantage. Possibly where it actually had MORE merit would be for a midrange sniper rifle (400-800m)

A high velocity flechette with some mass would focus a lot of energy in a small area,and penetrating most body armor would be very likely,but the low friction factor ALSO means less "stopping" power.The flechette goes through without that THUMP that stops someone cold. That can be bad news up close. The "target" may bleed out but if he's charging with a weapon, you kind of want him knocked down ASAP.
 
The Steyr ACR was a prototype in the Advanced Combat Rifle competition. It fired Flechette from a 5.56 round. The key feature was that the muzzle velocity was 2x that of the usual M16 and there was a near flat trajectory to 600m with less windage effects. This should mean more of a point + shoot approach for a midrange sniper,less delay calibrating for range and cross wind.
Further, the weapon shot 3 rd burst mode with minimal recoil.

In a combat scenario a marksman could take a position covering a squad advancing. Being beyond effective range of AK47's he could keep eyes on target. Footage I've seen of Iraq, infantry was often engaged at rather close ranges with both sides popping out from cover to shoot. Having constant cover from a moderate distance could be a big plus.

The Army, however was looking for a main battle rifle, not a niche weapon.
As a result, the Steyr ACR was not produced.
 
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