Well I can say our NJROTC class broke a few.
When our unit was formed back in the late 60s, the Navy had out fitted us with long rifles to use for parades, inspections, and drill. We had 100 used 1903 Springfield bolt action rifles with those long wooden stocks. These were kept in a special vault type arsenal to prevent their theft. When the navy found out that we had 100 % working rifles in 1975 (no barrel stoppage: no bolt weld: real working rifles) they freaked.
They sent us 100-barrel jammed, welded bolt rifles immediately. These came with those long, light tan, ugly nylon stocks. Well our armory team got together and stripped off 50 of the wooden stocks, and gave the navy back the working weapons with 50 of the newly delivered nylon stocks.
Within a year, we had broke 10 of the stocks; three in one night during a football game halftime performance. Seems like you just can high toss a rifle just fine, but if you don’t have members with enough height on them to catch and slow it down...the butt strikes hard, and you get a long split stock.
After the 10th one broke...well they stopped letting the drill team use them. I remember that the final 40 were reserved only for the seniors in the program.
not exciting...but it does bring back memories
