[ M8C Spotting Rifle at the Range ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and this of course is John Keene, Master Sergeant (retired) US Army, right?
- Correct. - And the NFA specialist for Morphy's.
Now we did a desktop video on this thing, the M8C Spotting Rifle, yesterday.
(Well, not we, I did one.) And I thought it was really cool.
And then ... we were going to come out to the range,
we're going to bring some cool stuff to shoot looking at all the cool submachine guns that
are in this upcoming [auction] of yours.
And I kind of thought to myself, like the guy who consigned that M8C consigned some ammo with it.
Can we shoot it?
And John went ... - Yeah, let me call him and get permission.
- Heck yeah! - And he said, "Absolutely, yes!"
- In fact the previous owner, immediately before he sent it to Morphy's, apparently put 10 rounds through it.
- Yes he did. - "It's my last chance, I'm getting rid of it, let's play with it one last time." - Indeed.
- And so, do you know of any others of these? - This is the only one I'm aware of, that I've encountered.
And it's really great that you got this great ammo with it.
And you can get this ammunition, it's out there.
... And it's good quality ammunition too, it always goes bang.
- 12.7x77. - Right.
- Much lower velocity than standard .50 Browning because it's ballistically matched
to the 106 millimetre [recoilless rifle] that this should have been mounted on. - Correct.
- I like what the guy's done with the tripod here. - Oh yeah, it makes ... a fine shooting platform.
Because otherwise what are you going to do with it?
- Right. The only thing that's missing is a bracket for like a scope.
- If it were me, I would build a bracket that would put a ... monocular on it.
- That'd be super easy, you can just bolt something right onto that.
But we are going to bore sight this thing down the length to make sure we're hitting our berm.
And we're going to try it out. - Absolutely. - Have you ever shot one of these?
- No. - Neither have I. - This is going to be a great opportunity.
- Alright, let's do this.
So this thing is sitting on a Bren tripod.
We have gone ahead and weighted the front down with a can of ammo and a big rock
(because we didn't think to bring sandbags, oops).
Alright, we've got our magazine well, we've got our 10 round magazine.
I have loaded 5 in it because we don't need to totally go nuts.
This is the trigger, you just pull that back.
Normally this would have been connected by a longer cable to the actual trigger on the recoilless rifle.
Not a howitzer, a recoilless rifle.
So magazine's in place.
Alright John, who's going to fire the first shot through it? Rock paper scissors this?
- Yeah, let's do that. - OK, ready? - Yep. One, two, three.
Aah! - Scissors cut paper. - John gets the first shot, here we go.
- Ready? - Whenever you're ready, John.
Nice! - Trying to put a hole in that piece of 2x4 there.
Alright, now my turn. You guys ready? Here we go.
You can really spot the impact. I'm not seeing the tracer,
I think, while the rounds may occasionally light early,
but ... they wouldn't normally light at a range this close.
And they're meant to trace out to 1,500 yards or so.
Well that's really cool, a really unusual opportunity to shoot something very scarce.
It would be super cool to see this go to a person who can actually put it on a recoilless rifle,
but the next best thing is having this tripod, set it up with an optic.
Or perhaps better yet, just make an adapter so that you can mount this
on one of those MG3 Lafette mounts that already have integrated optics in them.
That would be a really cool setup, a lot of fun. .50 cal, but less .50 cal than .50 Browning.
Alright, I'm going to fire one more round.
A big thanks to Morphy's for giving us the chance to come out here.
Thanks John for catering to my kooky idea that we should come and actually shoot this thing.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.
Oh, I forgot to ... it works better with a round in the chamber.
I unloaded it to fix the weight at the front. Here we go.
I saw the trace on that one.