China Lake (Grenade Launcher)
The China Lake 40mm Pump-Action Grenade Launcher was an experimental American grenade launcher with a pump-action mechanism , which was developed by the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California and used almost exclusively by the Navy SEALs in the Vietnam War .
It was created at the end of the 1960s, because the M79 grenade launcher , which was common at the time , had to be reloaded after each shot, which was a time-consuming process and was therefore considered unusable for special missions. The China Lake combined the M79 with a pump-action system so that four 40mm shells could be fired within a few seconds. It had a tubular magazine for three 40 × 46 mm shells, the fourth was in the chamber. The weapon was mostly made of aluminum and was therefore extremely light, which was important because the shooter still had to carry a second weapon with him. The high rate of fire and firepower were offset by problems with the ammunition feed, as not all 40 mm shells would fit into the weapon.
Overall, only a few pieces were produced, 16 to 50 depending on the source. As a custom-made product, the China Lake had no official designation, the sometimes falsely attributed identifier EX 41 denotes another grenade launcher prototype designed much later.
Various replicas and modifications of the weapon were made in the 1990s and 2000s.
literature
- Kevin Dockery: Weapons of the Navy SEALs. Berkley Publishing Group, New York 2004, p. 382.