Tuesday, September 06, 2016

Staged Photos: Why "The Mirror Online" is not a valid news source.

Iraqi woman guns down ISIS commander as bloody revenge for making her a sex slave - Mirror Online:

Consider This "News Photo" published on "The Mirror":



"The woman, believed to be be a member of the Yazidi-Kurdish minority, shot dead senior Islamic State commander Abu Anas, according to Iraqi satellite TV network Alsumaria News"
Never mind the text of the news article:
... it's unrelated to the photo, except that the photo suggests to demonstrate a female firing a "machine gun" which may or may not have had anything to do with the headline.

Look at the belt!
There are three rounds  in the extended belt .... in alternating loops feeding the gun.   WTF?
You can't feed a belt-fed machine gun when there's a break in the belt!

Then there are a series of empty loops (or links).  Then there is a six foot length of belt dragging through the dirt until it's draped over a short wall of sandbags.

This is obviously not a .50 caliber (12.7mm) M2 Machine Gun ... looks like an M60 (7.62mm) variant, but there's still a LONG length of  'links' trailing out of the gun, and the M60 (also M2) don't leave a chain of links on the 'ejection' side of the gun.   They spew out "one at a time" to the right side of the gun, scattering indiscriminately.

Nobody runs a crew-served weapon without the Assistant Gunner, whose jobs include:

  1. hump extra ammunition,
  2. ensure that the feed of ammunition to the gun is not interrupted by failure to link the next belt to the in-gun belt;
  3. identify and direct fire to priority targets;
  4.  let the gunner know when the barrel is overheating;
  5.  with the gunner, help replace the barrel when it gets too hot; and
  6.  MAKE SURE THE AMMUNITION ISN'T FOULING THE GUN by introducing plant fibers, dust/dirt or other environmental elements at the gun site.
That last part includes not dragging the feeder-belt through the muck and the blood and the dirt .. which will jam a hot crew-served weapon faster than you can say "Oh, Drat!"

Sure, the photo wouldn't be possible if you had an AG crouched on the left side of the gun; you wouldn't be able to see the gun.  And it's a much more dramatic photo with a single brave female gunner, with a chain of ammunition dragging through the dust and a chain of links (ammunition expended) on the right side of the gun.

It's just ... wrong!


It offends my sense of right, for the cause of presenting a very dramatic photograph supporting the theme of the story.

It's still wrong.

...

Okay, I'll go take my meds now.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I suspect it is some sort of Russian medium MG, equivalent to our M60 or M240. I thought all those troops lined up squatting along the wall in the background added a cute touch.

BillM said...


PKM in 7.62 x 54R. You can see the rim on the cartridges. Uses
a non-disintegrating belt. Manually operated single shot if you
only load every other link-----

Mark said...

Doesn't everyone drag their ammo through the dirt before they load the weapon?

Anonymous said...

You don't need meds, and you are right,the photo is offensive to a combat vets eyes.