Llanbedrog Beach, Wales UK

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My MOS in the USMC was 0351 Dragon Anti-tank Assaultman (early 1980’s), and this was my weapon, I have 2 live fires to my credit.

You shot, then sat there in front of a massive smoke plume ( all the better to advertise your location to the tank’s crew so they can machine gun you down better) while you guided a missile with a depleted uranium armor piercing casing (all the better to fry your ‘nads with), connected to the launch tube by very long length of wire, that slowly crawled its way through the air (you could see it coming from a mile away) snapping and popping its manuevering rockets (a noise guaranteed to help even the dimmest and deafest and blindest find you in time to waste you long before impact) while you had your eye planted solidly against the ocular of the guidance part of the missile system.

I was given one aptitude test before being given my dubious specialty: I was asked to close one eye while keeping the other open, presto! I qualified. I was told immediately afterward that I have a 3 minute life expectancy in combat, about the same as a radioman (the radioman was considered the epitome of the throwaway soldier, nice to know I mattered so much to my uncle sam).

The training weapon was a used missile tube and live electronic guidance system mocked up with a rifle blank activated weight inside the tube that simulated the ‘kick’ of a live fire. After I made my first shot ( at a wrecked AMTRAK ) I realized just what crap my training had been, the simulator simulated nothing like the real thing.

There is a massive pressure/noise wave with the launch blast, but nothing near deafening, just a big WHOOMPF, but no kick back from the tube. Aiming the missile into any spot is idiotically easy afterward, again nothing like the simulator weapon we trained with. You line up the cross hairs and hold steady, if your target is moving, you just move the cross-hairs along with it, POP,POP,POP go the guidance rockets on the missile’s sides and the very slowly moving missile accomodatingly follows along.

It hits, target goes BOOM, nice flash of fire and smoke. Job done. Sweet.

I saw the Dragon fired as a witness not the gunner once, the blast behind the gunner is absolutely amazing, in real combat you and your a-gunner would be so dead, so quick, because you would be so damned obvious, and (at least the gunner) so damn stuck in one stop until that missile hit (if you lived that long).

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