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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1. john stephen, June 10, 2008:

   mos-0351 do not get the respect we earn.0351’s do not just carry the dragon,we take more than just the dragon,even a 51’s gunner[mule]carries the same,an also has to know how to use the m-74,they are also 0351.In combat we are a nessesity.we bring ONE FIST OF FIRE-ONE FIST OF STEEL IF ONE DON’T GET YA THE OTHER ONE WILL –blood makes the grass grow……………..usmc

2. Juan Reyes, August 25, 2008:

   GW,
   I was an 0351 for the better part of 14 years. I’ll agree its not the best system, but it served its purpose as a foot mobile in-close support anti armor system. Your description of the signiture is wrong. The inital blast to launch the round on your shoulder is loud, but at 600m - 1000m away in and around a tank and or APCs(soveit doctrine is mechanized) I doubt you would hear it. There is no uranium in it, its a shape charge meant to bore a hole in its shell and push it through to kill whats inside. fromerly of DragPlt Wpns Co 3/8, 3/6, 3/25W.Va, and G. Co 2/25NJ

3. Robert Herzog, February 8, 2009:

   Hello i came across your site I also was a 0351 with 2nd bt 9th marines from 1881 to 1984 I had shot the dragon 4 times i was one of the guys they used for demonstrations and dog and pony shows it was a unique weapon very tempermental but when you hit it was awsome Semper Fi