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CLP versus Militec: One reader directed me to a TV news report about the gun lubricant used in Iraq. Apparently, the military developed its own gun lubricant: CLP. According to the TV report, CLP sucks in the desert. Sand sticks to it. The troops prefer another civilian lubricant called Militec. Many are asking their parents to buy it and ship it to them.
If she attempted to fire it and it did not fire, here is what I think is a more likely explanation.
Lock and load: To fire an M-16 or M-14 or other military rifle, you must put a magazine of bullets into the bottom of it. That puts 20 or so bullets just below the firing chamber. To fire it, you still have to pull the bolt back. Sliding the bolt back allows the top bullet in the magazine to rise up to the chamber level. When you push the bolt back forward, that pushes the first bullet into the firing chamber. Sliding the bolt back and forward again also cocks the hammer that strikes the back of the bullet to fire it when you pull the trigger. After the first bullet, the others are moved into the chamber and the hammer is cocked using the explosive gasses released by the firing of the previous bullet. In other words, the weapon is semi-automatic, meaning it cocks itself each time after the first bullet is fired. You **** it once but can pull the trigger and fire it thereafter as many times as there are additional bullets in the magazine without cocking it again. You just **** it once at the beginning of each magazine.
If Lynch pulled the trigger and the weapon did not fire, it seems more likely that it was because she had not pulled the bolt back to chamber the first round and **** the hammer. It is even possible that she had no magazine in the rifle at all, although the magazine is of no use until its first round is chambered and the hammer cocked anyway....."
Mr. Reed, I recently read your article "PFC Jessica Lynch's Capture" and noticed that the common belief is that her weapon jammed. This may be true, but I heard quite a different story. While I was XO of an infantry company at Fort Benning, we had a 1SG who came to us straight from one of the Ranger Battalions and was in every major conflict from Somalia onward. He is a very honest straight-shooting NCO. We also had a Spec-4 who had been in the same battalion as our 1SG. They were part of the effort to recover PFC Lynch and other members of her unit when they were in Iraq.
According to both the 1SG and the SPC, the convoy didn't defend itself because they had their weapons in the back of their trucks. They may have even said that they were locked up in the back of the vehicles. If this is true, this is even worse than having a dirty weapon. I don't know if more information has surfaced, but I thought you may want to know. By the way, I started reading Succeeding yesterday and had to force myself to put it down when I realized it was almost two in the morning. It is a fantastic book! Thanks again!
PFC Jessica Lynch’s capture