The Military Channel has a show titled Weaponology which has recently been profiling various elite units. Some of the info is not quite on, but when discussing small arms they often cut to Larry Vickers who demonstrates and explains abut a small arm.
Tonight they featured the Green Berets, for whcih Vickers demonstrated a Colt Carbine, an H&K MP5, an H&K 416, and a 1911. What I found really annoying was the editing, as parts of what Vickers said was clearly cut out or ended prematurely, like when he was showing his customized 1911 and they cut the segment before he explained all of the features he included to give the gun the updating that he felt it needed.
Larry also provided some commentary on his experience in the Special Forces.
He was also on the show on the segment on the Waffen SS demonstrating his STG44.
Anyway, the segment on the Green Berets will be repeated (all eastern Standard times) on Tue Jan 08, 10:00 am, and 2pm, Thur Jan 10 9am & 3pm, Sat Jan 12, 10am & 2pm, Sun Jan 13 3pm, and Mon Jan 14 3am. So set your VCRs, Tivos, Video Disk recorders.
I only caught the last 15 or so minutes. They spent far too little time talking to Mr. Vickers, in my opinion…perhaps if they did spend more time talking to him they would get some of their other information correct.
The stuff they had on about the 9mm cartridge vs the .45 ACP cartridge last night was just absurd.
It would have been far better, in my opinion, to spend more time talking to Mr. Vickers about training Army Special Forces and the tools they used to do their job and use that as the basis for the show than to have 20 second snippets of him mixed in with a lot of other stuff that wasn’t anywhere as informative, accurate, or interesting, in my opinion.
For instance: I would love to have heard him talk about how realistic he found Robin Sage to be compared to when he was out in the field on various missions during his 20 years in SF, or how valuable he found the RS experience in preparing him for what he would do later…or methods he used to overcome some of the training challenges he mentioned in one of the 20 second snippets. That would seem to me to be a better way to cover the RS experience and it’s place in creating the Army SF soldier.
I dunno. I’m not in TV so maybe I just don’t “get it”.
There were some definate eye-rolling moments. I think my favorite part was when LAV was humming too himself as he happily loaded mags on the tailgate of the truck. Classic.
Their hand gun ‘expert’ (not LAV) didn’t seem to know what he was talking about. “The .45 moves slower and pushes more tissue out of the way”…huh?
The part with LAV going over the various weapons was kind of neat. I’d love to get all of the raw footage of that whole interview with him. They probably spent all day with him and used a few minutes of what he said. Did you catch when he had the HK45 and M&P45 in his hand, but they didn’t acutally talk about them? That would have been interesting, too.
I caught all of it, and was glad to see that middle aged, overweight guys still have a chance.
Seriously though, I think LAV’s dedication to the .45ACP 1911 speaks volumes by itself as far as what he believes to be the best “Fight Stopper”. The HK416 stuff was enlightening and I’m looking forward to see if it “Catches Fire”. It doesn’t appear that the Gas Piston System has thus far as the “New Standard”.
I agree wtih what has been said. The producers of the show obvioulsly came up with what they wanted to put out. If they had ONLY asked Larry, I’m sure in his “user friendly” way, they would have gotten much more info then they would ever know what to do with.
My favorite part from the “SAS” show was when they talked about the “double tap”. We all know that the DT or Hammer is “one sight picture, two shots” as classicly taught.(I can see Larry hitting the delete button on the back of his head, “delete, delete that S&%#!”) Lav was VERY spacific when it was time for his two cents. It was something like “Two very fast SIGHTED shots.”
I was told that LAV was also on the episodes about the Rangers and SAS with a cameo appearance by Ken Hackathorn. I regret to say that I don’t have the Military channel.
Someone by the name of Kittywolf has some Weaponology episodes on there Youtube page. The SAS episode is the latest edition, they claim they will load the special forces episode soon. Here is the link
The 6 part National Geographic series " Documentary of the Green Berets in Firebase Cobra " , was very interesting and emotional. Thanks alot for posting these links.
