M18 Hellcat Firing

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Hello everyone,

thanks to Jusuchin for this one. Some of you know the excellent Youtube video channel and portal Forgotten Weapons (if you don’t, it’s definitely worth checking out, although the guy who runs it specializes on infantry weapons, mixing it occasionally with some heavier stuff). He recently took a short footage of the M18 Hellcat fire (unfortunately, he wasn’t able to make a full video), but damn, the firepower is impressive…

 

34 thoughts on “M18 Hellcat Firing”

  4. I didn’t know 110 pen. guns sounded this cool. Although they are useless :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

      • Nope :) From the comments by the author:

        Nope, they are live rounds.
        You don’t see the projectile in the video, but I can assure you it is there. And as others have pointed out, without a projectile there would not be enough pressure generated to operate the recoil system on the gun.
        I watched them load the shell. There was a nice big projectile sticking out of it. The clip of the case standing on the gun came from after one of the shots, not during the loading process.

    • aa yees the Pak-40 firing deeeem that is awwwwwsome sound and crazy ass kick for just a 75mm gun
      no wonder why it was the deadliest Anti Tank the germans had

      • No, this is an L/46 version, so between the L/43 and L/48 of the Pz IV in barrel length. The Panther gun is an L/70. (L numbers mean the length of the barrel in calibres, so each point of L is 7.5cm for this gun)

        EDIT: This is a closer cousin to the StuG guns than the tank guns, because the assault guns and tank destroyers had a horizontal arc as well. The horizontal sighting of a tank gun would be accomplished by turning the turret. The breech etc. are practically the same, though.

  10. That youtube channel is awesome. Pretty impressive the video with the Pak 40.

  11. Ehm..”US late WWII tank destroyer with 75mm main gun,,”? And i thought that M18 had 76 mm AT M1A2 gun, 75mm US gun with muzzle brake? why not.

  14. BUT BUT BUT!!
    IT FIRED AND YOU CAN SEE IT, IT ISN’T CLOAKED BY WG CLOAKING DEVICE!!

  17. This is how a gun sounds. :D Those “poofy” gun sounds from 9.1 CT are nothing compared to this one.

  18. Well the gun sound is nice indeed, but dont overlook where are they firing it. The enviroment gives a damn big hall/echo to that guns(to every one that they fire there) It is a nice location to do such things and I like it, but if you fire such a gun in not a echo area it still sound great, but not as that great as they want to make believe you ;)

    Yes I do know some real firing guns from my time in the german army…..

  19. I think I’d have picked up my $10-20k machine gun and not left it to the mercy of muzzle blast… dumb asses.

    Never heard a 76mm fire IRL, but it seems pretty tame to a 90mm and no comparison to the 105/120mm.

  20. That M-18 is in decent shape, missing the APU (takes up a lot of internal space, and not really needed at the shoots) and it has tracks, roadwheels and drive sprockets from a Chaffee (they’re interchangeable and easier on road surfaces).

    The electric firing mechanism is not hooked up, nor is the power traverse (for safety reasons).

    It is retardedly fast, though steering it is not very positive at speed. The driver’s compartment is very compact.