Yesterday we took a look at the history and the design of the Polish wz.88 Tantal, and today we are taking it out to the range. Let’s see how that unique Polish 3-round-burst works!
Anti-Tank Rifles
Vintage Saturday: The Mustache is Mightier than the Machine Gun
Polish soldier on the line near Gazala, Libya – February 1942. Armed with a Browning M1919A4 and a Boys AT rifle in the truck as well.
Grenade Launcher
RWGŁ-3: Poland’s Riot Squad AK-Based Tear Gas Launcher
When Polish workers held massive protests in Poznań against the communist Polish government in 1956, the Army was sent in to quell the unrest. In the aftermath of these events, the government decided to create […]
Submachine Guns
Błyskawica: Poland’s First Successful SMG
We’re privileged today to have another guest article written by Leszek Erenfeicht (and I would strongly recommend that our Polish readers check out Strzal, the print magazine he regularly publishes in). This time he is […]
When you do these shoot’s, can you show us the target to see how well you and the Gun does please .
Seeing the targets of a firing demonstration does not really give us any reliable information.
Even if Ian would let all soldiers of a platoon fire the gun, a second run with the same platoon could have a very different outcome.
Comparing outcomes of live shooting during troop trials is a most problematic (and in my view largely unsolved) area. Troops that have collected experience with strengths and weaknesses of a weapon over months and years, use it very differently compared to when it was new to them.
Considering the extremely dominant effect of the operator compared to the weapon, any small difference between small arms would be drowned in Ian’s impact on the result.
In my view, Ian is quite right in not showing us his personal results on the range. No reliable, neutral conclusions could be drawn from them.
I have to agree.
You hand an inexperienced tyro a weapon, and then the same weapon to someone who has used that weapon over the course of years, and you’re going to get very different outcomes from each in terms of what they can do with it, and in how the weapon itself functions.
As an experienced M60 gunner and armorer, I could keep one going for a hell of a lot longer than the average “new guy” could. Why? Because I knew all the foibles and the ins and outs of the weapon itself. I also knew how to care for it, and what to watch out for in terms of wear and parts breakage. Guys with no experience had no clue when it came to “what to watch for”, and generally kept right on going past the point where they really should have stopped and sent the gun in for maintenance. Lots of times, inexperienced gunners and supervisors wouldn’t know what to look for, and would fail to highlight really obvious issues in the maintenance documents. I walked into a unit, once, and within the first morning’s work on my platoon’s weapons, I’d deadlined all the M60s, a half-dozen M16s, and a couple of other weapons along with it. Some of those weapons were reported to me to have had those “issues” for months, if not years.
The right guy can keep a lot of things functioning, just like the wrong one can break stuff that should never have broken in the first place. I’ve been there, way too many times, looking at the soldier and supervisor in question… Plaintively asking “How… Just… How did you do this…?!!?!?!”.
Swear to God, that old joke about the soldier in the padded room with three steel balls? Breaking one and losing the other two? That’s taken from real life. Nothing is GI-proof. Nothing.
I suppose even a simple bottle opener isn’t IDIOT-PROOF. Why US Army Ordnance Corps even invests in guys with pristine-clean lab coats is beyond me. Why not pull a field test of “how many ways can an un-trained user break this weapon without even trying?”
I agree wholeheartedly!
Right on; I concur completely.
Agree. A few dozen rounds with an unfamiliar weapon (esp standing and on auto) doesn’t tell you that much. And it could easily descend into a critique of Ian’s abilities, which would be pointless and unfair.
“… few dozen rounds with an unfamiliar weapon…”(C)
This is exactly what you need.
Ian is an average shooter who hits rather than misses. And there is nothing corny to criticize.
Viewing finished targets does nothing. It is necessary to observe the dynamics of hits.
But his personal impressions of comparison with other samples are really of interest.
Thank you, very informative, now if I could only find one.
Karabinek wzor 88 looks like decent rifle, but in unison with Ian I would not be happy with the stock as it is. It should have ability to be extended to next position.
It occured to me that “rate reducer” is left out for the sole purpose of the burst, to give it more speed and thus more rounds on target in short time.
Consequence is that full auto seems too fast, compared to AKM, in M16 range.
As for stock, they should have went Valmet round fat tube route, but with some kind of M4 collapsible function – that way it would fit on racks.
Is this style worse than underfolder ?
Underfolder is piggly-wiggly.
And likely to break if you have a pratfall into mud with the thing unfolded. I could be wrong.
“(…)Is this style worse than underfolder ?”
Polish users dubbed this stock pogrzebacz which means ash poker
https://www.tactical-life.com/firearms/rifles/polish-tantal-wz-88-rifle/
AKMS style underfolder was discarded as it did not work well when grenade launching (not durable enough, grenade launch was deemed to be important feature in Poland)
Yugoslavian m70ab2 is underfolder with grenade launching capabilities, but stock definitely took a beating in that process (as well as barrel, that supposedly swells and loses accuracy).
I read in one book a user report how it completely bent after firing some quantity of grenades during fierce battle- thus its not very well suited, to say it mildly.
I dont know is it somehow possible as a last ditch effort to launch grenades with stock folded.
I would also like to see the result on paper targets. Yes we know Ian isn’t an expert shooter on any of the weapons he is firing, but at least it gives us an idea of what the weapon is capable of, brought to us in a very consistent way by a novice lefty.
Except by this point, he’s not a novice lefty. He competes regularly (and does rather well despite handicapping himself w/ ridiculous archaic guns just to see how well they do), and has field-stripped & fired a greater variety of cartridge loading firearms than all but the most experienced Special Forces armorers – if not more than them. If you want comparative shooting results of a large variety of firearms, head over to C&Rsenal, where they post up Mae’s results from 70m. To produce even a 20 minute video a day, he doesn’t even have time to measure the parts of the guns, let alone run around shooting some standardized target @ a standard range when he is able to get to some random range – oh, sorry, we can only shoot at 87 meters at this range, and this one is only 13, etc. This is one of the most accurate guns ever produced in it’s era – but we only have 4 handloads of 1950’s vintage to try… Way too many variables, & the let us see targets crowd would howl about each and every variable.
Very good points