Available from Morphys here:
https://auctions.morphyauctions.com/_N__VERTU_CORP_C_MORE_COMPETITION_M26_MASS_12_GAUG-LOT661207.aspx
The M26 Modular Accessory Shotgun System (MASS) was designed by C-More Products company as a new shotgun option for the US military. First prototyped in 1999, it was not actually adopted until 2012, but had been purchased in significant numbers since then. The idea is that the M26 can function as either a standalone weapon or attached under the barrel of an M4 Carbine, thus replacing a couple of different items in inventory. It weighs just 3.5 pounds in the under barrel configuration, significantly less than the Masterkey system, and is much more convenient for a breacher to carry than an M4 along with a separate Mossberg 500.
The M26 is a bolt-action 12ga shotgun that feeds from both 3- and 5-round magazines. It has folding integrated aperture sights and is envisioned for use in a wide variety of roles. Military ammunition supplies include #7.5 and #9 birdshot, classic #00 buckshot, rubber buckshot, rubber slugs, and breaching rounds (powdered metal in a wax binder). For use with breaching, the M26 includes a retractable breaching muzzle device.
Seems a rather clever design. Does anyone have a picture of this mounted on a M4?
“picture of this mounted on a M4”
See 1st XOR 2nd photo from top at https://modernfirearms.net/en/shotguns/u-s-a-shotguns/m26-mass-eng/
Also the preferred weapon of some of the human resistance fighters against Skynet.
Never saw this or the M320 when I was in; but, they would have been handy.
“(…)First prototyped in 1999(…)”
According to https://modernfirearms.net/en/shotguns/u-s-a-shotguns/m26-mass-eng/ Original solicitation for prototype was won by private US company C-More Competition, and by 1999 several XM26 underbarrel shotguns were issued to US troops in Afghanistan on an experimental basis. Is any feedback know today from these users?
“(…)M26 is a bolt-action(…)”
More precisely it is straight-pull bolt-action fire-arm. Bolt action was never popular with shotguns designed from scratch (as opposed to surplus rifle conversions), but straight pull seems even more rare. Was any other shotgun designed as straight-pull bolt-action?
“(…)feeds from both 3- and 5-round magazines.(…)”
Modern Fireams article which I linked earlier claims that it is
using detachable box magazines compatible with Russian Saiga-12
Is that true? If it so why U.S. military in 1990s wished to have magazine compatible with said Russian shotgun? Can M26 be carried with round in chamber (which would made it 3+1 or 5+1 in U.S. parlance) or is having round in chamber verboten unless immediately before firing?
“(…)integrated aperture sights and is envisioned for use in a wide variety of roles(…)”
Modern Firearms article which I linked earlier claim
Barrel is of “improved cylinder” type,
This would mean special measure was applied to lessen shot spread, which raise another question: what was maximal effective range required for such weapon?
A straight pull might have been less complicated than a pump action. I would think the latter would have been heavier. While useful, I am not sure I would want to lug around the combo. So any reduction in weight is good.
I have to assume the effective range is rather short. But this looks like a “don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes” type of weapon.
The use of it as anything other than a breaching weapon would be last resort.
And, atleast when I was there, we were mandated to carry a certain number of less lethal options.
So the guy with this mounted for breaching can put some beanbags in his vest and check a box too.
I did some research in that are and unveiled DICKINSON T1000 https://www.ssaa.org.au/?ss_news=what-the-dickinson which is straight-pull bolt-action shotgun, solution which seems to be desirable w.r.t Australian categories of fire-arms.
The bolt in the M26 looks quite a bit like one out of a Remington 1100 semi-auto shotgun.
I never thought this was a good option for “urban breaching”.
If it had been left up to me, I’d have gone more the path of something disposable, like an M72 LAW sort of system. Something you could hand out like party favors before a mission, and which would maybe take up the space/weight of a grenade.
Saddling a guy with this thing under his carbine always just seemed like a really bad idea, because you want all your guys to be ready for action at all times, and when you’re sticking this under someone’s primary weapon? WTF were they thinking?
Ah, well… It looked like a good idea to someone. I never heard good things about any of these combo weapon deals, and I have to tell you that I never, ever liked the M203 or its replacement, when mounted on a rifle. I still think the M79 or the M320 in its separate stock configuration were better answers than the abortion combos…
Breaching is a job better done with a linear cutting charge, or better yet two; one on the hinge side, the other on the lock side.
A typical door on a “drug house”, for instance, will generally have reinforced hinges, often a third or even four in a row instead of just the normal two.
On the lock side, two deadbolts are average, usually backed up by a pair of door-bar brackets bolted into a steel doorframe, holding a piece of steel U-channel or rebar as a bar. Wood 2 x 4’s are so “twencen”, you know.
And the door itself is usually commercial-grade steel inside no matter how “Waltons” it looks outside.
You are not getting through that with shotgun slugs.
I doubt that the OPFOR in the MidEast or etc. is any more accommodating- or less paranoid- than the average dealer in a major blue city here.
Breaching is a job for the Sappers. Not an infantryman with a shorty 12-gauge stuck under the barrel of his rifle.
clear ether
eon
Speaking as one of those sappers, it was always my contention that the best way to breach was through the walls, using something quite heavy.
Fifty-five gallon drum full of an ANFO mixture, maybe…?
Anyway, the idea is blow the building up, sift through the rubble. Screw clearing anything that’s got armed enemy combatants in it.
It’s really hard to kill any of the raiding party when you’re a recent victim of overpressure from blast, and bleeding out your every orifice. Buried in the rubble is also a serious discourager.
Yeah, but keep in mind us coppers have orders to take them alive.
So a judge can commiserate with them about their oppressed status and turn them loose the next day.
Different set of operational parameters.
cheers
eon
Yeah, but think of how much money the state could save with a few judicious “accidents”.
“Oh, jeez… We had no idea they had all those flammables and vapor hazards laying around the place… It’s too bad about all the collateral damage…”
My personal opinion is that if you’re going to make me come in and get you while you try shooting me? I’m going to make that job as easy as possible, and there ain’t nothing easier than sifting for body parts after a blast.
After a bit, and the word gets ’round? They’ll start preemptively surrendering about the time they see the little castles or upside-down “E” on the vehicles approaching their hideouts.
“Man, it’s too bad that IED went off…”
“IED?”
“Yeah, the one they had in the building when you did the entry…”
“IED? That wasn’t an IED, that was the door-knocker we used…”
P-for-plenty solves so, so many problems. Creates some new ones, but you don’t have to worry about body parts trying to kill you the way you do with prisoners.
Kirk;
See The Bonnot Gang by Richard Parry.
In 1910, the Bonnot anarchist gang, aka “The Motor Bandits” due to their robbing bank couriers, were holed up in a farmhouse outside of Oise. The police, looking at the stone and stucco pile, decided the best entry method (i.e., the one that didn’t involve getting shot at) was to go through the back wall on the alley side. They accordingly placed two well-tamped-with-earth boxes of dynamite against the base of the wall, ran their electric detonator wires back 100 meters, and pushed the pickle.
What they didn’t know, and could hardly be expected to know, was that the gang had their own store of dynamite, six or seven crates’ worth, neatly stacked against the other side of that same wall. Along with their blasting caps and etc
Yes, the “bang” was considerably larger than expected. Two of the gang lived to stand trial.
Everybody pretty much agreed that things went pretty much as planned.
That wouldn’t be the case today of course. But as Col. Cooper once observed,
The past is a foreign country. They did things differently there.
cheers
eon
“(…)Something you could hand out like party favors before a mission, and which would maybe take up the space/weight of a grenade.
Saddling a guy with this thing under his carbine always just seemed like a really bad idea(…)”
If you want such solution then use Israeli SIMON https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWo9rOyIrW0 although be warned it is used for some distance (see video).
I don’t care how bad a day you’re having you can’t help but smile when you blow the hinges off a door with a shotgun.
Unless the slug bounces back and hits you in your vest.
BTST.
clear ether
eon
That’s one reason I’m not too fond of shotguns for that sort of work. You never know what that damn door is actually built with, or what is behind it.
Couple of my guys told me about doing a breach on a merchant’s house in Iraq, where the doors were basically some ungodly ancient tropical hardwood, and the hinges were equally ancient high-quality metal forgings the likes of which probably earned some blacksmith his master’s papers. They went up to the door, thinking “Oh, this’ll be just like the others…”, and watched the breaching slugs basically splatter and do nothing to the door, the door jamb, or the hinges. If the guy who lived there hadn’t have opened the door up, they’d have never gotten in that way.
After I retired, I worked with my brother as a contractor for a bit. One of our clients pulled a set of doors out of their ass that had apparently come out of a New York City brownstone, and we had to refurbish them and install them in their offices. I do not know what the hell the species of wood was that was used on that door and jamb set, but I will testify that we burned out so many drill bits and screws trying to work with it that it wasn’t even funny. Stuff that would zip right through steel? Overheated and just plain broke. You couldn’t get normal wood screws to work; you had to resort to drilling it out like metal, and then running a tap into it and using heavy-duty screws meant for going into machined steel.
Most of the shotgun breaching stuff I’ve seen is predicated on getting inside normal modern doors, but there are materials and doors out there which absolutely do not conform to “normal” in any way whatsoever. I think that door in Iraq was probably made out of something very similar to that door our client pulled out of the New York City salvage yard, and I’m gonna bet that if you tried to get in their office with a shotgun? You ain’t doing it.
This is a great example of why we lost in Iraq and why we just lost in Iran. Could have just knocked on the door. Instead we think John Wayne movies are real.
Negative, aren’t we?
“Knocking on the door” is apt to get the reaction seen in Magnum Force (1973), i.e. the officer at the door gets shot through the door. (Or these days, a hidden gunport covering it in true medieval style.)
The best method is what Kirk advocates. Avoid the door entirely; go through the wall at some position that the occupants aren’t expecting.
If it’s good enough for le flics…..
clear ether
eon
Your ex-wife’s lawyer is smiling even more broadly. Judge is smiling like a big ol’ barracuder too.
I wonder, if we… Could Gast gun… Honest, it was a joke, burp. Handy tool that, doubtless in it’s current form.
If you had a shotgun barrel, on it’s own… And on the top rib, you drilled a series of wee holes just in the rib “Not into said barrel” say 1″ apart down it. And you popped in each hole say a zippo flint. (Bare with me, I have just condensed this post from a cock and balls pov. Quite.) Now, you have “Wheelocks” in the form of two wee wheels, sprung so they rotate… There was a medival crossbow cocking mech but this had a rod protruding from the front; you stick this on the ground and stand on some foot pegs attached to the bow mount thing, to cock it. Aye… Sooo, were are we… Er… Point! Superimposed loads, for an underbarrel attachment like this. Infront of the zippo flints are ports into the barrel. You cock the balls (The side by side wee wheels) by a sleeve going over the barrel containing said devices running over the rib, by squashing the front of the sleeve on the ground… Against a spring, the balls now go 1/2″ approx behind the wee “Cocks” you know, on the rib. Pull trigger, each set of spinning balls hits a “Cock” sparks… Superimposed charges in a sleeve, you get the 8 shot auto 00 buck shotgun you never wanted! Until you did. Eject the device – Throw away “Doubt it will take another kaboom” see the South Korean full auto shotgun and the un-used full auto capability of modern assaualt rifles combined. CLICK BANG, hey don’t attach it, if you don’t want to use it.
S’meh, condensed, he he!
Use? Psychedelic rave yourself up, 10 Japs there in a fox hole on Iwo Jima and nobody has a flamethrower. Who wants the “Device?” ME!! See, it’ll work.
This actual device may be better, but I bet not for morals, morale whatever they call it “You know folk being less depressed.” BANG!!! Go get em Son, you love that. Have 10.
What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
clear ether
eon
You taught me everything I know. He he, seems a bit harsh that. Have to read it back.
Still seems somewhat harsh, he he.
It wasn’t a “response” eek, ok sorry anyway. Hee… Nora. How would that have have been a response to what you said, it wasn’t intended to be. Anyway I apologise.
You and Kirk was waxing on about professional things. I didn’t interject on that, so it wasn’t a “response” it was a ramble, but not connected. Bit rude there Eon, am I that bad? He he. I will desist.
It is absolutely not dumb, at all. Ok, perhaps but markets change, Ukraine, he he… Ok sorry Eon.
Of course in 2026 you’d best be careful about shooting Japanese on Iwo Jima. The island is theirs now. Something to remember when gearing up for your next vacation
“(…)Wheelocks(…)Superimposed loads, for an underbarrel attachment(…)”
Explain how said weapon would be superior to already existing MAUL https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/Metal_Storm_MAUL which uses superimposed and is electric-fired.
Don’t ask PDB to explain anything. I suspect PDB actually stands for Perpetual Deranged Babbling.
clear ether
eon
Ok.
“Bit harsh, perhaps? Albeit some babble. Was actually Pillsbury Doughboy -Simpsons, Mr Burns, ether! Ether.
@eon
Still a better, and much more true acronym then “rocket propelled grenade” fake BS !
Cheaper,perhaps… Thousands of units.
Now a four barrelled… Joke, joke. Tut.
Groan.
eon
He he! 🙂 🙂 Sorry!
Jeff Cooper stole “The Past is a Foreign Country…” from Leslie Hartley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Go-Between