While my sample group is small, every fucking tunnel rat I ever met was crazy. Like, off the wall, bugshit bonkers lol. Zero fucks given about anything.
Considering what their job was, I would be more worried about the ones that aren't completely whacko.
One of them said, "man, if I hadn't been a little fucked up, I never would have done it. But if I hadn't been fucked top when I started, I sure as fuck would have after the first one."
Tunnel rats typically were mostly if not all volunteers. So that makes sense.
Exactly!
Near Ho Chi Minh city there are some tunnels like this which they let tourists go into and crawl along for a few hundred meters before coming up somewhere else. They were very very skinny, some of the tourists could not fit. Utterly terrifying places, when you think about the context they were used in.
Afterwards I paid $50 to fire a few shots from an AK-47. Surprisingly loud. Hard to imagine coping with several of them going off all around.
Is that a silencer? On a revolver. As I understand it, it can work but generally won't.
I couldn't find a source with enough details on this picture to confidently say. It might just be a blast can.
1911A semi-automatics like the one the Rat below is carrying were disliked because of the muzzle blast that temporarily blinded and deafened them in a tight tunnel. That’s why many Rats preferred silencer-equipped .38 Specials.
Is that a silencer?
Yes.
On a revolver.
Yes!
As I understand it, it can work but generally won’t.
You are three for three.
This revolver is from the 1966 Tunnel Exploration Kit. It is a .38 Smith & Wesson, with a supposed reduced cylinder gap and a silencer.
The final report on the kit was that 3 of the 4 units using it found that the silencer gave no appreciable advantage. Report here.
What a terrifying job that must have been.
We're the Tunnel Rats, that's us, and we rule!
