[HT] Arctic cold and guns

[starslayer]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

This is all interesting stuff for a hypothetical alien species on a cold world.
Could they develop workable guns without first inventing the warm working ones?

Absolutely, the early stages of firearms were all single shot, and remained that way for quite some time, repeating firearms are really only an invention of the last 200 years or so.

They would likely develop weapons that work great in the cold, and mightrun into problems in warmer climates. The reason, I feel, that we don't have a large selection of 'works great in the frozen cold' firearms is that, we don't live there (predominantly), if we did, we'd make them. It's not that the hurdles are insurmountable, just that there is no pressing need to surmount them.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

This is from accounts of US troops during the Battle of the Bulge (1944-45) and in Korea, especially in the winter of 1950.

1.) Oils congeal in the cold. [At that time, yes; modern military firearm lubricants are designed to resist the effects of cold, as a previous poster noted.] If you're using a bolt action rifle you can probably muscle through any sticking, but automatic and semi-automatic weapons tend to be single shot. The M-1 carbine was reportedly very prone to malfunctions this way. [It used a "tappet" system, where gas pressure on a piston provided energy to work the action through a short sharp "kick." Apparently the system was calibrated to warmer weather and less resistance from the moving parts. The M-1 rifle and BAR used gas systems that provided energy all through the rechambering cycle. As such they were less prone to this. Apparently no one ever complained about the Springfield Model of 1903.]

So in these conditions you might fire your semi-auto rifle, then "click!" on the next shot as the action failed to chamber another round. M-1 Carbine users in Korea sometimes had to kick their operating handle to chamber the next round.

Another problem, which might also affect bolt action or other manually-operated systems, was that gun grease or oil inside the bolt might congeal and interfere with the firing pin. In this case you can work the action all you want but if the firing pin isn't moving you'll need to disassemble the weapon and correct before it goes "bang!" at all.

2.) Solutions of that era (1944-50): One is to use a very thin grade of oil -- I've heard sewing machine oil was often a substitute. You'd have to strip the weapon down completely and remove the old oil & grease with a solvent. Apparently on occasion Scotch whisky was used. (Of course, since there are non-alcohol substances in Scotch or other drinks, this could leave a gummy residue anyway.)

Another solution was to again strip weapon/remove solvent and replace with graphite obtained from pencil lead.

In both these cases the weapon would probably still work less well than in warm weather but it would work. Sort of.

Apparently there were solutions in the c. 1940 time frame to these problems. IIRC the Finns had no problems with their weapons, even in the most severe cold. The Suomi submachine gun was famous for it's reliability even when the temperatures plunged well below 40 below (both Centigrade and Fahrenheit.)

So your players should be able to find solutions to their bang-stick freezing weather issues.

[Tema69]

The Sirius Patrol uses a 7.62NATO Enfield rifle of some sort, AFAIK.

In my personal experience, a classic TL7-8 assault rifle like the Diemaco C7 becomes relatively useless at those temperatures. The handguards would fall off for no good reason, the magazine would freeze to the well, the scope lost all efficiency, and the charging handle would even freeze to upper receiver. Not all at once, but distributed over thirty or so rifles, I'd say half of them were in trouble at any given time.

[weby]

At 20-25 centigrade below freezing (that is about 10 below zero in F scale), that is the lowest shooting experience I have, guns work still well if you take care of them.

Both assault rifles when in military and my own guns have had no special problems with anything, though I do use oil that claims to be for arctic use..

[Tema69]

@weby, out of curiosity, what guns did you use, and what did you do to keep them functional?
I should maybe say that the problems mentioned appeared after several days in -20, not instantly.