shuee@venus.iucf.indiana.edu (DAVID W. SHUEE) (08/03/90)
From: "DAVID W. SHUEE" <shuee@venus.iucf.indiana.edu> The book Silencers,Snipers & Assassins by J. David Truby (Palalin Press) has the following to say " Initally, SOG personal used silenced Swedish K's and Sten guns on across the border operations to prevent the Communist from exposing our intrusions through the idenication of our lost or captured weapons. By 1968, the VC/NVA had captured suffient quanities of M-16's that need for such deception was no longer nessary. Consequently the foreign weapons were phased out and replaced by CAR-15's and M-16's with suppressors." page 83 From page 91 " A freind of mine, while on his second tour of Veitnam duty, ran into an Army officer who carried a Swedish "K" submachine gun (officaly, their M-45)fitted with a very large silencer. The silencer was descibed as being about 12 to 14 inches long and about 2 inches in diameter, and it weighed about 2 pounds. The unit was painted grey, which lead him to believe it had been issued to a Navy SEAL team, which sometimes uses the Swedish gun as well as the British and domestic submachine guns. "It was a most effecive weapon," the officer told me. "The sound was like a very mild hand clap (probably mechanical noise), and there was no apperent loss of performance." The book has very little else to say about the gun. It does have a few pictures of the gun with a couple of differant suppersors. Most of this type of items are small lots and will vary greatly. The CIA pays for them and the paper work is destoryed or things are made "in house" at a military depot. The Smith and Wesson model 76 suppresor was designed by S&W, but was marked Sionics (tm). My best guess would be that the "can's" are of AMF and Sionic's heritage. shuee@venus.iucf.indiana.edu