mm wrote:
OT So, if you are a navy SEAL and you're carrying a gun, intending
to use it as soon as you pop out of the water, do you have to put a
cork in the gun barrel, so the barrel doesn't get any water in it?

I heard once that water in a barrel will cause the barrel to explode
or something when the bullet hits it.

I'm sure water could leak into most other guns from the rear end of
the barrel, but I figure there are ways to prevent that. But the
front end of the barrel has to be either unobstructed or easily
cleared.


Naval rifles had a canvas & cork cover/plug. If convenient, they were
removed before firing.

If not convenient, no biggie. Not much will interfere with a 16", 2000 lb
shell.

==============
Then, too, there's this from another group:

Re-reading a Lee Child's novel [DIE TRYING], this passage stood out:

--- begin quote

First thing out of the barrel of Reacher's Barrett was a blast of hot gas.
The powder in the cartridge exploded in a fraction of a millionth of a
second and expanded to a super-heated bubble. That bubble of gas hurled the
bullet down the barrel and forced ahead of it and around it to explode out
into the atmosphere. Most of it was smashed sideways by the muzzle brake in
a perfectly balanced radial pattern, like a doughnut, so that the recoil
moved the barrel straight back against Reacher's shoulder without deflecting
it either sideways or up or down. Meanwhile, behind it, the bullet was
starting to spin inside the barrel as the rifling grooves grabbed at it.

Then the gas ahead of the bullet was heating the oxygen in the air to the
point where the air caught fire. There was a brief flash of flame and the
bullet burst out through the exact center of it, spearing through the burned
air at nineteen hundred miles an hour. A thousandth of a second later, it
was six feet away, and its sound was bravely chasing after it, but three
times slower.

The bullet took five hundredths of a second to cross the [parade ground], by
which time the sound of its shot had just passed Reacher's ears and cleared
the ridge of the roof. The bullet had a hand-polished copper jacket and it
was flying straight and true, but by the time it had passed soundlessly over
McGrath's head it had slowed a little. And the air was moving it. It was
moving it right to left as the gentle mountain breeze tugged imperceptibly
at it. Half a second into its travel, the bullet had covered thirteen
hundred feet and it had moved seven inches to the left.

And it had dropped seven inches. Gravity had pulled it in. The more gravity
pulled, the more the bullet slowed. The more it slowed, the more gravity
deflected it. It speared onward in a perfect graceful curve. A whole second
after leaving the barrel, it was nine hundred yards into its journey. Way
past McGrath's running figure, but still over the trees, still three hundred
yards short of its target. Another sixth of a second later, it was clear of
the trees and alongside the office building. Now it was a slow bullet. It
had pulled four feet left and five feet down. It passed well clear of Holly
and was twenty feet past her before she heard the hiss in the air. The sound
of the shot was still to come.

Reacher's bullet hit Borken in the head a full second and a third after he
fired it. It entered the front of his forehead and was out of the back of
his skull three ten-thousandths of a second later. In and out without really
slowing much more at all, because Borken's skull and brains were nothing to
a two-ounce lead projectile with a needle point and a polished metal jacket.

The bullet was well over the endless forest beyond before the pressure wave
built up in Borken's skull and exploded it.

Reacher was watching it through his scope. Heart in his mouth. A full second
and a third is a long time to wait. He watched Borken's skull explode like
it had been burst from the inside with a sledgehammer. It came apart like a
diagram. Reacher saw curved shards of bone bursting outward and red mist
blooming.

--- end quote

These goddamn male romance novels get me all choked up !

The author could have devoted more words to what the principals were
wearing, what they thought about what the other principals were wearing. And
what smells were there on this gentle breeze he mentioned?

On the whole, though, an entertaining jockstrap-ripper.

=============

And Reacher - the shooter - was even a SEAL. He was an ex-Army MP.