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General Goods

The M60 (formally named United States Machine Gun, Caliber 7.62 mm, M60) is a family of American general purpose machine guns firing 7.62x51mm NATO cartridges from a disintegrating belt of M13 links. There are several types of live ammunition approved for use in the M60, including ball, tracer, and armor-piercing rounds.[1] The M60 was referred to as The Pig during the Vietnam War.[citation needed]

The M60 is a belt-fed machine gun that fires the 7.62 mm NATO cartridge commonly used in larger rifles. It is generally used as crew-served weapon and operated by a team of two or three men. The team consists of the gunner, the assistant gunner (AG in military slang), and the ammunition bearer. The gun's weight and the amount of ammunition it consumes when fired make it difficult for a single soldier to carry and operate. The gunner carries the weapon and, depending on his strength and stamina, anywhere from 200 to 1000 rounds of ammunition. The assistant carries a spare barrel and extra ammunition, and reloads and spots targets for the gunner. The ammunition bearer carries additional ammunition and the tripod with associated traversing and elevation mechanism, if issued, and fetches more ammunition as needed during firing.

During the interwar years, many new designs were developed, such as the Browning M2 .50 caliber (12.7o mm), which, along with others, were used in World War II. The trend toward automatic rifles, light machine guns, and more powerful submachine guns resulted in a wide variety of firearms that combined characteristics of ordinary rifles and machine guns. The Cei-Rigotti (20th century), Fedorov Avtomat (1910s), AVS-36 Simonov (1930s), MP44, M2 Carbine, AK-47, and AR-15 have come to be known as assault rifles (after the German term sturmgewehr). Many aircraft were equipped with machine cannon, and similar cannon (nicknamed Pom-pom guns ) were used as antiaircraft weapons. The designs of Bofors of Sweden and Oerlikon of Switzerland were widely used by both sides and have greatly influenced similar weapons developed since then.

Loading systems in early manual machine guns were often from a hopper of loose (un-linked) cartridges. Manual-operated volley guns usually had to be reloaded manually all at once (each barrel reloaded by hand). With hoppers, the rounds could often be added while the weapon was firing. This gradually changed to belt-fed types. Belts were either held in the open by the person, or in a bag or box. Some modern vehicle machine guns used linkless feed systems however.