China Lake Grenade Launcher - History

History

The M79 and XM148 grenade launchers, and the repeating T148E1 grenade launcher were unreliable, so a request was made to China Lake engineers. SEAL Teams were pleased with the resultant pump-action grenade launcher, since the tubular magazine held three 40x46mm grenades, and so with one grenade in the chamber, four grenades could rapidly be fired before reloading. In fact, a skilled operator could fire four aimed shots before the first one landed. The grenade launcher was extremely light for its size, since a significant portion of it was made of aluminum. Despite this advantage in firepower, it did have limitations as it could not reliably feed the more oddly-shaped 40mm grenades.

The pump-action grenade launcher featured leaf iron sights similar to the M79. The front sight is a fixed square notch. Depending on if the leaf is folded or not, the rear square notch is either fixed or adjustable from 75 to 400 m in 25 m increments.

Though meant for the SEAL Teams, a handful were used by Marine Force Recon and Army 5th Special Forces Group.

Sources differ as to how many weapons were produced. One claims that between 20 and 30 were made. However, according to another source, only 16 were made. The highest original receiver number found is 50, but it may never have been made into a functional weapon. Noted SEAL historian, Kevin Dockery has confirmed 22 completed guns being carried on Navy records. Currently, only 3 originals remain under US Navy control. It is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the EX-41 or as the "China Lake NATIC". The EX-41 was a design concept created in the mid-1980s based upon the earlier China Lake Model Pump 40mm. The EX-41 was produced in prototype form a full 2 decades after the China Lake Model was produced. The China Lake NATIC designation is also erroneous as the weapon was never known by that designation. Since it was made on an ad hoc basis for special operations forces, it was not formally adopted and has no official designation.

All 4 remaining original China Lake Model grenade launchers are on display in museums. One, serial number 4, is at the UDT/ SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce, Florida while serial number 13, is found in the War Remnants Museum (Ho Chi Minh City) in Vietnam., another is stored at the US Navy Museum in Washington DC. One additional launcher is on limited display in highly restricted US Navy facilities.