Thursday, February 13, 2014

"I've kept P-38's in my tackle boxes the last 62 years and counting!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Can openers. Military, Viet-Nam era. Great for camping."

 Pack of 10 for $5.00 on eBAy or $1.00 each.

"That's great, I need a new can opener. Mine is rusty where it needs to be stainless. Maybe I should get a pack of these."

"No. Not for that."


7 comments:

AllenS said...

I have a couple of them. 1966 was the first time I ever used one, and I said: "How cool is this?"

XRay said...

Somehow or another I still have the one I used in 1968, over there. It is a Speaker brand, which was much better, harder steel, than the later Mallin Hardware brand.

The Wiki page calls out both:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-38_can_opener

Though the origin of the name "P-38" is not known for sure, the US Army says it is because...

"United States Army sources indicate that the origin of the name is rooted in the 38 punctures around the circumference of a C-ration can required for opening."

I never knew that, never counted how many punctures it took either.

I also didn't know the USMC called them "John Waynes". That information didn't filter down to my squad, evidently.

Brings to mind another componet of C-Rats, the matches. For years I remembered the brand name of one such supplier of same, as they were such cheap pieces of shit when compared to the maker of those that worked well. I always meant to locate the factory and go tell them what assholes they were for manufacturing such crap and sending it to the troops.

And then there were the heat tabs included in the meals. Some brands better than others. We worked in an area and in such a way that Claymores were pretty useless, to us, for their intended purpose, so we'd remove the C-4 propellant and use that for heating our food. Hotter and quicker than standard issue heat tabs. Then we'd just order more Claymores.

Sorry to get carried away.

AllenS said...

XRay, same-same.

edutcher said...

I thought you were talking fighters.

Calypso Facto said...

I still have a couple that I use when camping. Although MREs had replaced C rats by the time I joined, whenever we had access to a vehicle we would pack our own chow including cans. And I always figured in a "real" knock down drag out war, food scrounging would be a likely necessity.

virgil xenophon said...

LOL. I was first introduced to the little devils during my 67-68 Vietnam tour. STILL have one on my old dog-tags chain..

Hagar said...

WWII, actually.