Suppressors
Suppressors (often incorrectly referred to as “silencers”) are like mufflers for your guns. Their purpose is to reduce the sound of a gunshot. Subject to certain limitations of design and physics, this makes the weapon a more effective tool. The gunshot is harder to detect, as is the location of the shooter. Suppressors also make the operation of the weapon easier on the shooter’s ears.
The loud report of a gunshot comes from two sources. When a shot is fired, burning powder in the cartridge expands and propels the bullet through the rifle barrel and downrange. By the time the hot gasses burst from the muzzle, they are supersonic, and that creates a loud report. The bullet itself, if supersonic, will generate a sonic boom audible all along its trajectory until it slows down.
A suppressor is a metal tube that fits onto the muzzle of a weapon. The tube contains a series of baffles (see Figure 2).
The baffles can be arranged in a number of different configurations. As the hot gasses leave the muzzle, they enter the suppressor. The baffles slow down the gasses so by the time they escape, they are subsonic. This eliminates much of the sound of the gunshot.
However, the suppressor will not eliminate the crack of a supersonic bullet. For this reason, for the greatest reduction in noise, suppressors should be used with subsonic ammunition. If subsonic ammunition is used, the noise associated with a gunshot can be reduced to the mechanical sound of the weapon’s action cycling. The Mark 23 SOCOM semi-automatic pistol made by H&K in .45 ACP has a slide-lock that can prevent the action from cycling. That effectively provides the operator the option of using the weapon as a suppressed single-shot pistol.
The .45 ACP round is inherently subsonic. For that reason, as far back as World War II, the OSS used the M3 submachine gun as a suppressed weapons system. Indeed, the suppressed grease gun was a favorite of MACV-SOG for operations into Laos during the Vietnam War (see figure 3).
This video provides an excellent discussion of the OSS M3, with its original suppressor: OSS M3 Submachine Gun with Original Suppressor.
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