Just for Fun Time Travel Exercise – Alamo

[TEX]

Just for Fun Time Travel Exercise – Alamo

If you could go back in time to the Alamo before the battle, and all you could take with you is what you could comfortably wear and a back pack with 75 pounds of gear maximum - not counting the weight of the back pack or what you could carry on your person via a belt, web gear, etc. What would you take with you to help turn the tide at the battle? Consider that there were about 1500 Mexican troops they were up against and the range on the guns at the Alamo was limited to about 200 yards on a man size target. Be practical. What would be enough to defend against 1500 adversaries or give them reason to give up the fight? Also, considering the water, food and weather conditions and what else would you take because of those concerns? It has to be items you can readily obtain without an NFA tax stamp, so no 40mm thumpers, full auto, or suppressed.

Have fun

[Rex B]

I'll play. Hard to beat an AR15 and all the mags you can carry. Actually, 4 AR15s - one for Crockett and the others for 2 other marksmen.
And some MREs. IIRC they had a spring in the fort for water.

[G.A. Heath]

M18A1 Claymores, AR15, Ammo and a good scoped bolt action for precision work on Santa Anna. Although I suspect the rifles would not see much if any use if one properly deployed the claymores for maximum psychological effect.

[Flightmare]

I think a bunch of tannerite could be fun in that sort of environment!

[The Annoyed Man]

I'll play the cynic here........ It's a dangerous game you're playing!

If you succeeded in stopping the Mexican attack, there would be no shouting of "Remember the Alamo!" in the future. Maybe without the tragic loss of the Alamo defenders and the cherished memory of their brave sacrifice, there's not enough motivation for the rest of the Texian forces to finally defeat Santa Ana? And you only brought 75 lbs of gear with you - enough to fight one battle. You expended all, or nearly all of your 5.56 ammo at the Alamo by judiciously killing every single Mexican soldier with one well-placed shot. There is no possibility of resupply.

Your AR15 is now a dead weight, useless for any further defense of the Texian cause, and so you wisely decide to hide it to keep it from falling into the Mexican victors' hands. Texas eventually enters the Union by US conquest instead of as the result of the 1844 annexation by treaty, and the independent Texan spirit dies out.....making Texas just like any of the other sheeple-states. You die a couple of decades later of old age ......or of some simple disease, easily curable today with antibiotics....which don't exist in the first half of the 19th century. Someone eventually discovers your hidden AR15 just in time for the outbreak of hostilities in the War of Northern Aggression. But while they can figure out that this is the "mysterious rifle that saved the Alamo", nobody can figure out its function.......your plastic PMAGs having been thrown away by your survivors, since nobody knew what they were for. There are no unfired cartridges for it so nobody can test its single-fire function, and even your spent cases from the Alamo battle are long gone.

Texan General John Bell Hood takes possession of the rifle upon its discover, as a perhaps useful artifact to be studied by the Confederacy in future years, and has it forwarded to the gov't archives in Richmond. There, it languishes in its crate until the capture of Richmond in April of 1865, and Secretary of War Stanton has the entire confederate archives transferred to DC for future study. There being no useful reason for the Union to allow a thorough knowledge of the motives of the confederate leadership to be disseminated to the people, the entire confederate archive is transferred to the same Double Super Top Secret gov't warehouse which, 80 years later, will house the Ark of the Covenant captured from the nazis on a mediterranean island. Your AR15 will be housed in the same section of unexplainable phenomena, and dour-faced top secret archivists will conclude that aliens must have, albeit unsuccessfully, aided the Confederacy.

Your AR15 languishes in unknown obscurity until 1954, when a young firearms designer with Double Super Top Secret clearance by the name of Eugene Stoner, browses the hidden archive looking for anything unusual in weaponry that might inspire or inform the idea he has in his head for a new self-loading rifle that his employer - Armalite - has tasked him with designing. He finds your AR15, and instinctively understands its workings.....except he can't figure out why it is chambered in a "poodle-shooter" caliber. He realizes that scaling it up to take the mighty .30-06 Springfield cartridge would defeat some of the advantages of the rifle due to overall cartridge length. Hearing of research into the T-65 .30 caliber cartridge being considered as a replacement, he designs the "new" rifle around the T-44 cartridge which becomes the 7.62NATO cartridge......and the AR10 is born. But it is too late .....the Mighty M14 has won acceptance with the Dept of Defense.

Under pressure from the aptly-named then-Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara, Eugene Stoner's staff engineers take his AR10 design and scale it down for a new "poodle shooter" cartridge - the .223 Remington - which when modified slightly to mil-spec needs, becomes the 5.56 NATO. The M16 rifle is accepted into service in 1964, and the civilian AR15 rifle begins civilian sales.

SIX DECADES LATER, you purchase an AR15. You devise a plan to build a time machine and return to 1836 Texas with your AR15 carbine, 8 full 30 round magazines, and approximately 1500 rounds of 5.56 NATO ammo, to try and turn the tide of the Battle of the Alamo. You succeed in going back in time........ the circle repeats, proving that the AR15 rifle system is, always was, and evermore shall be - independent of any human intervention - a free-standing wonder of the world, unrecognized as such by anyone who doesn't have one. The fallacy that Eugene Stoner designed it is allowed to be propagated by the fedgov't, because the Double Super Top Secret gov't archivists' secret in the Alien Artifacts section of the secret gov't archive have concluded that the American public is ready for The Truth........that we are not alone.





I don't believe in time machine exercises as anything more than an observer.

[C-dub]

What if I just take one sniper rifle and take out Santa Ana from half a mile away?

However, I also dislike time travel paradoxes. There are too many variables that would probably mess things up for your future that would probably end up worse or so different that it wouldn't be worth it. Murphy's Law!

[loktite]

Well played, TAM, well played.

[TEX]

Indeed TAM, well played and entertaining.

I was thinking more along the lines of you could return to present time after the battle. We will never know, but I don’t think defeating Santa Anna at San Antonio would have changed the outcome of Texas becoming a Republic and then a state within the United States – that was always the direction things were headed. As a side note, the absolute best book on Texas history I have ever read is Duel of Eagles by Jeffery Long – check it out if you have a chance.

Some of the answers, although greatly entertaining, did not fit into the no NFA items – pretty sure Claymores fit that category. Also, my thinking is that a 5.56 would be overkill and too heavy with sufficient ammunition to be practical and enough. A large part of the job could probably be done with 22 rim fire and a good scope. There were times when Santa Anna was visible on horseback within 500 yards of the Alamo walls and his troops were much closer.

Since web gear, and what I could hang off it, would not count in the weight it would be equipped with a Glock 17 and 6-8 spare magazines, canteen with purifying tablets, fixed blade knife, and rifle level body armor, super- duper bright flashlight with spare batteries, and a few other particulars like a small med pack with anti-diarrhea medicine, aspirin and antibiotics, ear plugs, etc. In addition I would wear photo changing safety glasses, and have a note book with the names of all of the officers in Santa Anna’s army, and embarrassing facts about Santa Anna that only he would know at the time. Think outside the box.

As far as the pack with a 75 pound limit, I would pack it as thus…

• (1) Proof Research Ultralight Rifle in 308 with 10x scope (7.6 lbs. total)
• (80) Rounds of 308 ammunition (1.2 lbs. per 20 round box = 4.8 lbs. total)
• (3) Kel-Tec CMR 22 Magnum Rifles with 4x fixed scope or red dot (5.7 lbs. each = 17.1 lbs. total)
• (44) 50-Rounds boxes of Speer Gold Dot 22 Magnum = 2,200 rounds (.56 lbs. per box = 24.1 lbs. total)
• (5) Civilian Version CS Grenades (1.1 lbs. each = 5.5 lbs. total)
• (1) Super Loud Speaker System – battery operated (6.2 lbs.)
• (1) Laser that can project moving images of Christ, demons, etc. on clouds, or walls (1.5 lbs.)
• (1) Recorded Loop of Heavy Metal Music for Loud Speaker (.1 lbs.)
• (1) Multi-Tool (1.4 lbs.)
• (6) 38mm Green Illumination Parachute Flares (.96 lbs. each = 5.76 lbs. total)

Grand Total Weight = 74.6 lbs.

The scoped 308 could be used to take out the artillerymen, officers, and possibly Santa Anna himself. The Kel-Tec 22 magnums with scopes could wreak havoc, as head shots could easily be made out 100 yards and even 200 yards with a good marksman, and body shots out to 300. The 22 mag is still lethal even beyond 300 yards. You would probably burn up 200 rounds training others to use the Kel-Tecs. Imagine three guys on the wall cranking off effective shoots about every 3-4 seconds each – the Mexican Army would probably be convinced there were much, much larger force within the Alamo. The CS grenades could be lobbed 20-30 yards beyond the walls and since it would be the Mexican Army’s first experience with chemical warfare it should cause loads of panic and misdirection. I think you can see where I am going with the loud speaker, laser and heavy metal music, and information in the note book (can you say Phy-Ops). The green illumination flares would bust up a night attack and possibly catch large numbers in the open.

I know some will think that I am anal and have way too much spare time on my hands. Not really true. I saw this question posted on another forum many years ago and have from time to time, update a Word document I started for it. So, it just took a little updating and polishing of that document. I actually had a spreadsheet embedded in it where I could increase or decrease the items and the count to get as close to 75 pounds as I could.

Have a good one - TEX