The Black Widow

[Marine A5 Sniper Rifle]

Recently, I was allowed to view an incredible collection of USMC sniper gear. In this collection were the Vietnam era Unertl scope repair records. Looking through the records, I was surprised to see that the old BS story about the Vietnam era armorers (one actually) using Black Widow spider webs to replace broken reticles, and there were a lot of broken reticles, was actually a true story. I decided to check out Black Widow spider webs to find out why they were considered to be the best substitute for factory reticles. A Black Widow spider web is the strongest web on earth, being 5 times as strong as Kevlar. The web is so strong, scientists have substituted the spider's web gene into the silk worm, which subsequently makes cocoons made of Black Widow web material. The cocoons are unwound and the resulting thread used to produce a thin cloth that is now considered the best bullet stopper on the market. I wonder how many other stories we now consider BS are actually factual? Food for thought.

:1948:

[Marine A5 Sniper Rifle]

An example of a destroyed Unertl scope in RVN. Turns out, quite a few were destroyed.:1948:

42184

[p246]

I had not heard that one. Thanks for sharing.

[Johnny P]

There is a spider in Madagascar whose web is supposedly 10 times stronger than Kevlar. Probably has a problem with limited production though.

[1903fan]

Neat piece of info! I definitely like reading all the researchers stuff on here, keep up the good work boys!

[clintonhater]

Before fine drawn tungsten wire became commonly available, spider silk (from the cocoon, not the web) was one of the most frequently used reticle materials in early scopes, and almost the only choice for anything above 8X (because the reticle is magnified by the eyepiece). Phil Sharpe's Rifle in America includes quite a detailed description of the process of unraveling the silk.

[oldtirediron]

Almost every Bombsight in WWII had one woman's hair in it, It was top secret until the 1980's-- One of those weird facts !