My dad said it was criminal all the dead marines he found with that damn rod down the barrel of their m-16 to clear jams.
He also said the Vietnamese actually structured their human wave attacks so that they didn’t risk anyone with a gun until the Americans were on their 5th or 6th magazine because that’s when the 16s would start to jam up.
I asked my Ranger Dad about M-16 reliability problems.
He enjoyed Indochina tropical vacations in `66-67 & `71-72.
“As long as you kept it clean it was reliable.” And he shot the hell out of it.
Yeah Colt had some problems at first with the Armalite and that’s all you hear about now.
A problem was an ammo maker using left over ball powder for .30 caliber in 5.56 cartridges. The M-16’s action is smaller, lighter and cycles faster than the old M-1 and M-14 action slamming back and forth.
And the Army and Marines didn’t like the M-16, everything about it from the sights to the `Buck Rogers’ look. Colt didn’t provide cleaning kits. All they had for cleaning for quite a while were .30 caliber kits.
Colt started chroming the barrels, added a forward assist, a thicker barrel and some other improvements and it was fine.
I’ve got three AKs and bought a CORE M4-orgery when the prices came down. Staked key, all that good stuff, milspec circa 1963, but not that expensive prancing pony.
Nothing wrong with the AK at all but owning both now, IMHO anyone saying they would take their AK-47 or 74-orgeries over the AR-15 is just fooling himself.
God bless Eugene Stoner.
All we got at the time was know-it-alls in the chain of command and above telling us that it was our fault for not cleaning them well enough or using the wrong lubricants. We did clean them well - we were Marines - but the idiot things would tear the rear halves from the fired cartridges, then ram a new cartridge into that partially-filled chamber to make a fused mess that only a cleaning rod could clear after a lot of pounding. Not a huge issue at a rifle range, but a death sentence for a young man in a firefight.
Only long after the war did we hear that it was really the wrong propellant in the ammunition. A lot of those names on the Wall in Washington DC are there because of an improperly-tested weapon and the callousness of our leaders.