Posted on 12/30/2016 8:06:14 AM PST by mad_as_he$$
That was an excellant artical on the M16 and its variants.When I in the AirForce in the 70’s I found the same issues with that weapon and it was all caused by the ball powder that the DOD purchased.
I don’t know if the ball powder was cheaper than the smokeless powder but it sure made a difference in the way the weapon had to be maintained.
After you fired a magazine of bullets with ball powder the rifle would be filthy with soot.Mix that soot with lubricating oil and it almost became like glue.
The Pentagon and the Department of the Army cost the lives of a lot of troops because they didn’t follow Gene Stoners Specifications.
If you are interested this article goes into great detail about the powder issue:
http://www.thegunzone.com/556prop.html
Poppycock. The Communists made it clear that their newest tactic to take over was the “National Liberation War” - a civil war supported and funded by the Communist bloc. In Vietnam’s case, the Vietcong successors of the Vietnam Minh weren’t winning against the South Vietnamese forces, so North Vietnamese units moved south with all the weapons and equipment the Warsaw Pact and China could provide.
At risk was 1. Our ally was going to be overwhelmed if we didn’t intervene and 2. The Soviets would have gained control of the Straits of Malacca by using Vietnamese ports for their blue water fleet. If they controlled those sea lanes, they would have controlled our ability to support our allies in Asia, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines.
I never bought the “conservatives don’t fight” excuse, so I fought there.
Proud of your dad - I got there just after Starlight/Harvest Moon. Did 18 operations in that neck of the woods.
Semper Fi
True enough, but there were times when full-A worked best. I never had any trouble at all controlling it very well, I’m happy to say. When I finally was hit, my lieutenant crawled up to where I was and said “I’m sorry you’re hurt Chainmail, but can I have your rifle?”
In ‘68, we only had 20 round magazines for the M-16, and loaded only 18 rounds so it wouldn’t jam. I saw some Car-16s with 30 rounders.
The linked story makes a number of errors, the first being thinking they could improve on the story of the history of the M-16 that’s maintained at TGZ.
The chief problems with the M-16 were (as already noted) #1) the services’ screwing with Stoner’s design, and #2), failing to properly train the soldiers/Marines in its use, particularly the armorers.
The ball powder not only was dirtier than the IMR powders used to develop the rifle, it also ran at higher max pressure to produce the same target muzzle velocity. The military always has to focus on the MV because that’s what the weapon’s sight’s range calibrations are predicated on. If they’d loaded the ball powder to the same Pmax as the IMR powders, it would have had a lower MV and, at range, the sights would would have been shooting too low.
So they loaded the round hotter than Stoner intended and ignored the consequences, which included the weapons cycling ~30% too fast, which resulted in accelerated parts wear and sometimes — if the firing chamber was sufficiently fouled — causing the extractor to skip over the rim of the just-fired cartridge, or even just rip it off. In either case the spent casing was left firmly lodged in the chamber, and if you didn’t have a cleaning rod to use to dislodge it, this predicament left your BVDs swingin’ in the breeze.
The first couple of years the M-16 was employed in SEA, most of the soldiers sent there previously had been using the M-14 as a service weapon and had never so much as held an M-16 until they landed in Vietnam. In 1968, the Army published its internal review of a country-wide inspection of arms rooms, during which they found that EVERY unit in country was under- and/or improperly maintaining the weapon. The lone exceptions were two grunt units (1Bde/101st Abn and 173rd Abn Bde) and some snake eaters (5th SF), all of whom, not so coincidentally, also had been issued M-16s at their home station.
This report (Report of the M16 Review Panel, 1 June 1968) was classified until 1984, so the soldier’s stories claiming it was all Stoner’s fault already were well entrenched in our military lore before the truth of it ever saw the light of day.
FWIW, I personally knew a snake eater (now dead) who served in Vietnam in 1958. And he went there to replace some other snake eater. I don’t know that it’s recorded anywhere (in open source) just when the first American boots were on the ground, but the 10th SF was formed in ‘52, Ike was inaugurated in ‘53 and the French didn’t get run out of Indochina until ‘54. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Ike would have sent some SF over as liaisons to the cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
My late uncle Lloyd was an Army medical officer/hospital admin/logistics type, and had been in “French IndoChina” during the 50s, helping locals set up a network of field hospitals...
In the late 50s, I remember him saying the hospitals and aid stations were initially meant to serve the needs of the locals, but that need would shift once the coming Communist insurgencies gained momentum and expected guerilla wars kicked into high gear...
Somebody knew something way back then, and was preparing...
US Marines were there from April, 1962 onward. HMR-362 and HMR-161 flew from the USS Princeton, initiating Operation Shufly.
No, it left you dead. I saw way too many good young men dead by their broken-down weapons to think that a cute turn of phrase made it funnier.
We had so much trouble with the early M-16s that it was a crisis with our units and we had investigators all over the place (my own solution was to keep my M-14, no matter what). Initially, they tried to blame us as "not cleaning our weapons sufficiently" which was patently false. Then they claimed that we were using the wrong lubricants, etc., etc.
Only long after did they confess that it was the wrong powder and no amount of additional cleaning or new lubricant could change anything.
I still bitterly resent the clowns who pushed that thing into our hands long before it was thoroughly tested in-country. We lost a lot of good kids we shouldn't have.
Bu the way, we saw a lot more combat than your "snake-eaters" did. They just had prettier uniforms.
It's part of a game we play.
Prior to 1965 they were Special Forces soldiers and military advisors.
Uncle’s friend had a story that I didn’t understand was about this issue until years later.
So they get their shiny new rifles passed out and units start going out on patrol. Within a couple days one is entirely wiped out except for two people: one wounded sarge and this skinny stick of a teenager who dragged his ass out of the jaws of hell. Every single one of the fallen had had their rifles jam and were reduced to firing pistols or literally any other weapon they had along while the gooks let ‘em have it with AK’s on full auto.
Local CO’s kept the two of them safe and guarded so that their story got back to HQ. But when it quickly became apparent that their solution was to blame the soldiers, some quick-thinker moved every one of those shiny new rifles in a newly-made storage near the front lines and it just so happened to blow sky high the next time Charlie shelled the place.
IIRC at least one officer man caught a court martial under suspicion of treason, but he knew what would happen if his men were sent out with that misbegotten jam-machine.
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Official Lie.
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Not really: read some Life magazines from that era. Wall-to-wall stories about our advisors and the ruthless VC. Maybe you didn’t hear about it in school but everybody knew that we had a large presence in Vietnam during the JFK years.
Thanks for that info. What branch?
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“Best weapon ever made” is what the man said. :o)
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I’m glad you made it home safe and sound
Agree with most of your points. You left out the chrome barrel lining problem. I have seen film of guy’s cleaning M-16’s in a half 55 gallon drum filled with gasoline. Scary stuff.
Were you issued the comic book? I see repops at gun shows all the time but I would like to find an original one.
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I had friends from my neighborhood that were already in the hills in Laos in ‘58.
I was just starting High school.
That’s why I said “give the M-14 a bipod and scope”. Bipod for short bursts of auto fire. Scope for long-distance semi fire.
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