No Vietnam- M14 as standard rifle?

Alternatively, the M-14 would be downscaled to carry the new lighter round, but this showed to be too difficult, or expensive. Therefore the user friendly M-16 and its offshoot were developped, although the troubles it encountered in Vietnam, first looked to downgrade the riffle, which was actually a very good weapon, but the servicemen using it lacked training to keep the weapon clean at all times. When the proper care is taken to maintain the weapon, the M-16 is an excelent and very accurate riffle.

Excuse me, but the M-16 in its early years in Vietnam probably caused the deaths of more American soldiers than the AK-47. It was a tin-plated piece of crap that wasn't worth the powder it took to blow it to hell. Have you ever tried to keep a rifle "clean at all times" in an environment that is by turns knee deep mud, dust so thick you choke on it, sheets of rain, and sun so hot gun oil drips out of the barrel? You can bury an AK in a mudhole, dig it up three days later, clear the barrel, chamber a round, and rock 'n roll. The early -16s jammed if a rain drop hit them the wrong way.

And BTW, the ability to carry more ammo so often cited as a reason for the -16 never seemed to bother 5'3" NVA troops who lugged AK-47s and its larger round.

The problem was McNamara and his "Whiz Kids." As originally designed, the M-16 was built loose enough to tolerate dirt and dust. But when it was accepted for general use, McNamara's ignorant Ivy League idiots tightened the specs to the point where the action wouldn't tolerate so much as a speck of dust. There were other problems -- badly designed ammo, lack of chroming in the right spots in the action. Put a weapon like that in Vietnam's environment and it's a recipe for disaster. Marines were punching four and five holes through attacking VC and not even slowing them down. The light-weight bullets could be deflected by leaves, for crying out loud. And more than one dead Marine or soldier was found with a jammed M-16 in his hands. It was a weapon made for draftee soldiers who were never trained in one-shot-one kill marksmanship but instead favored a "spray and pray" approach to firefights.

This was a classic case of a good -- not great, but good -- weapon ruined by desk jockeys with no real-world experience. It took at least two years and too many lives before the problems were solved. Even then, it never shook the "Mattel rifle" stigma. Iraq and Afghanistan have only reemphasized the weapon's many weaknesses, including its lack of long-range effectiveness.
 
My father used to say that the only thing an M1 carbine was good for was to stick in the ground and hold the helmet of the guy who got killed using it. He hated them with a passion, even more than the Grease Gun. No stopping power, no range, and pretty much useless in general. Pistols, Thompsons, and Grease Guns were more useful in house to house, altho he favored a 12-gauge himself. In the field, the M1 was everyone's choice. Since he landed the day after D-Day and was pretty much continuously on the sharp end until an arty round ruined his day in Germany just before New Year's Day, I listened to him.

Well For a weapon use in close fighting of the Jungle of New Guinea were my father got his tasted of combat he liked it and I liked it Nam , It's not the Worlds best weapon but it sure Better then the M-16 . That piece of shit cost me a cousin , brother and Brother -in -Law .
And rember if you our fighting in Europe during WWII most battles were fought at 50 yards or more and in the Pacific the Range was in the Jungle was less then 50 feet . I never Said it was a weapon for all of the World but it was fine for Jungles and short range .
 
This talk about 6.5/8mm rounds makes me think of that British .280 experiment. Now, that would've been great if they pulled it off.

In hindsight, what would have been best would have been if the US had adopted the British 7x43/.280 cartridge of the EM-2 as that probably would have been a solid intermediate round without the issues of being overpowered that 7.62 NATO had or the lack of range/stopping/penetrating power that's been a constant complaint against the 5.56. Someone else would have to answer whether a M-14 chambered for 7x43 would have been sufficiently controllable on full auto, while other western countries could choose between the EM-2, FAL, or TTLs version of a G-3.

However, the POD necessary for such a change would entail a major change in US Army thinking about small arms, as in the late 40s-early 50s, when the search for a replacement for the .30-06 as the US service cartridge occurred, the Army was still thinking in terms of long-range marksmanship by individual riflemen, and also long-range capability for machine guns firing the new cartridge. Essentially, what the Army saw the intermediate cartridges such as the Soviet 7.62x39 or German 7.92x33 as was an opportunity to use advances in ammo technology to shrink the .30-06 so a solider could carry more ammo in what amounted to an updated M-1, as opposed to a chance to introduce a new class of weapon which combined the SMG & rifle, such as the AK-47 or StG-44. That's essentially what 7.62x51 NATO is, and what the Army wanted, a shrunken version of the .30-06 (in metric terms 7.62x63); the ballistic performance of the two cartridges in the original military loadings is very similar.

The British 7x43 had another strike against it in that it was a foreign cartridge, and at the time, both the US military establishment and some elements in Congress had a major case of 'not invented here' syndrome which made both foreign equipment and equipment from US designers not part of the establishment automatically suspect. Those attitudes also hurt the FAL when it was being tested against the M-14 prototype- the tests were skewed to favor the M-14 as it was the American weapon & the descendent of the M-1 Garand, while the FAL was a foreign weapon which would automatically garner hostility from some people in positions of authority.
 
Was it really that bad?:confused::(

The M-16 was a piece of Shit when it came out . The Federal Rounds were really bad and they and the M-16 remind you that it was made by the lowist bidder . We would put condoms over the Barrows to keep the water out . I refused to carry one in Combat at all in my 3 tours of service there . I got very good with the M-79 .
 
The M-16 was a piece of Shit when it came out . The Federal Rounds were really bad and they and the M-16 remind you that it was made by the lowist bidder . We would put condoms over the Barrows to keep the water out . I refused to carry one in Combat at all in my 3 tours of service there . I got very good with the M-79 .


My father told me much the same story... his chief complaint was about the magazines locking up and not having correct spring pressures so that he would end up putting 21 rounds in a 20 round clip and it would crap out... he lugged around an old M-14 the rest of the way and just used it on semi auto
 
Well For a weapon use in close fighting of the Jungle of New Guinea were my father got his tasted of combat he liked it and I liked it Nam , It's not the Worlds best weapon but it sure Better then the M-16 . That piece of shit cost me a cousin , brother and Brother -in -Law .
And rember if you our fighting in Europe during WWII most battles were fought at 50 yards or more and in the Pacific the Range was in the Jungle was less then 50 feet . I never Said it was a weapon for all of the World but it was fine for Jungles and short range .

So noted. My father's experience with the carbine was Europe, and it was not a good fit there.

As for the M-16, we agree totally. I can't believe its still the MBR for the US military.
 
So noted. My father's experience with the carbine was Europe, and it was not a good fit there.

As for the M-16, we agree totally. I can't believe its still the MBR for the US military.

What most people do not realize is the M-1 Carbine was build to replace the M-1911 for support Troops and officers . It Sure is easier to Carry in a truck then the M-1 rifle was .
 
Eventually the value of the AK-47 would be obvious to all and NATO would want a weapon to deliver similar firepower and ammunition weight. Even without the Vietnam War, it would be obvious the M-14/FAL/G3 were handicapped. It's not clear that something better than the 5.56 would result. After all there would be no combat testing to evaluate the actual limitations of the 5.56. Clearly the Soviets were impressed enough with it to emulate this cartridge with their AK-74.
 
Last edited:

burmafrd

Banned
The soviets copied a lot of our mistakes over the years. My best friend did 4 tours in VietNam in SPecial Forces, and his contempt for the M16 was total. He said much the same about the tolerances and lack of chroming and the lousy rds used at the time. In conditions like that its IMPOSSIBLE to clean the weapon enough to keep it running.
 
Last edited:
To cap things off, the M-16/M-4 family of weapons are still experencing reliability issues that are putting soliders' lives at risk.

The AP & CBS News said:
In 2008 Afghanistan Firefight, US Weapons Failed

Weapons Didn't Work For US Troops As 2008 Afghanistan Battle Raged At Remote Base, Study Says


It was chaos during the early morning assault last year on a remote U.S. outpost in Afghanistan and Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips' M4 carbine had quit firing as militant forces surrounded the base. The machine gun he grabbed after tossing the rifle aside didn't work either.

When the battle in the small village of Wanat ended, nine U.S. soldiers lay dead and 27 more were wounded. A detailed study of the attack by a military historian found that weapons failed repeatedly at a "critical moment" during the firefight on July 13, 2008, putting the outnumbered American troops at risk of being overrun by nearly 200 insurgents.

Which raises the question: Eight years into the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, do U.S. armed forces have the best guns money can buy?

Despite the military's insistence that they do, a small but vocal number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq has complained that the standard-issue M4 rifles need too much maintenance and jam at the worst possible times.

A week ago, eight U.S. troops were killed at a base near Kamdesh, a town near Wanat. There's no immediate evidence of weapons failures at Kamdesh on Oct. 3, but the circumstances were eerily similar to the Wanat battle: insurgents stormed an isolated stronghold manned by American forces stretched thin by the demands of war.

Army Col. Wayne Shanks, a military spokesman in Afghanistan, said a review of the battle at Kamdesh is under way. "It is too early to make any assumptions regarding what did or didn't work correctly," he said.

Complaints about the weapons the troops carry, especially the M4, aren't new. Army officials say that when properly cleaned and maintained, the M4 is a quality weapon that can pump out more than 3,000 rounds before any failures occur.

The M4 is a shorter, lighter version of the M16, which made its debut during the Vietnam war. Roughly 500,000 M4s are in service, making it the rifle troops on the front lines trust with their lives.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a leading critic of the M4, said Thursday the Army needs to move quickly to acquire a combat rifle suited for the extreme conditions U.S. troops are fighting in.

U.S. special operations forces, with their own acquisition budget and the latitude to buy gear the other military branches can't, already are replacing their M4s with a new rifle.

"The M4 has served us well but it's not as good as it needs to be," Coburn said.

Battlefield surveys show that nearly 90 percent of soldiers are satisfied with their M4s, according to Brig. Gen. Peter Fuller, head of the Army office that buys soldier gear. Still, the rifle is continually being improved to make it even more reliable and lethal.

Fuller said he's received no official reports of flawed weapons performance at Wanat. "Until it showed up in the news, I was surprised to hear about all this," he said.

The study by Douglas Cubbison of the Army Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., hasn't been publicly released. Copies of the study have been leaked to news organizations and are circulating on the Internet.

Cubbison's study is based on an earlier Army investigation and interviews with soldiers who survived the attack at Wanat. He describes a well-coordinated attack by a potent enemy that unleashed a withering barrage with AK-47 automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

The soldiers said their weapons were meticulously cared for and routinely inspected by commanders. But still the weapons had breakdowns, especially when the rifles were on full automatic, which allows hundreds of bullets to be fired a minute.

Cubbison acknowledges the high rates of fire during the two-hour battle may have led to the failures. But he says numerous problems occurred relatively early in the engagement.

He also said the enemy forces were "experienced, numerically powerful, highly skilled, adequately equipped (and) tactically accmplished."

The platoon-sized unit of U.S. soldiers and about two dozen Afghan troops was shooting back with such intensity the barrels on their weapons turned white hot. The high rate of fire appears to have put a number of weapons out of commission, even though the guns are tested and built to operate in extreme conditions.

Cpl. Jonathan Ayers and Spc. Chris McKaig were firing their M4s from a position the soldiers called the "Crow's Nest." The pair would pop up together from cover, fire half a dozen rounds and then drop back down.

On one of these trips up, Ayers was killed instantly by an enemy round. McKaig soon had problems with his M4, which carries a 30-round magazine.

"My weapon was overheating," McKaig said, according to Cubbison's report. "I had shot about 12 magazines by this point already and it had only been about a half hour or so into the fight. I couldn't charge my weapon and put another round in because it was too hot, so I got mad and threw my weapon down."

The soldiers also had trouble with their M249 machine guns, a larger weapon than the M4 that can shoot up to 750 rounds per minute.

Cpl. Jason Bogar fired approximately 600 rounds from his M-249 before the weapon overheated and jammed the weapon.

Bogar was killed during the firefight, but no one saw how he died, according to the report.

___

On the Net:

U.S./NATO forces in Afghanistan: http://www.nato.int/isaf/
Army weapons: http://tinyurl.com/yk95j8z
Weapon manufacturer: http://www.colt.com/mil/M4.asp
State Department background on Afghanistan: http://tinyurl.com/5q42z
 
Top