The aluminum magazines of the time were designed for one-time use—load it, fire it, discard it. Beyond the malfunctions, the XM16E1 suffered several part breakage problems. I hope someday, somehow the get the justice they so greatly deserve. It was a manufacturing issue concerning the sensitivity of the primers. The AR-15 was developed in lockstep with the .223 Remington/5.56x45m cartridge. Load a magazine, charge the handle or drop the bolt, and you get a “bang” instead of a “clang”. Move the BCG faster and harder, and you cause increased wear on critical parts, such as the bolt and disconnector. God bless the men who served and their families who served and suffered. But the U.S. Army had spoken. All the while, the enemy is spraying you down with their AK-47s. Some of the most common requests? And barrels are made from steel. or those serving it. They all told of the M1 Garand making white smoke, so when they formed a battle line the Germans enfladed the white smoke with artillary to devastating effect. On that note, always be sure to point your weapon in a safe direction. No proof of corruption was found. This term means that the bolt traveled far enough back to strip a new cartridge from the magazine, but because the chamber is still occupied, the two rounds double-feed. There were even a few versions that were never given military designations at all. He was an experienced hunter before the war and continued to be afterwards, so he is very experienced and proficient with rifles of various makes, types and calibers. From VFW halls to online forums, you normally don’t have to go far to find someone proclaiming the evils of the AR-15/M16 and how unreliable it is. The official U.S. Army training manual of the time stated: “an occasional cleaning will keep the weapon functioning indefinitely.” Possibly one of the stupidest sentences ever written. One Marine writing his parents explained: “Out of 40 rounds I’ve fired, my rifle jammed about 10 times. These circumstances left the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps…obsolete. The U.S. military doctrine of today rarely has the average rifleman employing full-auto in their M16s or M4s. In battle, the difference of a few milliseconds can cost a life. I was trained in BCT on the M-14. Design for Assembly Definition: ... M5 x .8 M6 x 1.0 M8 x 1.25 M10 x 1.5 M11 x 1.25 M12 x 1.25 M12 x 1.75 M14 x 1.5 M16 x 2.0 Qty Required 12mm 0 14mm 2 2 16mm 3 3 20mm 4 8 8 20 25mm 6 6 12 30mm 3 8 11 ... Part Numbers CDC - Rocky Mount, NC . Colt, having several millions of stick powder ammo in stock, used it to test the rifles and “pass” the requirements. The congressional committee that went to Vietnam to investigate the M16 failures tragically discovered that a Marine was killed in combat because he was the only member of his squad with a cleaning rod. Join PackRats e-mail newsletter to receive exclusive updates and deals. ArmaLite developed the rifle and helped with the cartridge, but most of the cartridge work was completed by Remington. A truly eye opening report, keep them coming. Thank GOD Col. Moore and Sgt. 5 indicates 1965. A brass cartridge expands in the chamber to create a gas seal; once the pressure drops, the brass contracts and can be extracted from the chamber. So, how did the XM16E1 go from that to being an unreliable piece of shi-…junk? Copyright © 2021 Pew Pew Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Check out our beginners guns video course. (Fortunately, someone in his unit, whom he remembered, wrote a very detailed book about the war, although we did not discover it until the 2000's. It jammed continually with blanks, and during a live-fire range it went automatic even though the safety was still on. The report from Colt was sent to the Army and ignored. My uncle worked his way up to sergeant in an Army infantry unit, spending much of his time tasked to call in air support for his lieutenant. . God Bless America and the men/women who protect it. As he checked to see if I really did have it on "safe," it went full auto on him too. I really liked this article on the early M 16. As a career law enforcement officer and leo rangemaster I have enjoyed many conversations about guns with my uncle, a soldier in Vietnam in the height of the war. Please fly our flag daily. David, this was an extremely well researched and presented article explaining the controversy of the M16. I was not involved in intense combat so I never experienced many of the issues. Ongoing DEALYS at many hubs...TN/OK/VA, Govt's Finest! Reliable, accurate, and deadly. Stoner, ArmaLite, and Colt knew it, too. As designed and tested by ArmaLite, Colt, Stoner, and Remington, the M16 is a truly amazing firearm. The deeper we dive into this mess, the angrier you should be. You need to drop the magazine, lock the bolt back, pull out your cleaning rod (if you were issued one…), and jam it down the barrel of your rifle to knock the spent case out. Get proficient on YOUR time. GI Pattern Slings can be used with the M1 Garand, M14, M1A and AR15 M16 Rifle as well as most commercial equivalent Rifles and Shotguns. OD Green Cotton web. It’s the dreaded “click” instead of a “bang”. The original prototype AR-15 was developed by ArmaLite in 1956, and is a scaled down version of the ArmaLite AR-10 rifle, chambered in 5.56x45mm rather than 7.62x51mm. We’ve built dozens of AR’s and we’ll cover all the best AR-15 upgrades such as handguards, triggers, BCGs, gas blocks, and more. The U.S. Army Ordnance Corps has a long history of screwing over soldiers. for stick powder. Thank you for such a well written and well researched article. These are the BEST and most accurate rendition of the original USGI Web Sling used from WWII through Vietnam! However, none of these changes addressed the greatest issue—the ball powder was simply bad. Excellent They designed them, tested them, and produced them. They didn’t care about what was best for the rifle; they choose the powder, tested it, and used the numbers from the ball powder tests to determine what the technical data package should require. This also helped fill in some details about the war.) But the rifle and cartridge they designed were not the same ones fielded by the U.S. Army. The rifles that were mass produced and adopted by the military were, in order of adoption: There are several differences between each of these rifles, but most of them are largely unimportant for the story we’re looking at today. It’s not the end of the world and can be solved with basically the same fix-it technique, but it is a trickier (and more annoying) scenario. I had the "wait-a-minute version with the 3 prong flash suppressor and it would catch on every wine in the jungle. The BCG comes forward and, for whatever reason, fails to properly feed a round into the chamber. USGI WWII Brass Bore Cleaning Brushes 30 Cal. C’mon. It wouldn’t be until 1970 that the ball powder was finally reformulated to be closer to what the stick powder was all along. Great read but sickening to know the truth. American fighting men in Vietnam quickly discovered that their rifles did, in fact, need cleaning. The Army was okay with this, even though the rifles didn’t meet the technical data package specifications when paired with the stick powder. Fault doesn’t rest with the M16, Stoner, or even with Colt. 0s, is a number unique among C- 9. The U.S. military discovered these advantages when Americans were fighting Japanese soldiers in the jungles of WWII. I always love reading history especially from the Civil War through Vietnam. America’s newest rifle was delivered to the military in 1964, though it wouldn’t face a true trial by fire until the Battle of Ia Drang in 1965. Excellent article thoroughly laying out the history, the politics and the corruption involving the M-16. It does not surprise me any more to hear or read about the injustices perpetrated by our govt. Obviously, the Rebs hated these rifles, and we've all heard the saying "The guns the Yankees could load on Sunday and shoot all week". Unfortunately, the M16A1 would not enter service until 1967. The M16 Multiple Gun Motor Carriage, also known as the M16 half-track, was an American self-propelled anti-aircraft weapon built during World War II.It was equipped with four 0.5 inch (12.7 mm) M2 Browning machine guns in an M45 Quadmount. No, not at all. Likewise, Sgt. Garand also initially designed his Garand to fire a higher velocity intermediate cartridge but the Army said it had to be the 30-06. And all of it lands squarely at the feet of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps. Learn all the important stuff about handguns...with none of the attitude. But the U.S. Army refused, citing that it was “unnecessary” and “cost-prohibitive.”. The Canadian company Colt Canada (formerly Diemaco) licensed production of a rifle (Colt Model 715) and carbine (Colt Model 725), but later went on to produce an entire line of AR-15/M16 pattern weapons developed independently. //]]>, We’ve got a dedicated section for the AR-15 here. After years of the XM16E1 getting men killed, the M16A1 was finally adopted in February of 1967 with ten major engineering changes. I was in Viet Nam and had the same problems as stated in this article. Unable to meet these requirements, Colt declared that they were no longer accountable for the M16 passing the Army’s acceptance test and could not guarantee performance results with the ball powder. There are some lesser issues, such as magazine and parts breakage due to quality control failures, but the vast majority of the XM16E1’s problems can be traced to two reasons: Nearly every problem with the XM16E1 in Vietnam was directly caused by one or both of these issues. Thank you for your work....and more, please. And no problems with the XM16E1. They claimed that the rifle was “self-cleaning” and would not require a cleaning kit. There were instances of units 'saving the day' with lever actions. But if you’re unlucky, this could result in a “double-feed.”. Best article I've read on the M16 - from the git-go in Vietnam, I was told to keep it clean; I did. And pity the rest of the GIs and Greenies didn't for years later. This isn’t a big deal if you’re shooting semi-automatic because the BCG will settle forward before you can pull the trigger a second time. But I wasn’t trained on the M-16 until AIT. In 1965, a full year after tests proved that ball powder could break the M16 rifle, General William Westmoreland, the commanding officer of U.S. Army Vietnam, sent an urgent request for the adoption of the M16 by U.S. forces in Vietnam. By far, the most common problem the XM16E1 faced was a failure to extract. And often too little force to set off the primer and fire. While this process doesn't mean we'll never see something like this happen again, it does at least make it much less likely. But if the chamber is filled with tiny pits, the brass swells to fill the void and becomes stuck, resulting in slipped extractors and ripped case heads. This would get an easy A in any undergraduate class and your sources are excellent. It’s been 50 years since the problems with the M16 were fixed, but the rifle still suffers from a legacy that it never deserved. I expect he will be pleased to hear that your findings bear out his 50+-year-old intuition. If the military adopted Colt’s rifle, Colt would build it. I have compiled this information from a number of sources, but the bulk of it comes straight from the Congressional Subcommittee Hearing on the M-16. There is a lot of science we could talk about, but I’ll keep this simple. The buffer weights are effectively a dead blow hammer inside the rifle and act to keep the bolt from bouncing after it locks in place. In case you didn’t know, Vietnam is mostly jungle and coastline. And I' have a Bushie M4 now for 20 years I bought (after Dollar Bill Clinton left office) and that gun has NEVER had a problem. Terms that were impossible for the M16 to meet, which they knew from the start. If the BCG is moving too fast, it will chamber the round, lock, and then bounce backward slightly. He has mentioned stoppages involving rounds stuck in the barrel, but I will have to ask more about types of malfunctions. M1 Garand Web Slings & Bayonets. Keep up the good work. In full-auto, the act of the BCG locking forward is what trips the hammer. What a game changer. Even bows and arrows had a cyclic rate higher than the carbine. Thank you for your well-researched article. Combine that with a BCG that is moving faster and more violently, and you have extractors slipping off rims and torn case heads. Let us know if you’re interested in more of these kinds of articles down in the comments! Colt delivered more than 330,000 rifles under this agreement. When his gun jammed in combat, he was usually able to switch to the medic's M-16, as the medic was otherwise busy. As such, I have always held his opinions on these type of matters in high regard. Winchester wasn't formed until 1866. Never knew this side of it. Fun fact: Steel hates water. These were sold to the military in small-ish batches under commercial Colt names. But if the issue occurs during full-auto fire? The same rifles, loaded with the army’s ball powder, faced 18.5 malfunctions and 5.2 stoppages per 1,000 rounds—a failure rate almost six times as high. Ammunition made with the correct stick powder (manufactured by Remington) was utilized by various forces in the early days of Vietnam, including the ARVN, Green Berets, and the 7th Cavalry in the Battle of Ia Drang. We hate SPAM and promise to keep your email address safe. In June of 1963, the Army Materiel Command conducted tests at Frankford Arsenal and determined that stick powder was not a viable propellant for the M16. While the M16 technically shared the same shortcomings as the XM16E1, it was only acquired by the Air Force and in comparatively smaller numbers. Spot on. M16A1 nor my XM177E2 because I knew The M16 did not fail in Vietnam. purchase helps support my work in bringing you more awesome gun and gear articles. But this is where our story takes a turn from stupidity and apathy to clear malicious intent. Using primary sources (instead of synthesizing from multiple secondary sources) is key to good history writing and you nailed it. I killed all three of them 15 feet away.”. Im looking to buy my first AR so I like learning. These are all valid questions. The average humidity is 78%. In short, they sabotaged the M16 project. Keep in mind that these failed mechanics are occurring within milliseconds of each other. And that part is true. He died running up and down the line while using his cleaning rod to unjam his fellow Marines’ rifles. I’m sure ammunition expense was a prime factor in that. A step back is needed to understand the scope of this issue. While in recent years these graybeards have been largely drowned out in the flooded market of high-quality AR-15s, there are legitimate reasons behind their criticisms and complaints. Even though I knew almost everything you stated here in this article is still sickens me that US Army got away with treason and more because they didn’t like the rifle and did all they could to sabotage the M-16. The article left out two important players in the debacle; SecDef Robert McNamara and Commander in Chief Lyndon B. Johnson. How is that safe? Savage had the right gun with the right ammo at Ia Drang. And almost all of them were critical parts. An amazing read. Several years later, the Ichord Committee concluded: “the rifle project manager, the administrative contracting officer, the members of the Technical Coordinating Committee, and others as high in authority as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Installations and Logistics knowingly accepted M-16 rifles that would not pass the approved acceptance test.“. I chuckle a bit as now a single point sling is the rage, I used he carrying strap from a T-12 telephone with the ends clipped together through the carrying handle, adjusted so the trigger was at hand level so it could be fired one hand. However, what is important to know is that these rifles worked flawlessly. The M16 rifle series is the United States military designation of rifle variants of the ArmaLite AR-15 assault rifle adopted by the US military. Sure I have a fancy Colt M4 tricked out but that Bushie, with fixed GI stock and fixed carrying handle, never fails. The M16A1 solved many of the design and manufacturing problems inherent to the M16 family. The Krag Jorgensen rifle, although a fine weapon m, lacked the speed of reloading that the Mauser had with the stripper clip. In short I liked your article and would very much like to see more of this type. He has always believed that the unit's frequent rifle jams in combat were caused by ammunition that was "too hot" for the M-16. Copyright 2007-2021 PackRats Collectibles, LLC All Rights Reserved. Thank you for this well-written, well-researched article. But if you’re spraying full-auto fire to suppress the enemy during an ambush, taking the time to rack a charging handle because your rifle went “click” will leave you with a lifelong bad opinion of the rifle. Higher pressure means the case is harder to extract because it is still being held against the walls of the chamber of the gas pressure. I need it for my rifles are getting a lot of guys killed because they jam so easily.“. And all of those high-ranking officers were out of a job. It was a piece of junk. However, this is another scenario that can’t be solely attributed to the XM16E1. Thank you for taking the time to present a complex, controversial and in this case heartbreaking / Infuriating issue in an understandable, readable and documentary style. In this new cartridge, they used a specific power, the IMR 4475—an extruded or “stick” powder made by Du Pont and sold to Remington. // Lady In Black, American Society Of International Law Journal, Dr Michael Preston, Nicole Barré Ethnicity, Accident On I-10 New Orleans Today,