Replacing the M14 with M16 during Vietnam. Your thoughts?

[AK-Gunner]

I've been studying the development of AR-15 family of weapons reading huge amount of both false and true material, talked with people who were using the early weapons in Vietnam and also with those who were using the M14 rifle. I'm lucky enough to have been involved with people from US-SOCOM and LEO status and their veterans for several wars, so there have been quite interesting chats with the proverbial beer can and the equally proverbial camp fire.

I will not try to write a book, just a few pointers which people quite often get wrong and this is because of the fact that if you repeat something often enough, it will become the truth.

- AR stands for Armalite
- the AR-15 rifle was intended to be sold to the US Military to make Armalite and the main company Fairchild big and rich
- the rifle WAS NOT designed for being used in S-E Asia, the Vietnam war wasn't 'a thing' when the rifle was designed and nobody cared about any Vietnamese people
- the basic idea of the .22 calibre was to gain better ammo/weight ratio
- the first AR-15 prototypes were shooting .222 Rem, but it didn't meet the requirement to fully penetrate a steel helmet at 600 yards.
- the 5.56x45 calibre was created to meet the parameters by modifying a .222 Rem shell casing by pushing its shoulders further out gaining more room for powder thus lessening bullet bearing surface which caused poorer accuracy, still good enough for a service rifle
- Armalite failed to sell AR-15 to....basically anywhere, so they sold the production rights to Colt and eventually closed down the whole operation
- ...but AR still stands for Armalite
- that said, don't hold Eugene Stoner responsible for the problems that followed the AR-15 sales to Colt...
- Colt had better salesmen and the first real client was USAF security forces who were happy with a lightweight rifle they basically just carried along and went to a range if the range-day happened to be a beautiful day

Meanwhile the M14. There's lots of nostalgia involved with the cry for M14, but the weapon construction was a hell on earth for armourers filing parts to make them fit together, it lost its accuracy after fairly short amount of use and was NOT a reliable weapon of which I have personal experience luckily not in combat, based on WWII era M1 Garand it was utterly slow and expensive to manufacture and in the end its production lasted only five years from 1959 to 1964, and the last but not the least, its 7.62x51 ammo was too heavy plus the uncontrollable full auto was an useless feature. I'm sorry to say M14 was the rifle that never should've happen, but as stated earlier, the reason for not selecting the far superior FAL was based on an outdated urge to select a traditional rifle. After all, you are supposed to use the rifle mostly on parades and drills, right?

As M14 was slow to produce not meeting the production demands of a war fighting country, the production was ordered to halt in 1963 and because there was no other intermediate cartridge shooting rifle available, M16 was the only possible choice to be selected to become the new service rifle as an experimental rifle designated as XM16-E1.

About 5.56x45...

- the production rifle barrel twist rate was 1/12" which just barely stabilized the 55 grain bullet (1/14" with prototypes)
- the marginal stabilization caused the fast and light bullet tumble and break apart upon impact on human body thus causing devastating and usually lethal internal wounds
- this said: to incapacitate and to permanently take away a human from the roster you don't need a heavy bullet, you need lots of damage and bleeding inside him/her and for this the bullet-terminal velocity-twist rate combination was just about perfect
- THIS was a pleasant surprise to everyone, so the 5.56x45 was not designed to be extremely lethal per se, the whole fuss was about how to penetrate the bloody helmet with as lightweight ammo as possible...
- every rifle needs some love (except an AK, all an AK needs is more ammo), but the M16 was marketed as 'self cleaning' thus there were no cleaning kits available for the troops. This was an obvious error and after a short while and quite a many unnecessary deaths the troops were supplied with them kits.
- during the escalating conflict, the then easily and cheaply available powder selected by REMF bean counters caused two problems: it made the weapon dirty inside and by wreaking havoc with the so delicate dwell time it pushed the BCG into overspeed thus the extractor was ripping off rims from the spent cases causing failures to extract and THIS combined with...
- corporate greed! Since the AR-15 was intended to be used in nice and cosy climates there was no need for expensive chrome lining in the chamber or bore... and this was the basis for the price tag per rifle when Colt made the deal with the US-ARMY, so to maximize profit, the engineers' cry for chrome lining was hushed down...
- the lack of chrome lining and the resulting chamber corrosion caused failures to extract from the very beginning, but it was calculated by Colt that it was better to lose a few pawns during the war which would be over by the next Christmas anyway, so better just ignore the problem and collect the money
- the ill fated selection of too fast and dirty burning powder made the problem imminent to ALL troops using the new ammo, so something had to be done, but even then not before a Senate hearing. Hundreds of troops died, sometimes whole platoons of them at a time as a result of corporate greed, hooray the American dream gone sour this time.
- after the chrome lining commenced the newly adopted M16A1 served extremely well during the rest of the duration of the conflict.

About changing the service rifle during a war. It happens and it doesn't matter. Really, it's a non issue. The new troops will be trained from the day one with the current gear and the rest will have a quick field training and they are ready to go. Not a biggie really. None of the regular troops is so much grown into a particular weapon system that the change would cause major problems to them to adapt and the VerySpecialGuys who actually are, will still be using whatever weapons they want to.

Kill or wound? Kill, preferably messy and painfully with lots of whimper and crying out loud during the process. You ask 'why'.

Because nothing else makes the troops' balls retract and kill the morale more brutally than the realisation that when you get hit there will be no hope, just an agonizing ugly death. A fact, seen it happen and there's books and studies on the subject.

But... doesn't a wounded need help from at least four guys? Yes. After the fact, i.e. completion of the mission, or during a lull in a defensive fight. The so called 'modern warfare' happens in urban areas and usually(!) the missions are quick, decisive and effective. If you get hit it is your job to stop yourself from bleeding out, your peers will be fighting until the proverbial fat lady sings, then they'll check on you and get you further help and an appropriate med evac. The one wounded takes five soldiers off the fight has never been an actual fact with one single exception: the Israelis used to have mixed gender first line troops, which is OK in theory. But what happens when the sexy brown eyes gets hit: every single alpha-male stops fighting trying to save the possible mother of their beautiful children. That's human nature taking control over mission oriented minds. So, no more mixed gender troops and not even females fighting within the front line Israeli troops, Israeli women in the trenches is obsolete news for this particular and quite understandable reason.

Also about wounding: I have witnessed with my own eyes how a truck driver who during a drive got shot through his right lung with (probably) a 7.62 FMJ from an AK, drove the lorry for an hour or so and furiously fought back any helpers because he insisted he's OK...with a bullet through and through his upper torso. Don't know what happened to him after he was taken to a hospital, but that was an eye opening moment in my life.

Kill, make it messy, don't wound is my take on this and I'm not alone with this assessment.


Would USA have won the Vietnam war if they had another service rifle, say like FAL or an AK? No. US troops won every major battle, so the 'winning or losing' was a political gameplay, not a military one. When fighting is between any at least close to modern armed forces, the performance of an individual serviceman has no real effect on the outcome of an armed conflict, which is mind crushing thought to the troops, but so it has been and so it will be.


Sorry for the incoherent babbling, I'm multitasking as I go...

[pre 64]

Thanks AK...good read.
Quote of the month...'the AK doesn't need love , it just needs more ammo'

[Pirate]

And "REMF beancounters"... hell I'm not even military and I giggled at that!

[CorditeCrazy]

Nice post AK, that was quite informative

[oafpatroll]

Nice post AK, that was quite informative

Hear hear! No substitute for experience and expertise.

[nkosi]

The responses from the experienced guys has been excellent. Thanks.

I cannot contribute to the platform discussion, but the saying that the more things change, the more they stay the same comes to mind on the topic of the 5.56 x 45mm for military use.

The initial light for calibre 55gr load at high velocity was heralded as the new way foward and after all this time we are back to a medium to heavy (ish) bullet for calibre at more moderate velocities.

They should have just asked the hunters .

[oafpatroll]

Ha ha, that's funny. Ask hunters what 'the perfect calibre/load' is. I've watched fires burn out to that discussion