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Eregon[_4_]

wrote in
:

On 04 Jan 2010 15:25:30 GMT, Eregon wrote:

Larry Jaques wrote in
m:

On Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:30:14 -0600, the infamous "David R.Birch"
scrawled the following:

Wes wrote:

"Only accurate rifles are interesting."- Col. Townsend Whelen

This thinking led us to fight two World Wars with target rifles
instead of battle rifles and to use squads of riflemen supported by
machine guns instead of the more useful unit of machine guns
supported by riflemen.

Lerps in 'Nam picked up muddy, always-usable AKs and tossed their
early, quick-jamming M-16s. The smart ones also quit smoking and ate
the same fishhead & rice diet the Vietnamese did so their smells
were the same, internally and externally. The M-16 was eventually
debugged, but lots of our guys died from the early models. That was
inexcusable.

The jamming problem was NOT caused by faulty DESIGN but by faulty
AMMUNITION.

The Stoner-designed Armalite was designed to utilize IMR powder and,
in its initial testing and Air Force deployment, served so well that
the brass at the Pentagon decided to adopt it for the other services.

Unfortunately, however, the "geniuses" at the Pentagon preferred doing
business with Winchester rather than Remington and wrote the ammo
specs to require BALL powder in the cartridges. The dustier BALL
powder resulted in both frequent jamming due to powder fouling AND
degradation of bullet performance due to lowered velocities.

While the addition of a "Bolt Assist" helped (somewhat) to overcome
the fouling of the chamber by the dirty powder in the substandard
ammunition, the only "treatment" was frequent cleaning of the firing
chamber.

I wonder if the REMF that wrote those specs got his Directorship with
the Olin Corporation when he retired...

IN 1964 and 1965 I was stationed at Nha Trang air base. 5th special
Forces camp abutted on the back of the Nha Trang airbase and I used to
eat in the S.F. mess.

When the first hullabaloo happened with the M-16 and people started
writing home to Mama about their gun jamming I mentioned this across
the supper table to a bunch of army people. I was told that 5th had
conducted the "jungle tests" of the M-16 and "we never had a
malfunction".

The statement was followed by the comment "Of course we clean our
weapons".

I can't comment from personal experience (the A.F. is the only service
that sends its officers out to do or die and stays safely at the base
:-) but I've always wondered about the stories of people who threw
their M-16 away to grab up a muddy old AK. Where did they get the
ammo? Did the U.S. Army maintain stocks of AK ammo because they just
knew that their people wanted it?

Regards,

J.B.

The "early testers" were supplied with Remington-produced ammo loaded
with IMR powder.

It was only when the Olin-produced, BALL-powder loaded, ammo was issued
that powder-fouling of the chamber became an issue.

With typical Pentagon brilliance, DOD preferred to modify the weapon
rather than admit that the ammo specifications were faulty.