On Jan 5, 12:51*pm, Eregon wrote:
"Ed Huntress" wrote :

There was a velocity issue with the original loadings, too, IIRC. The
version the Air Force accepted did not meet general Pentagon
requirements for service-rifle velocity. Supposedly, that's why there
was a change in ammo.

The "velocity issue" was that the IMR powder pushed those itty-bitty
bullets so fast that, upon impact, the projectiles would "keyhole" and,
thus, create more devastating wounds than the slower-velocity BALL
powder loadings.

When this difference was mentioned to McNamara's Finest, they panicked
and started screaming "instability" and "inaccuracy" since they would
never (even in their wildest nightmares) stoop so low as to actually
observe the phenomena much less make any attempt at discovering the
facts.

Besides which, Olin didn't load IMR powder and Remington didn't load BALL
powder. Thus Remington got the Rifle Contract and Olin got the AMMO
Contract - and everybody made money hand-over-fist.

Remington NEVER produced M16s, it was a COLT baby, and the reason that
IMR powder wasn't used was Dupont couldn't reproduce the ballistics
that original experimental batch had. See Black Rifle 1 & 2 before
spewing hash. Has the whole sorry story of the M16's early days.
McNamara's band has a prominent place but there's plenty of blame to
spread around.

Stan