hist2004
04-23-2004, 10:34 AM
The Saga of the M16 in
Vietnam (part 1)
by **** Culver
The following story is one that I tell with some trepidation, since my experience(s) with the "Matty Mattel Mouse Guns" were not pleasant ones. In this time and place far separated from the grim reality of kill or be killed, the bitter memories of the "little black rifle that wouldn’t shoot" have started blending into the mists of long forgotten firefights. Some of the bitterness of those days of long ago will no doubt color the story somewhat, but in order for the reader to understand the story from the perspective of those of us who experienced the frustration, this is probably unavoidable. There seemed to be a callous disregard for the lives and well being of those individuals who willingly fought and often died using a seriously flawed rifle. This is their story then, for those who went in harm's way with the XM16E1, and most of all, for those who didn’t come back. May their sacrifices never be forgotten.
Like most things, the reality of being armed with an ineffective weapon was of little import to those who were not risking their lives on a daily basis. By the time the problem was finally fixed, many friends and comrades had been awarded "the white cross", or in the verbiage of the time, had "bought the farm". Many lives could have been saved if a few individuals in decision making billets had possessed the intestinal fortitude to correct the problem. ...And the problem was "correctable" – all that was necessary was the application of a bit of guts and common sense. Aircraft that are suspected of being flawed are immediately grounded until a problem has been corrected, or a fix has been found. And so it was with the Marines’ CH-46 Helicopter during the same time frame. The tail pylons started rather abruptly separating themselves from the bird with catastrophic results. The CH-46 was was quite rightly grounded and sent back to Okinawa until the problem was isolated and fixed. For some unexplained reason the same rationale was not applied to a rifle that was costing lives on a daily basis. Perhaps the "Wingies Union" was stronger than the "Grunt’s Union" – whatever the reason, dead is dead, and the Grunts were not amused! Unfortunately, doing the "right thing" would have cost individuals in positions of authority considerable embarrassment – something that no one was willing to risk. The "air types" could blame Boeing, but many of the decisions concerning the M16 were made within the "military industrial complex", making it more difficult to pin Colt to the wall. Individuals within the Military who had given their "yea verily" to the project would have found themselves looking for another job.
Rather than bore you with cold statistics and hard facts to start, I will tell the story as it happened and as I remember it. Making allowances for the dimming of the memory after 32 years, the entire saga still stands in my consciousness as if it happened only yesterday – things like that are hard to forget.
Our outfit, the Second Battalion, Third Marine Regiment, was selected to assume the duty as one of the two Battalions filling the job as the "Special Landing Force". This evolution consisted of a quick trip out of Vietnam to the peacetime home of the 3rd Marine Division (Okinawa), for a refurbishment of web gear, worn out equipment, and the fleshing out of a casualty riddled Battalion with fresh replacements. This slight respite from the "free fire zone" afforded new replacements an opportunity to gain experience and training with their new organization. The SLF was in fact a BLT (Battalion Landing Team) with enough attachments to make it into a sort of "bobtailed Regiment". In addition to the standard four line (infantry) companies, and an H&S Company (Headquarters & Service), we also had attached: a Helicopter Squadron, an Artillery Battery, a Recon Platoon, an Engineer Platoon, Amtracs (Amphibious Tractors/Landing Vehicles) and various other supporting elements. At that time, an (unreinforced) Infantry Battalion (before being festooned with the above attachments) consisted of approximately 1100 men. 1/3 (1st Bn., 3rd Marine Regiment) was to be designated as SLF Alpha, and 2/3 was to make up SLF Bravo.
The SLF’s job was to act as a sort of "Super Sparrow-hawk" (calvary to the rescue stuff) to reinforce any organization actively engaged with the enemy who wound up in a "feces sandwich"... when the brass sent in the SLF, someone was already in big trouble! Knowing that you were headed into a "hot LZ" (landing zone) on a rather repeated basis made for a very exciting tour. The normal SLF tour of duty was usually scheduled for a duration of 6 weeks. The outgoing SLF Battalion was then returned to its parent Division (1st or 3rd), and a new Battalion took over the rather thrilling duty as "The I Corps’ Fire Brigade". It was an ingenious scheme, as it allowed the Marines to refurbish their battalions occasionally, and allowed time (albeit relatively short), to train new replacements out of the line of fire. Normally, the SLF tour was anticipated by the selected Battalions with some enthusiasm, as it was supposed to include one short R&R for the Battalion in Subic Bay, prior to the SLF’s reassignment to the RVN. Needless to say, no one in 2/3 ever saw Subic, except as a casualty. Murphy, always taking a hand in things, stirred the pot in such a way that the refurbishment and replacement of battalions on the SLF was curtailed after the vicious "Hill Fights" around Khe Sanh in April of ’67. 2/3 (and their sister battalion, 1/3) had taken on the best that the NVA could throw at them and whipped them hands down, but it was not without cost. Many a dead or dying Marine was found with a cleaning rod shoved down the bore of the little black rifle...
The constant pressure on I Corps starting that Spring left 2/3 manning the ramparts as one of the two SLFs for a period of nine months (versus the normal 6 weeks)! When the smoke finally settled, 2/3 had taken over 800 casualties and those who survived walked away with a sigh of relief. By August of ’67, my company (Hotel, 2/3) had only 5 Marines without at least one Purple Heart, and I was not one of them.
Technically, the SLFs were supposed to return to the LPH (and other supporting shipping) after a battle, lick their wounds, get cleaned up, draw more ammunition and standby for the next mission.
By way of explanation to those who have not been in the Corps or associated with the Navy, "LPH" stands for "Landing Platform - Helicopter". The LPH is in fact nothing more than a small aircraft carrier, primarily designed to launch helicopters for a Marine (or perhaps Army) landing force. The supporting shipping usually consisted of an LSD, ("Landing Ship - Dock" designed to launch Amphibian Tractors for a seaborne surface assault), an LST ("Landing Ship - Tank", self explanatory) and an APA (assault transport to house additional troops). All together, they made up the seaborne vehicles for a rather formidable assault force.
Murphy again took a hand, and out of those fateful 9 months, we spent approximately 12 days aboard our assigned shipping. The rest of the time we got "chopped op-con" to one of the Infantry Regiments ashore (transferred to, and under their operational control) - after all, we were those "pogues" who lived aboard ship and had it easy, were we not? Everyone figured that we were well rested and ready to go. The Regiments ashore, of course, took full advantage of such obviously fresh troops, and threw us into the very "choicest" assignments, to allow their units a breather – we were eventually referred to as the "day on - stay on battalion", and brother, they weren’t kidding!
It was in the arena outlined above that I got my first introduction to the XM16E1. When 2/3 arrived on Okinawa to refit and train for their duties as SLF Bravo, they were already licking their wounds. The Battalion had been ambushed on a march between two hill masses, losing their Commanding Officer and Sergeant Major, along with numerous other individuals. While they were hardly demoralized, they possessed a particular affection for their CO and Sgt.Maj. and were chomping at the bit to return to the RVN to avenge the Battalion’s losses. Shortly after 2/3’s arrival on Okinawa, the Battalion learned that it was scheduled to draw a new "experimental rifle"... the XM16E1. 2/3 dutifully turned in their M14s to draw a curious little plastic thing that drew lots of snickers and comments from the old timers (we still had a few WWII vets in those days). The Battalion was given an orientation lecture in the Camp Schwab Base Theater by some ordnance folks, sent to the range to fire some sighting in rounds, and ****ounced properly prepared for combat... little did they know!
The Battalion was told that they would now be able to carry 400 rounds ashore on each operation, and were now armed with an accurate, hard hitting rifle that would tear a man’s arm off if you hit him. The lecture was impressive. The interesting thing is that the Marines WANTED to like the little rifle – it was light, cute, and supposedly extremely effective! Marines are always in favor of a weapon that will dismember their enemy more efficiently and more effectively. The Marines of 2/3 left Okinawa READY to go try this "jack the giant killer" on the NVA or Cong (they didn’t care which, as long as it made a good fight!). However, there were several flies in the ointment. First, they only had one cleaning rod per rifle and no replacements – sounds reasonable, but events were to prove this assumption wrong. The second problem was that ordnance had only enough magazines to issue three (3) per rifle, and they were "twenty rounders". The thirty rounders in those days were only being used by the Special Forces – Robert "Strange" McNamara, (The Secretary of Defense), had decreed that the 20 round magazines were more cost effective than the 30 round magazines (this from the guy who was responsible for marketing the Edsel!)! We were now armed with the latest in weaponry, and able to carry 400 rounds ashore. Our confidence level would probably have been considerably higher if we had been issued more than three 20 round Magazines per gun. We were promised more of course, and as it turned out, it became true, but only because we were able to pick up those left behind by the casualties. The long and the short of this lesson, however, was that they were trying to get the M16 into action well before adequate supplies were available to support the weapon, even if it had been functioning properly. Politics is indeed a strange game!
Ammunition was issued in "white" or "brown" twenty (20) round boxes. Bandoleers with "clipped ammunition" in ten round "strippers" had not yet made their way to South East Asia. While this would have been a handicap under normal circumstances, it turned out to be a "non-problem"... A full 50% of the rifles wouldn’t shoot semi-automatically! The unfortunate individuals armed with the malfunctioning rifles couldn’t shoot enough rounds to need more than the initial three magazines at any rate! Three hundred and forty rounds in 20 round cardboard boxes were stowed in our packs, with the idea that during a firefight, a man who had run dry, could roll over to his buddy and take ammunition out of his pack and his buddy could do the same. As it turned out, this rarely figured into the equation.
The first clue (for 2/3) that something was wrong came during the battle of Hill 881 North... but all the Hill Fights at Khe Sanh in April ’67 came up the same – dead Marines with cleaning rods stuck down the barrel of their M16s to punch out cartridge cases that refused to extract. At first, we considered that the experiences encountered during the Hill Fights might have constituted an isolated incident, but as experience was to prove, alas, ‘twas not so! The regulations of the time required that all such malfunctions were to be documented, and reported to Ordnance Maintenance/Division Ordnance. The 2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment of Marines must have filled a 6X6 truck with malfunction reports attempting to stay within the administrative guidelines. We submitted the required reports and waited – we wanted the problem FIXED – NOW, and we were willing to play the ordnance paperwork game if that was what it took to correct the situation!
Spring stretched into summer, and summer gave way to fall, with reams of paperwork having being sent out to the Ordnance Maintenance Folks on the "Rock" (Okinawa) and to the ordnance folks in Vietnam. We outlined, in great detail, the failure of the much vaunted M16 to perform as advertised... It simply wasn’t working! It seemed that if your rifle would shoot, it would shoot under almost all conditions (if clean), but if it wouldn’t, no amount of coaxing would help. All of the M16s seemed to be extraordinarily sensitive to carbon build-up, even if the rifle was one that would shoot when freshly cleaned. This meant that in a long and heated firefight, it was possible to have a much larger percentage of rifles "out of action" than the 50% that didn't want to shoot at all. Something was seriously amiss! A rifle that refuses to shoot during a firefight, is unsuitable as a combat implement. The NVA was obviously not gonna' allow us a "time out" while we held a cleaning session! My first clue to the solution to the problem came from talking to the Battalion Armorer. He had an M16 that worked under almost all conditions. I asked him what he had done to it, and he replied that he had taken a ¼" drill, attached a couple of sections of cleaning rod to it, and put some "crocus cloth" through the slotted tip (like a patch) and run it into the chamber and turned the drill motor on. He "horsed" the drill a bit and apparently relieved the chamber dimensions just enough to ensure positive functioning. This was a sort of precursor to the "chrome plated chamber fix" that would be applied in days to come.
FSR (Force Service Regiment – which also acts as a home for the small arms repair folks), sent a trouble shooting team to visit us aboard the LPH shortly after the "Hill Fights" to try and pin down the problem. As soon as the ordnance team arrived, they made it clear that THEY were already well informed (meaning they’d already made up their minds) concerning our problem and had decided (without so much as a question to us) that WE as a Battalion were responsible for a bad rap being given to a marvelous little rifle! The lads in the rear had decided that WE were simply not keeping our rifles clean, and if we weren’t such inattentive and unmotivated "oafs" being led by incompetents, we wouldn’t have such a problem. Needless to say, the hackles stood up on the back of our necks. "Them wuz fightin’ words!" ...And we wuz peaceable folks (well sorta’ anyway)! To say that they had misread the problem is an understatement!
Certainly from a personal standpoint, they were full of "un-reprocessed prunes". My background in small arms went back as far as my conscious memory, and when I "screwed up" with a firearm of any kind as a kid, my Daddy left knots on my head and welts on my "stern-sheets"! During this time frame, I had just finished firing on the USMC Rifle Team (in 1965 – this was now 1967) and to say that I had high standards of weapons cleanliness for my rifle company is an extreme understatement. If the rifles had been clean enough to eat off of before the visit from the FSR clowns, rifle cleanliness moved up a notch to "autoclaved" as a result of the insults they were bandying about! We literally fired thousands of test rounds over the fantail (the stern) of the LPH. Each of the issued rifles was fired, cleaned and then fired again! ...Same story, about 50% of the rifles were reliable and 50% were "non-shooters". We cleaned the rifles between strings of fire (and this test was conducted in the more or less "sterile" conditions encountered in a shipboard environment), with the same results! NOW we were getting worried.
The malfunction reports continued to pour into the rear echelon papermills without any tangible results. On one notable occasion, a stalwart Marine crept around in a flanking movement on an enemy machine gun position. He assumed a quick kneeling position to get a clear shot over the sawgrass, and "did for" the hapless NVA gunner! His second shot aimed for the assistant gunner never came, as his rifle jammed and the assistant gunner avenged his dead comrade by splattering the Marine’s gray matter all over the stock of the Matty Mattel Special. After the fight, we sent his little black rifle to Division Intelligence with a complete report on the events (without removing the brain matter from the stock). We waited with baited breath for the response to this one, but alas to no avail! Still no action! Normally aggressive Marines were understandably getting a bit edgy about being assigned to listening posts or outposts. Ambushes were, more likely than not, to result in Marine casualties. We started stealing and or trading the cute little black rifle for M14s. Many rear echelon troops (usually known as REMFs) were more than willing to trade their old fashioned M14s for a little lightweight rifle that was easy to carry, (the M16s in those days were reserved for the frontline troops). Supply and demand prevailed, and what we couldn’t trade, we appropriated (a polite military term for outright theft!). The Engineer troops assigned to us for support (mine clearing, demolition, and setting up helicopter landing zones) were still armed with the M14 (not being infantry). The Engineers became some of the most popular troops in the Battalion and made up a substantial part of our base of fire. I was always partial to Engineers anyway, and these guys cemented our relations in a big time way – good people those Engineers – and THEY were armed with a REAL rifle!
It finally became apparent that no one was gonna’ come to our rescue! Our reports were falling on deaf ears, and our Battalion Commander was more than a little annoyed. The bayonet had become more popular than before and indeed enjoyed a resurgence of usefulness, until in the throes of hand to hand combat one of the lads gave the enemy a vertical butt stroke that resulted in his holding a "two part" Matty Mattel... Captured AK 47s began to show up in increasing numbers, but they were a double edged sword. The AK 47 had a rather distinctive sound when fired, and would occasionally result in the Marine "wielding" the foreign piece, receiving a bit of "friendly incoming"! This was in addition to the fact that ammo re-supply for the AK was a problem. After a fire fight, the battalion S-4 (supply & logistics) frowned on requests for a couple of thousand rounds of 7.62 X 39...
Things were getting desperate... Our Commandant at the time, General Wallace M. Green, when queried about the rumors filtering back from the front-line troops, contacted the Marine Corps ordnance people and asked them what the problem was. The Ordnance Brass "bleated" the school solution and told the "Commandanche" that the problem stemmed from poor weapons maintenance and a lack of leadership! The Commandant then appeared on TV and announced to all the world that the only thing wrong with the M16 was there weren’t enough of them! How RIGHT he was! It took 20 rifles to get off 20 rounds! We were enraged! – and we began to plot! Never let it be said that the average Marine isn't cunning, if not terribly intelligent.
This is probably a good place to describe the actual malfunction that was prevalent with the "mouse gun" – although there were variations the problem was essentially as follows:
1.) The rifle would be loaded normally, i.e., a loaded magazine would be inserted and the bolt would be allowed to go forward, causing a round to be chambered.
2.) The trigger would allow the hammer to fall, with the rifle firing the first round in the expected fashion. Then the problem began...
3.) The bolt would start to the rear, but the cartridge case would remain in the chamber. There were two variations to this one, one in which the extractor would "jump" the rim, and one where the extractor would "tear through" the rim. Either version left the case in the chamber.
4.) The bolt would start forward stripping the next round from the top of the magazine.
5.) Since the chamber was already occupied by the cartridge that had just been fired, the newly fed round would shove the bullet tip firmly into the stuck case effectively jamming the rifle.
6.) This "jam" could be cleared by:
a.) Removing the magazine from the rifle, pulling the bolt to the rear, and locking it in this position by depressing the bolt catch.
b.) If the newly fed live round did not automatically fall free (it often did), you had to shake the rifle to allow the round to fall free of the magazine well.
c.) A cleaning rod was then inserted in the muzzle and the "stuck case" was driven out of the chamber.
d.) The magazine was then reinserted and locked into the magazine well, and the bolt allowed to go forward by depressing the bolt catch. The bolt would again strip a round from the magazine and reload the chamber.
e.) This round could then be fired and the entire cycle started all over again.
Essentially we had been reduced to a "magazine fed, air cooled, single shot, muzzle ejecting shoulder weapon" shooting an inferior cartridge. How lucky can you get?
Mike Chervenak, my XO (executive officer) was a man of rare moral fiber. Not only was Mike one hell of a good Marine, but he cared for and about our Marines... and the M16 was continuing to get them killed. On one of the very few days we spent aboard the LPH preparing for our next thrilling adventure, Mike came to see me in my quarters.
"Skipper" said Mike, "what the heck are we gonna’ do about this miserable little rifle?"
"Well Mike," I replied, "I guess we’re doing about all that can be done – I’m about out of options! All we can hope for is that ordnance’ll find a fix!"
Mike being smarter than the average bear, drug his toe in the dirt and asked, "Skipper, do I have your permission to write a letter to my congressman?"
"Well Mike," I said, "I can’t tell you NOT to write such a letter, it’s a free country!"
"Well Skipper," said Mike, "what would YOU do?"
Uh oh – now I’m trapped! "Well," I told him, "I’d probably write a letter to the Commandant!"
"But Skipper," Mike says, "you KNOW he won’t ever get to see it!"
"Wrong," sez I, "all you have to do is put ‘copy to: Senator Zhlotz’ (or whoever) at the bottom of the letter, and military paranoia will kick in! The staff will be afraid NOT to show it to him, lest he get a call from an outraged Congressman!"
"Yeah," said Mike, "but I’ll bet that nothing will be done about it even if he DOES see it!" "Well, you’re probably right," I tell him, "but it might be worth a try!?"
Mike, somewhat discouraged at this point, allows as how it’ll probably be more effective to send one to his Representative. I agree without overtly suggesting that he do so. He turns to go, but just as he reaches the Water Tight Door (WTD), he turns around with a slight grin and says "Skipper, would YOU help me write it?"
Hummm... the rest is history. Mercifully we did a workmanlike job on the letter, and simply explained the problem (much as above) and made note that it took precious seconds to clear a jammed rifle that an Infantryman doesn't have in a firefight. We were also careful not to call names or point fingers, and that’s all that saved us in the light of things to come! I’m not too sure who Mike sent the letter to, but a copy of it WAS published in that "Communist Rag", The Washington Post!
Mike was on R&R when the thunder came rolling in. He received a "person to person" phone call from "Wally" (Wallace M. Green, the Commandant, who hangs his hat in Washington, D.C.) in Vietnam! Alas, Mike was not there to take the call! The brass came to me of course, asking where Mike had gone when he left on R&R. Since Mike had earned his R&R in spades, and I didn’t want to screw it up for him (knowing the problem would still be there when he returned). I did the only honorable thing I could and lied! Hee, hee, hee... Mike finished his R&R in good order and without harassment.
When they discovered that I had aided and abetted Mike in his endeavors, the feces struck the ventilation! That letter kicked off FIVE simultaneous investigations; one from the Third Marine Division, one from the 9th Amphibious Brigade, one from the 3rd Marine Regiment, one from the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment (us) and last but not least a Congressional Investigation led by a Congressman from Louisiana named "Speedy O. Long" (yes, that was really his name!). During the investigations, the Battalion hid me so far back in the "ding toolies" that it was necessary to pipe in air and sunlight. Mike and I had become the "pariahs" in the Marine Corps in general, and the 3rd Marine Division in particular. However...
At long last people started doing something overt for a change. We were pulling an operation down in the 1st Marine Division AO, south of Da Nang (AO stands for "area of operations" – the SLF was essentially a "hired gun" and went wherever there was hate and discontent). The Corps "flew-in" a C-130 with 400 brand new XM16E1 rifles along with a Marine Warrant Officer considered to be an expert in the small arms ordnance field. The ordnance Warrant was an old friend of mine who had been the Marine Representative to Cadillac Gauge when they were building the "Stoner 63" System. He had been a Staff Sergeant at the time and we used to sit on my living room floor and disassemble the Stoner System over an occasional beer (well, maybe several beers) when the Marine Corps was running its Stoner tests in at Camp Lejeune. Now, I tell myself, we’ll get some results, Bob is a pretty savvy guy! ...Wrong again "gopher breath"! – Bob Baker (the Marine Warrant Officer), had suddenly and inexplicably switched to (what we thought of as) the enemy camp!
In a private and rather heated conversation with Bob, he allowed as how the problem was that we weren’t keeping them clean enough!
"BS." I said, "Bob, you know me better than that!"
"Nope," he said, "the M16s will work if they’re clean!"
Seeing that I had reached a dead end, it was time to try a different approach. Another Captain/Company Commander and I (he having just as much a case of the "$%#^" over the "16" as the rest of us) watched as WO Baker utilized his $800 ultra powerful chamber scope to examine the M16 rifle chambers of a line of troops brought in out of the lines for evaluation of the condition of their rifles.
This marvelous chamber scope was supposedly powerful enough to make any imperfections in the chamber look like the surface of the moon. The first man stepped up to the front of the line and handed over his rifle. Bob sticks the chamber scope in the chamber, shakes his head and throws the old rifle in a pile that was to grow materially in the next couple of hours. The Marine was then issued one of the new rifles brought in on the C-130. Watching the lad with his "brandie, brand new" rifle stride off. Bob Bogard (the other Company Commander) and I chased him down (out of sight of course). We talked him out of his rifle, threw it into the dirt, kicked a little over it, picked it up and dusted it carefully off (to make it look like a "used" rifle). We then waited awhile until a number of folks had gone through the line and "number 1’s" face had faded from WO Baker's recent memory. We put the trooper back in line and hid and waited. When (Warrant Officer) Bob stuck his chamber scope into the new rifle, he again shook his head and threw the new rifle on the pile of discards! Gotcha! When we pointed out to Bob what we’d done, he went orbital (not a word to come into general use until ’69 of course)! He accused us of not taking his efforts seriously, and trying to make him look bad – not hard to do at this point! While we had outraged the brass, a seed of doubt had been planted, and it grew!
Back at the Command Post, a rather short civilian gentleman of Asian extraction wearing a Colt Detective Special on his belt, strode over to see me. I recognized him as a Mr. Ito, the Colt Representative that had flown in with the 400 rifles.
"Howdy," he sez, "my name is Ito!"
"I know," I said, "and my name is Culver."
"Yes, I know," sez Ito, and at that point, I figured that my fanny was truly gonna’ be grass. My instincts in this case were wrong.
Mr. Ito turned out to be a heck of a nice gentleman and told me all sorts of revealing stories. Among other things, he told me that Colt had offered to chrome plate the bores and chambers of the M16s for the sum of $1.25 each, but that Robert "S" McNamara had vetoed it as being non cost effective. Mr. Ito sent me a "care package" when I got home, guess what it contained? A double handful of Colt M16 tie tacks. (1) Grrrrr...
Ultimately, Colt wound up chrome plating the chambers (and later the bores) of the M16s, thus reducing the coefficient of friction between the cartridge case (not necessarily a good thing, incidentally) and the chamber. The bolt then began battering the frame from the excessive velocity in its rearward movement, and they again gave the "patient" with a brain tumor an aspirin tablet as a "fix" – they simply made the buffer group heavier! But the real story had yet to be told. The story eventually leaked in bits and pieces but was never made public in the headlines it deserved. The rifle was eventually fixed, but at what a price... Much like the guy unjustly accused in print - when the real culprit is found, the headlines don’t shout out his innocence, a retraction is usually printed in extra small type on the last page. The guys who died for this folly can never be brought back, and the people responsible who fought the problem by placing the blame where it wouldn’t get their fingers dirty came away clean.
Somewhat later, a new Battalion Commander, who hadn’t fought with us in the old days when the rifle was at its worst, inherited 2/3 in time to preside over the ensuing hate and discontent. He called me in during the ongoing investigations, and chided me about my stance on the rifle.
When I stood firm, he asked me, "Culver, just what would be YOUR solution?"
"Easy." I said, "it’s only been 9 months since we turned in our M14s, all that’s necessary is for us to draw the 14s again until ordnance can work the bugs out of this little piece of #$@&!"
"Unfortunately," said the Colonel, "it’s not as simple as that!"
"Unfortunately," sez I, "it’s EXACTLY that simple! What you mean is that it’s not ‘politically’ that simple!"
I was dismissed without another word.
The aftermath? The rifle was eventually fixed of course, but at great cost in life and suffering. Unfortunately, "fixing" the M16 left us saddled with a service rifle that shoots a cartridge not powerful enough to be used on anything larger than groundhogs according to most state hunting laws. The latest version is almost as heavy as the M14 without any of the 14's redeeming features. In retrospect, the cost of saving reputations and enhancing corporate well being was high... too high. Mike and I both spent an extra year in grade and Mike decided not to stay on in the Marine Corps even though he was a regular officer. That was one of the larger tragedies, as Mike was one of the truly good guys. Men of principle are more rare than the Hope Diamond in real life, and he was one of those. After the decorations had settled on the scene in SE Asia, they decided to keep me around and I was too stubborn to quit. The Corps, with what can only be described as a rather macabre sense of humor, sent me to Graduate School and made an Ordnance Engineer out of my somewhat "frayed" fanny. Life is often rife with seemingly contradictory incidents. Most of these give truth to the statement of George Burns in the movie, "Oh God" where he describes God as a comedian playing to an audience that’s afraid to laugh! Amen...
In "Part II" I’ll tell you what the problems REALLY were and why so many were fighting to keep the lid on the situation. The real story is not one to give you great confidence in our leadership or human nature. War and politics truly make strange bedfellows!
In Part I, I covered the saga of the M16 from a standpoint of personal remembrances. The trials and tribulations of the average grunt carrying "the little black rifle" in the field were especially frustrating because we were swallowing the party line totally. As far as I knew, my Corps had never lied to me before, and I could see no reason why they would. As it turned out, they too were being lied to, but too many in high places had put their "chop" on the "give us the M16 now" requests. Human nature dictates that very few people in high places like to back down, apparently even when lives are at stake (as long as it isn’t their life of course). Marines, too, tend to "link arms" and assume a "we’ll take care of our own" attitude and I assumed that this was simply an extension of this prevalent attitude.
One statement by an outraged Colonel on the Division Staff finally changed my mind on the "we’ll bite the bullet and fix this thing ourselves" attitude. When Mike was called up to the Division Headquarters over the infamous letter published in The Washington Post, this Colonel asked Mike, "Lieutenant, where’s your loyalty to the Marine Corps?" (asked in a tone that indicated that the Colonel considered Mike to be a disloyal SOB). Mike turned the tables and asked the Colonel if they had lied to them in Basic School (the USMC Basic Officer’s Course)?
"What are you talking about?" asked the Colonel.
Mike replied, "we were told in Basic School that loyalty in the Corps went down as well as up! Does this mean that loyalty is only to be expected from the bottom up? The men of our company have been told from Boot Camp that the Corps takes care its own, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I’ve followed all the rules and regulations concerning malfunction reporting, with absolutely no results other than feedback that indicated that I was lying in my reports. I only stepped out of bounds when it became obvious that careers were more important than the lives of our men. Obviously the average Marine is expendable if political correctness appears to be at risk!"
The Colonel dropped the subject.
While I (mercifully) didn’t get in on the above interview, the word spread like wildfire on Mike’s return. I took it rather personally when it appeared that careers were more important than saving lives, and it became a sort of self imposed holy cause on my part to get at the truth. Some of the story below is a matter of personal opinion, and I have tried to identify that portion rather than simply make my point(s) by tall tales and innuendo.
All the above having been said, here are the distilled results of what I found during the ensuing years. I have not attempted to make this a textbook, but a "what went wrong and why" primer. If you want more detailed information there are whole books out there on the subject. Many of the below listed facts are drawn from available documentation, and some are simply the result of personal experience. As I pointed out in Part I, the Marine Corps, with a rather warped sense of humor, sent me to graduate school to become an ordnance engineer. While a degree doesn’t necessarily make you an expert in anything (except on paper), people tend to listen more readily when you wave a degree at them. One of more interesting things about this one is that, having grown up around weaponry all my life, I knew virtually everything about small arms ordnance that I know now, before I went to school. I wrote an eight page statement on the problems (or at least my observations on the problems) with the M16 during the investigations of 1967, one copy of which was sent back to the 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade on Okinawa. A friend of mine stationed at the Brigade Headquarters, was sitting in the office when they read my statement. Since this individual was a long time friend, he listened with more than average interest when they got to mine. The Colonel reportedly read my contribution and tossed it in the trash can with the comment, "just who in the hell does he think he is? – some kinda’ expert?" From the time I heard of that one, I swore that I would find the truth, and here are the results of my efforts. Unfortunately not everything is documentable, but the information fits into the jigsaw puzzle rather well. Here we will deal with the problems and misconceptions surrounding the M16 Rifle and attempt to show what went wrong. The tale is rather twisted, but bear with me on this.
Background (The Armory System of Weapons Development):
You must understand that for many years there had been a faction of the American Public that was not happy with our "Armory System" of weapons selection. Rightly or wrongly, there had always been a feeling from the American public that the "small time" arms designer could not get a fair shake when it came to a new ordnance concept. The attitude also prevailed that any rifle or rifle design submitted to the Army had little or no chance of getting fairly evaluated, due to the "Not Invented Here" attitude of Springfield Armory. Although probably not true, that feeling was in the air when the M1 Rifle was selected as our new service rifle. The M1 had a myriad of nickel-dime problems with the first production models, such as the infamous 7th round stoppage, the rear sight that refused to hold its elevation and other problems. Melvin M. Johnson stepped in with his recoil operated rifle that tested very well indeed against the Garand, but was "picked to pieces" on little things, with the Army Ordnance folks pointing out the obvious superiority of the M1. The Marines weren’t so sure. One contingent under Capt. (later Brig. Gen.) George Van Orden, the founder of the Marine Corps Ordnance School, were proponents of the Johnson Rifle, while the test conducted by the Marines on the West Coast held the M1 to be the best of the semi-autos, but chose to go with the M1903 over both of them.
While I think the Johnson was a fascinating rifle, I’m personally damn glad that they picked the Garand. The Armory system actually made very few mistakes, but the public is a fickle mistress. I am reminded of the apocryphal inventor (as an example) who always claims that HE had the final answer to the "gasoline mileage" breakthrough, but the Government (or, the big Oil Companies, or whoever) came along and bought his patent (or paid him not to market the invention, etc.). At any rate, you get the picture, every inventor is convinced that HE had the answer, but no one would listen (or look, or whatever...). I’m not saying that some of this isn’t true, but a large portion is pure hogwash.
The reason that many of the inventors were turned down by the lads at Springfield Armory was that they (Springfield) had already tried many of the ideas and found them wanting. There are very few "new" concepts in weapons design, once you get past the basic operating systems (manual, gas operated and recoil operated), although there are variations of incorporating them in a design (the short stroke piston, long versus short recoil, etc.). Most of these neophyte inventors wanted the government to take their ideas and run with them (spending Government money on R&D of course), and when the Government didn’t bite, the legend was perpetuated. Generally speaking, inventors who had developed a working model of a new design were welcomed at the Armory, and the weapon given a fair shake (John Garand falls roughly into that category). If one of these inventors happened to be working for a large corporation (such as Eugene Stoner and ArmaLite/Fairchild Aircraft), things changed a bit. The large corporation(s) had enough money to develop a new system on their own. Once major money was involved, (with a certain amount of ego or true dedication to their new idea cranked into the equation), the organization and/or the inventor tended to get irate if the Government didn’t jump on their new "gizmo" with both feet, kiss them on both cheeks and ask them why they didn’t come forward sooner! When this didn’t happen, the organization would often complain to their local Congressman or Senator, claiming Armory favoritism. Such things can tie things up in court or force the Government to try their latest gadget by greasing the appropriate palms, appealing to sympathetic Congressmen, or airing their grievances in a news hungry press. Since many constituents had stock in such corporations and more often than not distrusted the Government, political pressure was brought to bear that would not have been possible in a government procurement system; and therein lay the problem.
I am certainly not downplaying Eugene Stoner’s genius in the arms designing field, but he was playing hardball in an arena with considerably more interest in profit margins than operational suitability. Eugene was indeed a talented gun designer, and perhaps rivaled John Browning in some respects, but every time he came out with a new design, Fairchild Aircraft would have more money invested in his concepts, and of course THEY had stockholders. His initial efforts were on the M16’s big brother, the AR-10. The AR-10 was essentially the little 16 with steroids. It did in fact use a man sized cartridge (the 7.62 NATO), but to put it politely, it was a "beast" to shoot (I’ve tried one)! It would supposedly float with about 1" of the buttstock protruding from the water if thrown in a swimming pool (you’ll have to take their word on that one, as I never tried it). The Government had been experimenting with a smaller service round for some time along with several other ideas such as the SPIW, and multiple projectile 7.62 rounds, but never with any real success. With the 5.56 (.223), they came upon a saleable product.
Enter the Air Force:
While initially, the U.S. Army wasn’t buying, the Air Force thought it would be a marvelous replacement for the aging .30 Carbine. Over many objections, the Air Force (with the support of General Curtis LeMay) finally obtained permission to buy a number of the little AR-15s as an airfield perimeter defense weapon. This was probably a task worthy of the "mouse gun", but would hardly qualify the weapon as a suitable rifle for the front line Infantryman.
Comparative Cartridge Ballistics:
In order to appreciate what the infantryman was giving up with the 5.56 mm, it is necessary to look at the specifications of the two cartridges and compare them to other rivals of the time – AND compare the results with the pipsqueak .22 Long Rifle:
7.62 NATO (M14 & M60 Machine-gun):
Bullet Weight = 150 grains
Nominal Muzzle Velocity = approximately 2700 fps.
Muzzle Energy = 2427 ft. Lbs.
Muzzle Energy at 500 yds. = 1576 ft. lbs.
5.56 NATO (XM16E1):
Bullet Weight = 55 grains
Nominal Muzzle Velocity = approximately 3185 fps
Muzzle Energy = 1239 ft. lbs.
Muzzle Energy at 500 yds. = 252 ft. lbs.
.22 Long Rifle (Generic .22 Rifle):
Bullet Weight = 40 grains
Nominal Muzzle Velocity = 1335 fps. (high velocity ctg.)
Muzzle Energy = 158 ft. lbs
Muzzle Energy at 500 yds. = ?
7.62 X 39 (AK-47):
Bullet Weight = 125 grains
Nominal Muzzle Velocity = 2400 fps.
Muzzle Energy = 1598 ft. lbs.
Muzzle Energy at 500 yds. = 414 ft. lbs.
.30 Carbine:
Bullet Weight = 110 grains
Nominal Muzzle Velocity = approximately 2000 fps.
Muzzle Energy = 976 ft. lbs.
Muzzle Energy at 500 yds. = 182 ft. lbs.
If you will notice, these figures list the velocity and energy both at the muzzle and for the maximum effective range of U.S. (shoulder) Small Arms, (generally figured to be approximately 500 yards or 460 meters). The proponents of the AR-15/M16 attempted to change the maximum effective range of the U.S. Service Rifle to 300 yds. as a more realistic figure. What they were really saying, was that the 500 yd. figure made the AR-15 look bad in comparison to the M-14, but the Army decided to stand fast. The 500 yd. figure had been taken from the combat experience(s) of a number of wars. Experience and first hand observation are hard to refute, unless of course, the figures of a conceived scenario better suit your purposes... and not all wars can be guaranteed to be fought in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Even for the mathematically challenged, it should be obvious to the most casual observer that the 5.56mm isn’t in the same league as the 7.62mm NATO.
If you compare the muzzle energy of the .22 LR to the terminal energy of the 5.56mm NATO at 500 yds., you will find a difference of only 94 ft. lbs. Not exactly what I would consider a definitive difference. Sure we are talking muzzle energy compared to the residual energy at 500 yards, but the 5.56mm was (is) touted to have a maximum effective of 500 yards. Dream on! Accuracy, interestingly enough, has never been the problem. No one has ever complained about the accuracy of the "Mouse Gun" (after the change from a 1-14 barrel twist to a 1-12. Initially at least, the problem was the reliability of the issued weapon. Quite frankly, in 1967 I used to dream of a Marine Rifle Company armed with M1903 Springfields! I would have laid money that such an outfit could have taken Hanoi if given the mission. Nay, ‘twas not accuracy that was the problem...
At that same 500 yards, there is a difference of 1324 ft. lbs. of energy remaining for the 7.62mm in excess of the energy of the 5.56 mm. The 5.56 is down to a puny 252 ft. lbs. versus 1576 ft. lbs. for the 7.62 mm. Only the .30 Carbine is outclassed by the 5.56 mm at 500 yards, and it (the .30 Carbine) was designed as a replacement for the pistol cartridge. No one in their wildest imagination would place the .30 Carbine’s effective range in excess of 300 yards. Yet even at that range the Carbine still retains 273 ft. lbs. of energy which exceeds the 5.56 mm’s remaining energy at its advertised maximum effective range by 21 ft.lbs. Folks, something is wrong here! To the best of my knowledge, there is not a single state in the United States that will allow the 5.56mm NATO round to be used as a hunting cartridge for a deer sized animal (a good sized deer will go up to 150+ pounds, or roughly human sized). Why in their remotest dreams the military feels that a cartridge that is acknowledged to be suitable only for varmints is a viable anti-personnel round, is beyond my comprehension.
Penetration was not the long suit of the 5.56mm either. The common "Grunt" soon became aware that the "mousegun round" often ricocheted off of bamboo thickets, and had little effect on earthwork emplacements. The U.S. Ordnance manuals list the penetration of the .30-'06 as M2 ball as 36" of oak at 200 yds. Since the ballistics of the ball 7.62mm round are essentially the same, I can only assume that the 7.62 will do the same although I have never tried this personally. I DO know that a .30-'06 AP round will punch a power transmission pole at 200 yards like Swiss Cheese. I've been waiting for some bad guy to hide behind a telephone pole for years! The initial demonstrating teams for the 5.56mm loved to show the effect of the "mouse gun round" on a concrete block wall at 25 yards when the rifle was fired in the full automatic mode. The effect was truly awesome! I asked the demonstrating ordnance folks to try the same stunt at 200 yards. They grinned and said that such a demonstration would not give the desired impression of power. In other words they had the demonstrations rigged in favor of the 5.56mm! I wonder how many feet of oak the 5.56mm will penetrate at 200 yds?
The rather miserable penetrating power of the mouse gun was proven to me in spades during a rifle requalification firing session on Okinawa in 1973. CWO-4 Marine Gunner Dave Luke (a former U.S. Service Rifle Champion) was supervising the butt detail. The rifle range at Camp Hansen is built between two mountains along the long axis of what can only be termed a wind tunnel. The wind on the Rock would often come whistling down that cut in the mountains giving a headwind of 25 mph. So it was on the day in question. The Marine Corps, being frugal, does not use fresh targets for each day's firing, reserving the virgin targets for qualification day (usually Friday). As a result, we used multiple target faces (repair centers) on our targets during our practice sessions, held to the target with a rather disgusting paste of roughly the same consistency of flour and water. This stuff dries hard, and after several days, the thickness of repair centers becomes relatively thick. Since this was a Wednesday, we had a fair thickness of repair centers on the targets. I was stationed on the firing line when I got a call from Gunner Luke in the butts.
"Hey Major" said the Gunner, "I've got something down here you need to see!"
"What's that Gunner," I replied.
"Major, we've got bullets sticking in the target faces!" said Luke.
"The hell you say Gunner?" sez I, "wait one, I'll be right there!"
I called a cease fire and headed for the butts in the safety vehicle. When I got there I could hardly believe my eyes! Sure enough, there were a number of projectiles that hadn't completely penetrated the multiple target faces at 500 yards. For a moment, I considered that the Gunner might just be pulling my chain, and inserting spent projectiles in the bullet holes for a joke. Two things changed my mind. First, while Dave Luke has a sense of humor, it doesn't run to things like that, and secondly all the projectiles stuck in the target faces showed no evidence of having struck anything more solid than a thick piece of paper. Not only that, but Dave was a professional range officer and we were conducting practice for a Battalion requalification program. Any undue delays would have reflected unfavorably on Dave's ability and he was not one to have allowed anything to interfere with his duties unless he considered it extremely important.
While I had never been a proponent of the mouse gun's, even I would not have thought that the M16 was this underpowered! You can now understand why I am somewhat skeptical of the claims of an 800 yard maximum range for the new M16A2. An additional 8 grains of bullet weight is incapable of making a major difference in penetration, and at 800 yards - ? Right, and my name's Mickey Mouse! No wonder the folks developing the M16 wanted the maximum effective range reset to 300 yards!
The "Meat Ax" Effect:
Yes you say, but what about that fantastic "meat ax" effect that the 5.56mm round has on flesh? Won’t the 5.56 mm tear a man’s arm or head off if it hits him? In a word, no! This is a myth that has been perpetuated since the AR-15/M16’s earliest days, and here is as good a place as any to lay this claim to rest! The original .223/5.56mm was derived from the little .222 Remington or at best the .223 Remington Magnum Cartridges. Now the .222 Remington and .222 Remington Magnum originally used a 40 or 45 grain bullet and a 1-14 barrel twist. Ballistic engineers found that 55 grain bullet pushed the stability of the 1-14 twist to the absolute limit in terms of stability. The initial rounds loaded for the 5.56mm were marginally ballistically stable, and tended to tumble if anything got in its way.
This was apparently especially true of flesh. A 55 grain bullet striking flesh when only stabilized with a 1-14 twist, tumbled with devastating results, but it had a problem – it was only marginally accurate. Now it’s possible to have a bullet that is known to tumble, but if it won’t reliably hit the target at the maximum effective range you are in big trouble. After the initial test results (including some in Southeast Asia) were in, it was apparent that this WAS an effective round (assuming that a tumbling bullet was employed)! However, it also became obvious that this rifle wasn’t exactly a "tack driver" in terms of accuracy. Air Force cold weather tests in January 1963 showed definite "bullet wobble" around the projectile’s rotational axis causing unacceptable accuracy. As any good ordnance folks would do, they tightened the twist to 1-12 and the accuracy improved. The order to change the barrel twist was signed by Robert S. McNamara on the 26th of July 1963. The accuracy immediately improved, but the "magic bullet" quit tumbling! All of a sudden, we had a reasonably accurate round with a bullet that was essentially ineffective in terms of cleaving flesh with the much vaunted "meat ax effect". The round was now reasonably accurate, but much underpowered for its designed maximum effective range of 500 yds.
The Demise of Springfield Armory:
Unfortunately for the America, one lone solitary event was to doom the Armory system of weapons procurement. Robert McNamara had come to power with JFK in 1961. McNamara made no secret of the fact that he considered the Armory system to be wasteful and hidebound. He made a clean sweep of the former Pentagon ordnance experts and replaced them with Ph.D.s and private sector cronies, most of who had no clue as to the difference between a muzzle and a trigger. Many of these gentlemen were former members of the Rand Corporation "Think Tank". My experience with such "experts" has never been one to give me a warm fuzzy feeling as to their real world expertise. Robert McNamara made no bones about his disapproval of Springfield Armory, and would have liked nothing better than to close it down. The only thing saving Springfield was the fact that it resided squarely in President Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts, and was essentially under his protection much as was the Boston Navy Yard. One fateful day in November 1963 changed all that, and from that moment on, Springfield Armory was living on borrowed time.
The (deliberate?) Perpetuation of a Misconception:
Following the official change of barrel twist rate, a bit of disinformation (perhaps better classified as marginal dishonesty) kicked in! The individuals attempting to sell the 5.56mm as the new service cartridge had lost one of their major selling points! We were now armed with a weapon that would poke knitting needle sized holes in the enemy, but without the so-called "devastating effect" of the bullets fired in the 1-14 tubes. Since the individuals in love with the mouse gun concept were in the "selling" mode, they were somewhat reluctant to inform the powers-that-be (and the American Public) that we were no longer dealing with a "devastating" round. This is of course understandable considering human nature, but still a bit "iffy" in terms of honest evaluation of the effectiveness of the prospective cartridge for our primary "go to war gun".
Unfortunately, a sizeable portion of the American Public still believes in the "meat ax" effect of the M16. As a quick anecdotal story, while I was in the early throes of learning to live with the little black rifle, I went to our Battalion surgeons, and hospital corpsmen with a question.
"Had they seen anything during their treatment of wounds that would indicate that the 5.56mm hit harder than any other round?"
I received a negative answer, but they promised to start investigating more closely. A daily check during periods of intense combat always turned up the same answer. None of the devastating effects described by the M16’s most ardent proponents, were being encountered by our medical folks. We were not privy to the above technical information in the Spring and Summer of 1967, of course. Having been told of the rifle’s extreme effectiveness before the Battalion left Okinawa to assume the duty as SLF Bravo, I was beginning to have personal doubts about the Brass’ evaluation of Colt’s latest toy.
Quick Fixes by the Troops:
I could have lived without being armed with a "meat ax", but I as a professional infantryman was loath to have a rifle that would not repeatedly "go bang" when called upon to do so. We tried everything we could think of to remedy the problem. We were keeping our rifles as clean as any man could whose life depends upon such cleanliness. Still... there was a nagging doubt. After all, the ordnance folks were Marines, and surely they wouldn’t lie to their brothers would they?! As a result, we tried different lubes that wouldn’t pick up dirt, and even tried washing the rifles in gasoline pilfered from the motor transport types. A favorite of the time was some stuff called "Dri-Slide" (I’ll have to take a hit on spelling here, as I remember it being a proprietary one). Dri-Slide contained a highly volatile carrier with something akin to powdered graphite that would deposit a "non-sticky" lubricant on the metal when the carrier evaporated. The U.S. Mail was burdened with many cans of Dri-Slide being sent from home to the Marines in Northern I Corps.
Anything greasy seemed to pick up powder residue and acted as a carrier of the stuff to ensure that the abrasive residue was distributed in a fashion reminiscent of lapping compound. This was obviously bad "ju-ju" to a rifle that already seemed to be more than slightly susceptible to dirty powder and the residue of battle. Immediate temporary fixes amounted to such things as having your cleaning rod assembled and taped to the side of the rifle, much in the style of the Civil War musket. By making a couple of loops with ordnance tape (also know to the airborne troops as "rigger’s tape") with a piece put inside the loop to prevent the sticky side from impeding the rapid withdrawal of the "ramrod", your makeshift ejector was more easily accessed for immediate use. Unfortunately this was a double-edged sword. When a man was wounded and medivaced, the cleaning rod was often lost in an attempt to evac the Marine’s rifle and his personal gear with him.
Under ordinary circumstances, this wouldn’t have constituted a problem, but don’t forget, we were issued one cleaning rod per rifle and there were no replacements available. As a result, many of the rifles issued to new replacements (taken from our wounded) were issued without cleaning rods, but, with the instructions to "use your buddy’s." Most of the individuals that were medivaced were wounded due to the fact that their rifles malfunctioned; thus the rifles that were reissued, were those that were most susceptible to jamming and needed a cleaning rod to be used as an ejector (as opposed to a cleaning device). An already bad problem was being compounded.
An Analysis by the Bad Guys:
During my latter days with 2/3 I served as the Battalion Intelligence Officer. One of the reports that came in was an intercepted message from the Viet Cong (Vietnamese Communists). The VC were not as well equipped as the NVA (the North Vietnamese Army - the regular Vietnamese Army people who operated primarily in the North just south of the DMZ).
We as Marines, usually policed all (or as much as we could find) of our equipment left on the battle field by our wounded. Most of course, was sent to the rear with the wounded man, but there would occasionally be items on the battle field by the departing units. The VC used this recovered equipment to equip there own rather meager supplies as would any good guerilla force. The intercepted document reinforced this practice, exhorting the VC troops to police the battle fields for usable equipment. This document however, had one telling exception to the rule. It stated that all equipment was to be picked up with the exception of "the little black rifle" which is useless to our cause!
I knew exactly what they were talking about!
Enter Ball Powder:
Had we but known, the problem was not simply dirty powder or a lack of regular and conscientious cleaning by the operator, but was due in fact to the burning rate(s) and burning temperature of the powder coupled with varying gas port pressures depending on the powder. It seems that the AR-15/M16 was developed and tested with extruded IMR (Improved Military Rifle) powder. This powder is relatively clean burning, but has a relatively high pressure peak during its initial ignition. Remington had been using some stuff called IMR-4475 that worked extremely well, but wasn’t terribly consistent from lot to lot. Remington had solved the problem by using selected lots of the powder to obtain the desired burning rates and functioning in the M16. In fact the entire testing had been accomplished by using such ammunition. The double based powder (so called because it used both nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose in its manufacture) burned hotter than ball powder due to the nitroglycerine content, and the chamber pressures tended to be a bit higher than with say, ball powder. Because of the quality control problems with the double-based extruded IMR powder that had been used by Remington, all manufacturers of the 5.56mm cartridge preferred to use a less finicky ball powder. The argument was essentially that ball powder burned cooler, thus giving less barrel/throat erosion, and had a lower peak pressure, and would stay well within the pressure limits prescribed for the cartridge. The requirement for using only selected lots of IMR powder having been circumvented, not to mention the great amount of ball powder on hand, the problem seemingly had been solved. In May of 1964, the authorization to use "alternative propellants" was signed without conducting any sustained additional functioning tests. Even Gene Stoner himself issued a warning against such a procedure, but to no avail, and unfortunately there were several unsuspected flies in the ointment, much as Stoner had predicted.
The first and perhaps most important one was that they had not bothered to check the "port pressure" of the alternative powders. While it was true that the ball powders did have a lower "peak" pressure, they also had a higher port pressure. Let’s start this discussion from a simple but accurate premise. All gas-operated mechanisms must be timed. This seemingly simple truism can be applied to automobiles as well as rifles. If there are moving parts involved that are influenced by gas pressure, it is necessary for all of these parts to arrive at their appointed location as designed, and to arrive at the proper time. Since the ball powder had a higher port pressure than the IMR-4475, the gas being vented through the gas tube was under greater pressure as the projectile passed the gas port than would have been the case with the IMR powder. Since the gas was under greater pressure, it should not come as any great surprise that the gas was traveling down the gas tube more rapidly than was normal during its designed functioning cycle. This meant that the gas reached the "gas key" on top of the bolt earlier in the functioning cycle than usual. It did, in fact, arrive while the cartridge case was still firmly "obturated" to the chamber walls by the pressure of the gasses caused by the ignition of the cartridge.
By way of explanation, "obturation" is a physical process that takes advantage of the elasticity of the brass cartridge case and causes it to expand and conform to the exact shape of the chamber walls. The brass even sticks little fingers into minor (often invisible) irregularities in the chamber, thus sealing the chamber effectively and keeping gas from being blown back into the face of the operator. In of itself, obturation is a very good thing. The problem here, however, is that the gas reaching the bolt was arriving before the case obturation had subsided and the residual chamber pressure would not allow the brass to be easily broken loose from its hold on the chamber walls, extracted and ejected. The high port pressure and resulting delayed duration of case obturation often, if not usually, caused the extractor to either "jump the case rim" or pull through it, causing the case to remain in the chamber.
This "stuck case" problem was compounded by the fact that the ball powders being used by Remington (CR8136), Olin and Federal (WC846) were much dirtier burning powders than IMR-4475, and tended to "dirty" the rifle chamber area much quicker than the earlier powder. The dirt that deposited itself in the chamber and feeding areas of the rifle added to the extraction problems – dirty chambers tend to resist extraction to a much greater extent than clean chambers by increasing the coefficient of friction between the case and the chamber walls, thus making the cartridge case more reluctant to leave the chamber. Even dirty chambers can be kept clean with constant care, but unfortunately the dirty powder was aided and abetted by a calcium carbonate deterrent coating applied to the powder that addled to the fouling problem. Alas the pr
Vietnam (part 1)
by **** Culver
The following story is one that I tell with some trepidation, since my experience(s) with the "Matty Mattel Mouse Guns" were not pleasant ones. In this time and place far separated from the grim reality of kill or be killed, the bitter memories of the "little black rifle that wouldn’t shoot" have started blending into the mists of long forgotten firefights. Some of the bitterness of those days of long ago will no doubt color the story somewhat, but in order for the reader to understand the story from the perspective of those of us who experienced the frustration, this is probably unavoidable. There seemed to be a callous disregard for the lives and well being of those individuals who willingly fought and often died using a seriously flawed rifle. This is their story then, for those who went in harm's way with the XM16E1, and most of all, for those who didn’t come back. May their sacrifices never be forgotten.
Like most things, the reality of being armed with an ineffective weapon was of little import to those who were not risking their lives on a daily basis. By the time the problem was finally fixed, many friends and comrades had been awarded "the white cross", or in the verbiage of the time, had "bought the farm". Many lives could have been saved if a few individuals in decision making billets had possessed the intestinal fortitude to correct the problem. ...And the problem was "correctable" – all that was necessary was the application of a bit of guts and common sense. Aircraft that are suspected of being flawed are immediately grounded until a problem has been corrected, or a fix has been found. And so it was with the Marines’ CH-46 Helicopter during the same time frame. The tail pylons started rather abruptly separating themselves from the bird with catastrophic results. The CH-46 was was quite rightly grounded and sent back to Okinawa until the problem was isolated and fixed. For some unexplained reason the same rationale was not applied to a rifle that was costing lives on a daily basis. Perhaps the "Wingies Union" was stronger than the "Grunt’s Union" – whatever the reason, dead is dead, and the Grunts were not amused! Unfortunately, doing the "right thing" would have cost individuals in positions of authority considerable embarrassment – something that no one was willing to risk. The "air types" could blame Boeing, but many of the decisions concerning the M16 were made within the "military industrial complex", making it more difficult to pin Colt to the wall. Individuals within the Military who had given their "yea verily" to the project would have found themselves looking for another job.
Rather than bore you with cold statistics and hard facts to start, I will tell the story as it happened and as I remember it. Making allowances for the dimming of the memory after 32 years, the entire saga still stands in my consciousness as if it happened only yesterday – things like that are hard to forget.
Our outfit, the Second Battalion, Third Marine Regiment, was selected to assume the duty as one of the two Battalions filling the job as the "Special Landing Force". This evolution consisted of a quick trip out of Vietnam to the peacetime home of the 3rd Marine Division (Okinawa), for a refurbishment of web gear, worn out equipment, and the fleshing out of a casualty riddled Battalion with fresh replacements. This slight respite from the "free fire zone" afforded new replacements an opportunity to gain experience and training with their new organization. The SLF was in fact a BLT (Battalion Landing Team) with enough attachments to make it into a sort of "bobtailed Regiment". In addition to the standard four line (infantry) companies, and an H&S Company (Headquarters & Service), we also had attached: a Helicopter Squadron, an Artillery Battery, a Recon Platoon, an Engineer Platoon, Amtracs (Amphibious Tractors/Landing Vehicles) and various other supporting elements. At that time, an (unreinforced) Infantry Battalion (before being festooned with the above attachments) consisted of approximately 1100 men. 1/3 (1st Bn., 3rd Marine Regiment) was to be designated as SLF Alpha, and 2/3 was to make up SLF Bravo.
The SLF’s job was to act as a sort of "Super Sparrow-hawk" (calvary to the rescue stuff) to reinforce any organization actively engaged with the enemy who wound up in a "feces sandwich"... when the brass sent in the SLF, someone was already in big trouble! Knowing that you were headed into a "hot LZ" (landing zone) on a rather repeated basis made for a very exciting tour. The normal SLF tour of duty was usually scheduled for a duration of 6 weeks. The outgoing SLF Battalion was then returned to its parent Division (1st or 3rd), and a new Battalion took over the rather thrilling duty as "The I Corps’ Fire Brigade". It was an ingenious scheme, as it allowed the Marines to refurbish their battalions occasionally, and allowed time (albeit relatively short), to train new replacements out of the line of fire. Normally, the SLF tour was anticipated by the selected Battalions with some enthusiasm, as it was supposed to include one short R&R for the Battalion in Subic Bay, prior to the SLF’s reassignment to the RVN. Needless to say, no one in 2/3 ever saw Subic, except as a casualty. Murphy, always taking a hand in things, stirred the pot in such a way that the refurbishment and replacement of battalions on the SLF was curtailed after the vicious "Hill Fights" around Khe Sanh in April of ’67. 2/3 (and their sister battalion, 1/3) had taken on the best that the NVA could throw at them and whipped them hands down, but it was not without cost. Many a dead or dying Marine was found with a cleaning rod shoved down the bore of the little black rifle...
The constant pressure on I Corps starting that Spring left 2/3 manning the ramparts as one of the two SLFs for a period of nine months (versus the normal 6 weeks)! When the smoke finally settled, 2/3 had taken over 800 casualties and those who survived walked away with a sigh of relief. By August of ’67, my company (Hotel, 2/3) had only 5 Marines without at least one Purple Heart, and I was not one of them.
Technically, the SLFs were supposed to return to the LPH (and other supporting shipping) after a battle, lick their wounds, get cleaned up, draw more ammunition and standby for the next mission.
By way of explanation to those who have not been in the Corps or associated with the Navy, "LPH" stands for "Landing Platform - Helicopter". The LPH is in fact nothing more than a small aircraft carrier, primarily designed to launch helicopters for a Marine (or perhaps Army) landing force. The supporting shipping usually consisted of an LSD, ("Landing Ship - Dock" designed to launch Amphibian Tractors for a seaborne surface assault), an LST ("Landing Ship - Tank", self explanatory) and an APA (assault transport to house additional troops). All together, they made up the seaborne vehicles for a rather formidable assault force.
Murphy again took a hand, and out of those fateful 9 months, we spent approximately 12 days aboard our assigned shipping. The rest of the time we got "chopped op-con" to one of the Infantry Regiments ashore (transferred to, and under their operational control) - after all, we were those "pogues" who lived aboard ship and had it easy, were we not? Everyone figured that we were well rested and ready to go. The Regiments ashore, of course, took full advantage of such obviously fresh troops, and threw us into the very "choicest" assignments, to allow their units a breather – we were eventually referred to as the "day on - stay on battalion", and brother, they weren’t kidding!
It was in the arena outlined above that I got my first introduction to the XM16E1. When 2/3 arrived on Okinawa to refit and train for their duties as SLF Bravo, they were already licking their wounds. The Battalion had been ambushed on a march between two hill masses, losing their Commanding Officer and Sergeant Major, along with numerous other individuals. While they were hardly demoralized, they possessed a particular affection for their CO and Sgt.Maj. and were chomping at the bit to return to the RVN to avenge the Battalion’s losses. Shortly after 2/3’s arrival on Okinawa, the Battalion learned that it was scheduled to draw a new "experimental rifle"... the XM16E1. 2/3 dutifully turned in their M14s to draw a curious little plastic thing that drew lots of snickers and comments from the old timers (we still had a few WWII vets in those days). The Battalion was given an orientation lecture in the Camp Schwab Base Theater by some ordnance folks, sent to the range to fire some sighting in rounds, and ****ounced properly prepared for combat... little did they know!
The Battalion was told that they would now be able to carry 400 rounds ashore on each operation, and were now armed with an accurate, hard hitting rifle that would tear a man’s arm off if you hit him. The lecture was impressive. The interesting thing is that the Marines WANTED to like the little rifle – it was light, cute, and supposedly extremely effective! Marines are always in favor of a weapon that will dismember their enemy more efficiently and more effectively. The Marines of 2/3 left Okinawa READY to go try this "jack the giant killer" on the NVA or Cong (they didn’t care which, as long as it made a good fight!). However, there were several flies in the ointment. First, they only had one cleaning rod per rifle and no replacements – sounds reasonable, but events were to prove this assumption wrong. The second problem was that ordnance had only enough magazines to issue three (3) per rifle, and they were "twenty rounders". The thirty rounders in those days were only being used by the Special Forces – Robert "Strange" McNamara, (The Secretary of Defense), had decreed that the 20 round magazines were more cost effective than the 30 round magazines (this from the guy who was responsible for marketing the Edsel!)! We were now armed with the latest in weaponry, and able to carry 400 rounds ashore. Our confidence level would probably have been considerably higher if we had been issued more than three 20 round Magazines per gun. We were promised more of course, and as it turned out, it became true, but only because we were able to pick up those left behind by the casualties. The long and the short of this lesson, however, was that they were trying to get the M16 into action well before adequate supplies were available to support the weapon, even if it had been functioning properly. Politics is indeed a strange game!
Ammunition was issued in "white" or "brown" twenty (20) round boxes. Bandoleers with "clipped ammunition" in ten round "strippers" had not yet made their way to South East Asia. While this would have been a handicap under normal circumstances, it turned out to be a "non-problem"... A full 50% of the rifles wouldn’t shoot semi-automatically! The unfortunate individuals armed with the malfunctioning rifles couldn’t shoot enough rounds to need more than the initial three magazines at any rate! Three hundred and forty rounds in 20 round cardboard boxes were stowed in our packs, with the idea that during a firefight, a man who had run dry, could roll over to his buddy and take ammunition out of his pack and his buddy could do the same. As it turned out, this rarely figured into the equation.
The first clue (for 2/3) that something was wrong came during the battle of Hill 881 North... but all the Hill Fights at Khe Sanh in April ’67 came up the same – dead Marines with cleaning rods stuck down the barrel of their M16s to punch out cartridge cases that refused to extract. At first, we considered that the experiences encountered during the Hill Fights might have constituted an isolated incident, but as experience was to prove, alas, ‘twas not so! The regulations of the time required that all such malfunctions were to be documented, and reported to Ordnance Maintenance/Division Ordnance. The 2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment of Marines must have filled a 6X6 truck with malfunction reports attempting to stay within the administrative guidelines. We submitted the required reports and waited – we wanted the problem FIXED – NOW, and we were willing to play the ordnance paperwork game if that was what it took to correct the situation!
Spring stretched into summer, and summer gave way to fall, with reams of paperwork having being sent out to the Ordnance Maintenance Folks on the "Rock" (Okinawa) and to the ordnance folks in Vietnam. We outlined, in great detail, the failure of the much vaunted M16 to perform as advertised... It simply wasn’t working! It seemed that if your rifle would shoot, it would shoot under almost all conditions (if clean), but if it wouldn’t, no amount of coaxing would help. All of the M16s seemed to be extraordinarily sensitive to carbon build-up, even if the rifle was one that would shoot when freshly cleaned. This meant that in a long and heated firefight, it was possible to have a much larger percentage of rifles "out of action" than the 50% that didn't want to shoot at all. Something was seriously amiss! A rifle that refuses to shoot during a firefight, is unsuitable as a combat implement. The NVA was obviously not gonna' allow us a "time out" while we held a cleaning session! My first clue to the solution to the problem came from talking to the Battalion Armorer. He had an M16 that worked under almost all conditions. I asked him what he had done to it, and he replied that he had taken a ¼" drill, attached a couple of sections of cleaning rod to it, and put some "crocus cloth" through the slotted tip (like a patch) and run it into the chamber and turned the drill motor on. He "horsed" the drill a bit and apparently relieved the chamber dimensions just enough to ensure positive functioning. This was a sort of precursor to the "chrome plated chamber fix" that would be applied in days to come.
FSR (Force Service Regiment – which also acts as a home for the small arms repair folks), sent a trouble shooting team to visit us aboard the LPH shortly after the "Hill Fights" to try and pin down the problem. As soon as the ordnance team arrived, they made it clear that THEY were already well informed (meaning they’d already made up their minds) concerning our problem and had decided (without so much as a question to us) that WE as a Battalion were responsible for a bad rap being given to a marvelous little rifle! The lads in the rear had decided that WE were simply not keeping our rifles clean, and if we weren’t such inattentive and unmotivated "oafs" being led by incompetents, we wouldn’t have such a problem. Needless to say, the hackles stood up on the back of our necks. "Them wuz fightin’ words!" ...And we wuz peaceable folks (well sorta’ anyway)! To say that they had misread the problem is an understatement!
Certainly from a personal standpoint, they were full of "un-reprocessed prunes". My background in small arms went back as far as my conscious memory, and when I "screwed up" with a firearm of any kind as a kid, my Daddy left knots on my head and welts on my "stern-sheets"! During this time frame, I had just finished firing on the USMC Rifle Team (in 1965 – this was now 1967) and to say that I had high standards of weapons cleanliness for my rifle company is an extreme understatement. If the rifles had been clean enough to eat off of before the visit from the FSR clowns, rifle cleanliness moved up a notch to "autoclaved" as a result of the insults they were bandying about! We literally fired thousands of test rounds over the fantail (the stern) of the LPH. Each of the issued rifles was fired, cleaned and then fired again! ...Same story, about 50% of the rifles were reliable and 50% were "non-shooters". We cleaned the rifles between strings of fire (and this test was conducted in the more or less "sterile" conditions encountered in a shipboard environment), with the same results! NOW we were getting worried.
The malfunction reports continued to pour into the rear echelon papermills without any tangible results. On one notable occasion, a stalwart Marine crept around in a flanking movement on an enemy machine gun position. He assumed a quick kneeling position to get a clear shot over the sawgrass, and "did for" the hapless NVA gunner! His second shot aimed for the assistant gunner never came, as his rifle jammed and the assistant gunner avenged his dead comrade by splattering the Marine’s gray matter all over the stock of the Matty Mattel Special. After the fight, we sent his little black rifle to Division Intelligence with a complete report on the events (without removing the brain matter from the stock). We waited with baited breath for the response to this one, but alas to no avail! Still no action! Normally aggressive Marines were understandably getting a bit edgy about being assigned to listening posts or outposts. Ambushes were, more likely than not, to result in Marine casualties. We started stealing and or trading the cute little black rifle for M14s. Many rear echelon troops (usually known as REMFs) were more than willing to trade their old fashioned M14s for a little lightweight rifle that was easy to carry, (the M16s in those days were reserved for the frontline troops). Supply and demand prevailed, and what we couldn’t trade, we appropriated (a polite military term for outright theft!). The Engineer troops assigned to us for support (mine clearing, demolition, and setting up helicopter landing zones) were still armed with the M14 (not being infantry). The Engineers became some of the most popular troops in the Battalion and made up a substantial part of our base of fire. I was always partial to Engineers anyway, and these guys cemented our relations in a big time way – good people those Engineers – and THEY were armed with a REAL rifle!
It finally became apparent that no one was gonna’ come to our rescue! Our reports were falling on deaf ears, and our Battalion Commander was more than a little annoyed. The bayonet had become more popular than before and indeed enjoyed a resurgence of usefulness, until in the throes of hand to hand combat one of the lads gave the enemy a vertical butt stroke that resulted in his holding a "two part" Matty Mattel... Captured AK 47s began to show up in increasing numbers, but they were a double edged sword. The AK 47 had a rather distinctive sound when fired, and would occasionally result in the Marine "wielding" the foreign piece, receiving a bit of "friendly incoming"! This was in addition to the fact that ammo re-supply for the AK was a problem. After a fire fight, the battalion S-4 (supply & logistics) frowned on requests for a couple of thousand rounds of 7.62 X 39...
Things were getting desperate... Our Commandant at the time, General Wallace M. Green, when queried about the rumors filtering back from the front-line troops, contacted the Marine Corps ordnance people and asked them what the problem was. The Ordnance Brass "bleated" the school solution and told the "Commandanche" that the problem stemmed from poor weapons maintenance and a lack of leadership! The Commandant then appeared on TV and announced to all the world that the only thing wrong with the M16 was there weren’t enough of them! How RIGHT he was! It took 20 rifles to get off 20 rounds! We were enraged! – and we began to plot! Never let it be said that the average Marine isn't cunning, if not terribly intelligent.
This is probably a good place to describe the actual malfunction that was prevalent with the "mouse gun" – although there were variations the problem was essentially as follows:
1.) The rifle would be loaded normally, i.e., a loaded magazine would be inserted and the bolt would be allowed to go forward, causing a round to be chambered.
2.) The trigger would allow the hammer to fall, with the rifle firing the first round in the expected fashion. Then the problem began...
3.) The bolt would start to the rear, but the cartridge case would remain in the chamber. There were two variations to this one, one in which the extractor would "jump" the rim, and one where the extractor would "tear through" the rim. Either version left the case in the chamber.
4.) The bolt would start forward stripping the next round from the top of the magazine.
5.) Since the chamber was already occupied by the cartridge that had just been fired, the newly fed round would shove the bullet tip firmly into the stuck case effectively jamming the rifle.
6.) This "jam" could be cleared by:
a.) Removing the magazine from the rifle, pulling the bolt to the rear, and locking it in this position by depressing the bolt catch.
b.) If the newly fed live round did not automatically fall free (it often did), you had to shake the rifle to allow the round to fall free of the magazine well.
c.) A cleaning rod was then inserted in the muzzle and the "stuck case" was driven out of the chamber.
d.) The magazine was then reinserted and locked into the magazine well, and the bolt allowed to go forward by depressing the bolt catch. The bolt would again strip a round from the magazine and reload the chamber.
e.) This round could then be fired and the entire cycle started all over again.
Essentially we had been reduced to a "magazine fed, air cooled, single shot, muzzle ejecting shoulder weapon" shooting an inferior cartridge. How lucky can you get?
Mike Chervenak, my XO (executive officer) was a man of rare moral fiber. Not only was Mike one hell of a good Marine, but he cared for and about our Marines... and the M16 was continuing to get them killed. On one of the very few days we spent aboard the LPH preparing for our next thrilling adventure, Mike came to see me in my quarters.
"Skipper" said Mike, "what the heck are we gonna’ do about this miserable little rifle?"
"Well Mike," I replied, "I guess we’re doing about all that can be done – I’m about out of options! All we can hope for is that ordnance’ll find a fix!"
Mike being smarter than the average bear, drug his toe in the dirt and asked, "Skipper, do I have your permission to write a letter to my congressman?"
"Well Mike," I said, "I can’t tell you NOT to write such a letter, it’s a free country!"
"Well Skipper," said Mike, "what would YOU do?"
Uh oh – now I’m trapped! "Well," I told him, "I’d probably write a letter to the Commandant!"
"But Skipper," Mike says, "you KNOW he won’t ever get to see it!"
"Wrong," sez I, "all you have to do is put ‘copy to: Senator Zhlotz’ (or whoever) at the bottom of the letter, and military paranoia will kick in! The staff will be afraid NOT to show it to him, lest he get a call from an outraged Congressman!"
"Yeah," said Mike, "but I’ll bet that nothing will be done about it even if he DOES see it!" "Well, you’re probably right," I tell him, "but it might be worth a try!?"
Mike, somewhat discouraged at this point, allows as how it’ll probably be more effective to send one to his Representative. I agree without overtly suggesting that he do so. He turns to go, but just as he reaches the Water Tight Door (WTD), he turns around with a slight grin and says "Skipper, would YOU help me write it?"
Hummm... the rest is history. Mercifully we did a workmanlike job on the letter, and simply explained the problem (much as above) and made note that it took precious seconds to clear a jammed rifle that an Infantryman doesn't have in a firefight. We were also careful not to call names or point fingers, and that’s all that saved us in the light of things to come! I’m not too sure who Mike sent the letter to, but a copy of it WAS published in that "Communist Rag", The Washington Post!
Mike was on R&R when the thunder came rolling in. He received a "person to person" phone call from "Wally" (Wallace M. Green, the Commandant, who hangs his hat in Washington, D.C.) in Vietnam! Alas, Mike was not there to take the call! The brass came to me of course, asking where Mike had gone when he left on R&R. Since Mike had earned his R&R in spades, and I didn’t want to screw it up for him (knowing the problem would still be there when he returned). I did the only honorable thing I could and lied! Hee, hee, hee... Mike finished his R&R in good order and without harassment.
When they discovered that I had aided and abetted Mike in his endeavors, the feces struck the ventilation! That letter kicked off FIVE simultaneous investigations; one from the Third Marine Division, one from the 9th Amphibious Brigade, one from the 3rd Marine Regiment, one from the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment (us) and last but not least a Congressional Investigation led by a Congressman from Louisiana named "Speedy O. Long" (yes, that was really his name!). During the investigations, the Battalion hid me so far back in the "ding toolies" that it was necessary to pipe in air and sunlight. Mike and I had become the "pariahs" in the Marine Corps in general, and the 3rd Marine Division in particular. However...
At long last people started doing something overt for a change. We were pulling an operation down in the 1st Marine Division AO, south of Da Nang (AO stands for "area of operations" – the SLF was essentially a "hired gun" and went wherever there was hate and discontent). The Corps "flew-in" a C-130 with 400 brand new XM16E1 rifles along with a Marine Warrant Officer considered to be an expert in the small arms ordnance field. The ordnance Warrant was an old friend of mine who had been the Marine Representative to Cadillac Gauge when they were building the "Stoner 63" System. He had been a Staff Sergeant at the time and we used to sit on my living room floor and disassemble the Stoner System over an occasional beer (well, maybe several beers) when the Marine Corps was running its Stoner tests in at Camp Lejeune. Now, I tell myself, we’ll get some results, Bob is a pretty savvy guy! ...Wrong again "gopher breath"! – Bob Baker (the Marine Warrant Officer), had suddenly and inexplicably switched to (what we thought of as) the enemy camp!
In a private and rather heated conversation with Bob, he allowed as how the problem was that we weren’t keeping them clean enough!
"BS." I said, "Bob, you know me better than that!"
"Nope," he said, "the M16s will work if they’re clean!"
Seeing that I had reached a dead end, it was time to try a different approach. Another Captain/Company Commander and I (he having just as much a case of the "$%#^" over the "16" as the rest of us) watched as WO Baker utilized his $800 ultra powerful chamber scope to examine the M16 rifle chambers of a line of troops brought in out of the lines for evaluation of the condition of their rifles.
This marvelous chamber scope was supposedly powerful enough to make any imperfections in the chamber look like the surface of the moon. The first man stepped up to the front of the line and handed over his rifle. Bob sticks the chamber scope in the chamber, shakes his head and throws the old rifle in a pile that was to grow materially in the next couple of hours. The Marine was then issued one of the new rifles brought in on the C-130. Watching the lad with his "brandie, brand new" rifle stride off. Bob Bogard (the other Company Commander) and I chased him down (out of sight of course). We talked him out of his rifle, threw it into the dirt, kicked a little over it, picked it up and dusted it carefully off (to make it look like a "used" rifle). We then waited awhile until a number of folks had gone through the line and "number 1’s" face had faded from WO Baker's recent memory. We put the trooper back in line and hid and waited. When (Warrant Officer) Bob stuck his chamber scope into the new rifle, he again shook his head and threw the new rifle on the pile of discards! Gotcha! When we pointed out to Bob what we’d done, he went orbital (not a word to come into general use until ’69 of course)! He accused us of not taking his efforts seriously, and trying to make him look bad – not hard to do at this point! While we had outraged the brass, a seed of doubt had been planted, and it grew!
Back at the Command Post, a rather short civilian gentleman of Asian extraction wearing a Colt Detective Special on his belt, strode over to see me. I recognized him as a Mr. Ito, the Colt Representative that had flown in with the 400 rifles.
"Howdy," he sez, "my name is Ito!"
"I know," I said, "and my name is Culver."
"Yes, I know," sez Ito, and at that point, I figured that my fanny was truly gonna’ be grass. My instincts in this case were wrong.
Mr. Ito turned out to be a heck of a nice gentleman and told me all sorts of revealing stories. Among other things, he told me that Colt had offered to chrome plate the bores and chambers of the M16s for the sum of $1.25 each, but that Robert "S" McNamara had vetoed it as being non cost effective. Mr. Ito sent me a "care package" when I got home, guess what it contained? A double handful of Colt M16 tie tacks. (1) Grrrrr...
Ultimately, Colt wound up chrome plating the chambers (and later the bores) of the M16s, thus reducing the coefficient of friction between the cartridge case (not necessarily a good thing, incidentally) and the chamber. The bolt then began battering the frame from the excessive velocity in its rearward movement, and they again gave the "patient" with a brain tumor an aspirin tablet as a "fix" – they simply made the buffer group heavier! But the real story had yet to be told. The story eventually leaked in bits and pieces but was never made public in the headlines it deserved. The rifle was eventually fixed, but at what a price... Much like the guy unjustly accused in print - when the real culprit is found, the headlines don’t shout out his innocence, a retraction is usually printed in extra small type on the last page. The guys who died for this folly can never be brought back, and the people responsible who fought the problem by placing the blame where it wouldn’t get their fingers dirty came away clean.
Somewhat later, a new Battalion Commander, who hadn’t fought with us in the old days when the rifle was at its worst, inherited 2/3 in time to preside over the ensuing hate and discontent. He called me in during the ongoing investigations, and chided me about my stance on the rifle.
When I stood firm, he asked me, "Culver, just what would be YOUR solution?"
"Easy." I said, "it’s only been 9 months since we turned in our M14s, all that’s necessary is for us to draw the 14s again until ordnance can work the bugs out of this little piece of #$@&!"
"Unfortunately," said the Colonel, "it’s not as simple as that!"
"Unfortunately," sez I, "it’s EXACTLY that simple! What you mean is that it’s not ‘politically’ that simple!"
I was dismissed without another word.
The aftermath? The rifle was eventually fixed of course, but at great cost in life and suffering. Unfortunately, "fixing" the M16 left us saddled with a service rifle that shoots a cartridge not powerful enough to be used on anything larger than groundhogs according to most state hunting laws. The latest version is almost as heavy as the M14 without any of the 14's redeeming features. In retrospect, the cost of saving reputations and enhancing corporate well being was high... too high. Mike and I both spent an extra year in grade and Mike decided not to stay on in the Marine Corps even though he was a regular officer. That was one of the larger tragedies, as Mike was one of the truly good guys. Men of principle are more rare than the Hope Diamond in real life, and he was one of those. After the decorations had settled on the scene in SE Asia, they decided to keep me around and I was too stubborn to quit. The Corps, with what can only be described as a rather macabre sense of humor, sent me to Graduate School and made an Ordnance Engineer out of my somewhat "frayed" fanny. Life is often rife with seemingly contradictory incidents. Most of these give truth to the statement of George Burns in the movie, "Oh God" where he describes God as a comedian playing to an audience that’s afraid to laugh! Amen...
In "Part II" I’ll tell you what the problems REALLY were and why so many were fighting to keep the lid on the situation. The real story is not one to give you great confidence in our leadership or human nature. War and politics truly make strange bedfellows!
In Part I, I covered the saga of the M16 from a standpoint of personal remembrances. The trials and tribulations of the average grunt carrying "the little black rifle" in the field were especially frustrating because we were swallowing the party line totally. As far as I knew, my Corps had never lied to me before, and I could see no reason why they would. As it turned out, they too were being lied to, but too many in high places had put their "chop" on the "give us the M16 now" requests. Human nature dictates that very few people in high places like to back down, apparently even when lives are at stake (as long as it isn’t their life of course). Marines, too, tend to "link arms" and assume a "we’ll take care of our own" attitude and I assumed that this was simply an extension of this prevalent attitude.
One statement by an outraged Colonel on the Division Staff finally changed my mind on the "we’ll bite the bullet and fix this thing ourselves" attitude. When Mike was called up to the Division Headquarters over the infamous letter published in The Washington Post, this Colonel asked Mike, "Lieutenant, where’s your loyalty to the Marine Corps?" (asked in a tone that indicated that the Colonel considered Mike to be a disloyal SOB). Mike turned the tables and asked the Colonel if they had lied to them in Basic School (the USMC Basic Officer’s Course)?
"What are you talking about?" asked the Colonel.
Mike replied, "we were told in Basic School that loyalty in the Corps went down as well as up! Does this mean that loyalty is only to be expected from the bottom up? The men of our company have been told from Boot Camp that the Corps takes care its own, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I’ve followed all the rules and regulations concerning malfunction reporting, with absolutely no results other than feedback that indicated that I was lying in my reports. I only stepped out of bounds when it became obvious that careers were more important than the lives of our men. Obviously the average Marine is expendable if political correctness appears to be at risk!"
The Colonel dropped the subject.
While I (mercifully) didn’t get in on the above interview, the word spread like wildfire on Mike’s return. I took it rather personally when it appeared that careers were more important than saving lives, and it became a sort of self imposed holy cause on my part to get at the truth. Some of the story below is a matter of personal opinion, and I have tried to identify that portion rather than simply make my point(s) by tall tales and innuendo.
All the above having been said, here are the distilled results of what I found during the ensuing years. I have not attempted to make this a textbook, but a "what went wrong and why" primer. If you want more detailed information there are whole books out there on the subject. Many of the below listed facts are drawn from available documentation, and some are simply the result of personal experience. As I pointed out in Part I, the Marine Corps, with a rather warped sense of humor, sent me to graduate school to become an ordnance engineer. While a degree doesn’t necessarily make you an expert in anything (except on paper), people tend to listen more readily when you wave a degree at them. One of more interesting things about this one is that, having grown up around weaponry all my life, I knew virtually everything about small arms ordnance that I know now, before I went to school. I wrote an eight page statement on the problems (or at least my observations on the problems) with the M16 during the investigations of 1967, one copy of which was sent back to the 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade on Okinawa. A friend of mine stationed at the Brigade Headquarters, was sitting in the office when they read my statement. Since this individual was a long time friend, he listened with more than average interest when they got to mine. The Colonel reportedly read my contribution and tossed it in the trash can with the comment, "just who in the hell does he think he is? – some kinda’ expert?" From the time I heard of that one, I swore that I would find the truth, and here are the results of my efforts. Unfortunately not everything is documentable, but the information fits into the jigsaw puzzle rather well. Here we will deal with the problems and misconceptions surrounding the M16 Rifle and attempt to show what went wrong. The tale is rather twisted, but bear with me on this.
Background (The Armory System of Weapons Development):
You must understand that for many years there had been a faction of the American Public that was not happy with our "Armory System" of weapons selection. Rightly or wrongly, there had always been a feeling from the American public that the "small time" arms designer could not get a fair shake when it came to a new ordnance concept. The attitude also prevailed that any rifle or rifle design submitted to the Army had little or no chance of getting fairly evaluated, due to the "Not Invented Here" attitude of Springfield Armory. Although probably not true, that feeling was in the air when the M1 Rifle was selected as our new service rifle. The M1 had a myriad of nickel-dime problems with the first production models, such as the infamous 7th round stoppage, the rear sight that refused to hold its elevation and other problems. Melvin M. Johnson stepped in with his recoil operated rifle that tested very well indeed against the Garand, but was "picked to pieces" on little things, with the Army Ordnance folks pointing out the obvious superiority of the M1. The Marines weren’t so sure. One contingent under Capt. (later Brig. Gen.) George Van Orden, the founder of the Marine Corps Ordnance School, were proponents of the Johnson Rifle, while the test conducted by the Marines on the West Coast held the M1 to be the best of the semi-autos, but chose to go with the M1903 over both of them.
While I think the Johnson was a fascinating rifle, I’m personally damn glad that they picked the Garand. The Armory system actually made very few mistakes, but the public is a fickle mistress. I am reminded of the apocryphal inventor (as an example) who always claims that HE had the final answer to the "gasoline mileage" breakthrough, but the Government (or, the big Oil Companies, or whoever) came along and bought his patent (or paid him not to market the invention, etc.). At any rate, you get the picture, every inventor is convinced that HE had the answer, but no one would listen (or look, or whatever...). I’m not saying that some of this isn’t true, but a large portion is pure hogwash.
The reason that many of the inventors were turned down by the lads at Springfield Armory was that they (Springfield) had already tried many of the ideas and found them wanting. There are very few "new" concepts in weapons design, once you get past the basic operating systems (manual, gas operated and recoil operated), although there are variations of incorporating them in a design (the short stroke piston, long versus short recoil, etc.). Most of these neophyte inventors wanted the government to take their ideas and run with them (spending Government money on R&D of course), and when the Government didn’t bite, the legend was perpetuated. Generally speaking, inventors who had developed a working model of a new design were welcomed at the Armory, and the weapon given a fair shake (John Garand falls roughly into that category). If one of these inventors happened to be working for a large corporation (such as Eugene Stoner and ArmaLite/Fairchild Aircraft), things changed a bit. The large corporation(s) had enough money to develop a new system on their own. Once major money was involved, (with a certain amount of ego or true dedication to their new idea cranked into the equation), the organization and/or the inventor tended to get irate if the Government didn’t jump on their new "gizmo" with both feet, kiss them on both cheeks and ask them why they didn’t come forward sooner! When this didn’t happen, the organization would often complain to their local Congressman or Senator, claiming Armory favoritism. Such things can tie things up in court or force the Government to try their latest gadget by greasing the appropriate palms, appealing to sympathetic Congressmen, or airing their grievances in a news hungry press. Since many constituents had stock in such corporations and more often than not distrusted the Government, political pressure was brought to bear that would not have been possible in a government procurement system; and therein lay the problem.
I am certainly not downplaying Eugene Stoner’s genius in the arms designing field, but he was playing hardball in an arena with considerably more interest in profit margins than operational suitability. Eugene was indeed a talented gun designer, and perhaps rivaled John Browning in some respects, but every time he came out with a new design, Fairchild Aircraft would have more money invested in his concepts, and of course THEY had stockholders. His initial efforts were on the M16’s big brother, the AR-10. The AR-10 was essentially the little 16 with steroids. It did in fact use a man sized cartridge (the 7.62 NATO), but to put it politely, it was a "beast" to shoot (I’ve tried one)! It would supposedly float with about 1" of the buttstock protruding from the water if thrown in a swimming pool (you’ll have to take their word on that one, as I never tried it). The Government had been experimenting with a smaller service round for some time along with several other ideas such as the SPIW, and multiple projectile 7.62 rounds, but never with any real success. With the 5.56 (.223), they came upon a saleable product.
Enter the Air Force:
While initially, the U.S. Army wasn’t buying, the Air Force thought it would be a marvelous replacement for the aging .30 Carbine. Over many objections, the Air Force (with the support of General Curtis LeMay) finally obtained permission to buy a number of the little AR-15s as an airfield perimeter defense weapon. This was probably a task worthy of the "mouse gun", but would hardly qualify the weapon as a suitable rifle for the front line Infantryman.
Comparative Cartridge Ballistics:
In order to appreciate what the infantryman was giving up with the 5.56 mm, it is necessary to look at the specifications of the two cartridges and compare them to other rivals of the time – AND compare the results with the pipsqueak .22 Long Rifle:
7.62 NATO (M14 & M60 Machine-gun):
Bullet Weight = 150 grains
Nominal Muzzle Velocity = approximately 2700 fps.
Muzzle Energy = 2427 ft. Lbs.
Muzzle Energy at 500 yds. = 1576 ft. lbs.
5.56 NATO (XM16E1):
Bullet Weight = 55 grains
Nominal Muzzle Velocity = approximately 3185 fps
Muzzle Energy = 1239 ft. lbs.
Muzzle Energy at 500 yds. = 252 ft. lbs.
.22 Long Rifle (Generic .22 Rifle):
Bullet Weight = 40 grains
Nominal Muzzle Velocity = 1335 fps. (high velocity ctg.)
Muzzle Energy = 158 ft. lbs
Muzzle Energy at 500 yds. = ?
7.62 X 39 (AK-47):
Bullet Weight = 125 grains
Nominal Muzzle Velocity = 2400 fps.
Muzzle Energy = 1598 ft. lbs.
Muzzle Energy at 500 yds. = 414 ft. lbs.
.30 Carbine:
Bullet Weight = 110 grains
Nominal Muzzle Velocity = approximately 2000 fps.
Muzzle Energy = 976 ft. lbs.
Muzzle Energy at 500 yds. = 182 ft. lbs.
If you will notice, these figures list the velocity and energy both at the muzzle and for the maximum effective range of U.S. (shoulder) Small Arms, (generally figured to be approximately 500 yards or 460 meters). The proponents of the AR-15/M16 attempted to change the maximum effective range of the U.S. Service Rifle to 300 yds. as a more realistic figure. What they were really saying, was that the 500 yd. figure made the AR-15 look bad in comparison to the M-14, but the Army decided to stand fast. The 500 yd. figure had been taken from the combat experience(s) of a number of wars. Experience and first hand observation are hard to refute, unless of course, the figures of a conceived scenario better suit your purposes... and not all wars can be guaranteed to be fought in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Even for the mathematically challenged, it should be obvious to the most casual observer that the 5.56mm isn’t in the same league as the 7.62mm NATO.
If you compare the muzzle energy of the .22 LR to the terminal energy of the 5.56mm NATO at 500 yds., you will find a difference of only 94 ft. lbs. Not exactly what I would consider a definitive difference. Sure we are talking muzzle energy compared to the residual energy at 500 yards, but the 5.56mm was (is) touted to have a maximum effective of 500 yards. Dream on! Accuracy, interestingly enough, has never been the problem. No one has ever complained about the accuracy of the "Mouse Gun" (after the change from a 1-14 barrel twist to a 1-12. Initially at least, the problem was the reliability of the issued weapon. Quite frankly, in 1967 I used to dream of a Marine Rifle Company armed with M1903 Springfields! I would have laid money that such an outfit could have taken Hanoi if given the mission. Nay, ‘twas not accuracy that was the problem...
At that same 500 yards, there is a difference of 1324 ft. lbs. of energy remaining for the 7.62mm in excess of the energy of the 5.56 mm. The 5.56 is down to a puny 252 ft. lbs. versus 1576 ft. lbs. for the 7.62 mm. Only the .30 Carbine is outclassed by the 5.56 mm at 500 yards, and it (the .30 Carbine) was designed as a replacement for the pistol cartridge. No one in their wildest imagination would place the .30 Carbine’s effective range in excess of 300 yards. Yet even at that range the Carbine still retains 273 ft. lbs. of energy which exceeds the 5.56 mm’s remaining energy at its advertised maximum effective range by 21 ft.lbs. Folks, something is wrong here! To the best of my knowledge, there is not a single state in the United States that will allow the 5.56mm NATO round to be used as a hunting cartridge for a deer sized animal (a good sized deer will go up to 150+ pounds, or roughly human sized). Why in their remotest dreams the military feels that a cartridge that is acknowledged to be suitable only for varmints is a viable anti-personnel round, is beyond my comprehension.
Penetration was not the long suit of the 5.56mm either. The common "Grunt" soon became aware that the "mousegun round" often ricocheted off of bamboo thickets, and had little effect on earthwork emplacements. The U.S. Ordnance manuals list the penetration of the .30-'06 as M2 ball as 36" of oak at 200 yds. Since the ballistics of the ball 7.62mm round are essentially the same, I can only assume that the 7.62 will do the same although I have never tried this personally. I DO know that a .30-'06 AP round will punch a power transmission pole at 200 yards like Swiss Cheese. I've been waiting for some bad guy to hide behind a telephone pole for years! The initial demonstrating teams for the 5.56mm loved to show the effect of the "mouse gun round" on a concrete block wall at 25 yards when the rifle was fired in the full automatic mode. The effect was truly awesome! I asked the demonstrating ordnance folks to try the same stunt at 200 yards. They grinned and said that such a demonstration would not give the desired impression of power. In other words they had the demonstrations rigged in favor of the 5.56mm! I wonder how many feet of oak the 5.56mm will penetrate at 200 yds?
The rather miserable penetrating power of the mouse gun was proven to me in spades during a rifle requalification firing session on Okinawa in 1973. CWO-4 Marine Gunner Dave Luke (a former U.S. Service Rifle Champion) was supervising the butt detail. The rifle range at Camp Hansen is built between two mountains along the long axis of what can only be termed a wind tunnel. The wind on the Rock would often come whistling down that cut in the mountains giving a headwind of 25 mph. So it was on the day in question. The Marine Corps, being frugal, does not use fresh targets for each day's firing, reserving the virgin targets for qualification day (usually Friday). As a result, we used multiple target faces (repair centers) on our targets during our practice sessions, held to the target with a rather disgusting paste of roughly the same consistency of flour and water. This stuff dries hard, and after several days, the thickness of repair centers becomes relatively thick. Since this was a Wednesday, we had a fair thickness of repair centers on the targets. I was stationed on the firing line when I got a call from Gunner Luke in the butts.
"Hey Major" said the Gunner, "I've got something down here you need to see!"
"What's that Gunner," I replied.
"Major, we've got bullets sticking in the target faces!" said Luke.
"The hell you say Gunner?" sez I, "wait one, I'll be right there!"
I called a cease fire and headed for the butts in the safety vehicle. When I got there I could hardly believe my eyes! Sure enough, there were a number of projectiles that hadn't completely penetrated the multiple target faces at 500 yards. For a moment, I considered that the Gunner might just be pulling my chain, and inserting spent projectiles in the bullet holes for a joke. Two things changed my mind. First, while Dave Luke has a sense of humor, it doesn't run to things like that, and secondly all the projectiles stuck in the target faces showed no evidence of having struck anything more solid than a thick piece of paper. Not only that, but Dave was a professional range officer and we were conducting practice for a Battalion requalification program. Any undue delays would have reflected unfavorably on Dave's ability and he was not one to have allowed anything to interfere with his duties unless he considered it extremely important.
While I had never been a proponent of the mouse gun's, even I would not have thought that the M16 was this underpowered! You can now understand why I am somewhat skeptical of the claims of an 800 yard maximum range for the new M16A2. An additional 8 grains of bullet weight is incapable of making a major difference in penetration, and at 800 yards - ? Right, and my name's Mickey Mouse! No wonder the folks developing the M16 wanted the maximum effective range reset to 300 yards!
The "Meat Ax" Effect:
Yes you say, but what about that fantastic "meat ax" effect that the 5.56mm round has on flesh? Won’t the 5.56 mm tear a man’s arm or head off if it hits him? In a word, no! This is a myth that has been perpetuated since the AR-15/M16’s earliest days, and here is as good a place as any to lay this claim to rest! The original .223/5.56mm was derived from the little .222 Remington or at best the .223 Remington Magnum Cartridges. Now the .222 Remington and .222 Remington Magnum originally used a 40 or 45 grain bullet and a 1-14 barrel twist. Ballistic engineers found that 55 grain bullet pushed the stability of the 1-14 twist to the absolute limit in terms of stability. The initial rounds loaded for the 5.56mm were marginally ballistically stable, and tended to tumble if anything got in its way.
This was apparently especially true of flesh. A 55 grain bullet striking flesh when only stabilized with a 1-14 twist, tumbled with devastating results, but it had a problem – it was only marginally accurate. Now it’s possible to have a bullet that is known to tumble, but if it won’t reliably hit the target at the maximum effective range you are in big trouble. After the initial test results (including some in Southeast Asia) were in, it was apparent that this WAS an effective round (assuming that a tumbling bullet was employed)! However, it also became obvious that this rifle wasn’t exactly a "tack driver" in terms of accuracy. Air Force cold weather tests in January 1963 showed definite "bullet wobble" around the projectile’s rotational axis causing unacceptable accuracy. As any good ordnance folks would do, they tightened the twist to 1-12 and the accuracy improved. The order to change the barrel twist was signed by Robert S. McNamara on the 26th of July 1963. The accuracy immediately improved, but the "magic bullet" quit tumbling! All of a sudden, we had a reasonably accurate round with a bullet that was essentially ineffective in terms of cleaving flesh with the much vaunted "meat ax effect". The round was now reasonably accurate, but much underpowered for its designed maximum effective range of 500 yds.
The Demise of Springfield Armory:
Unfortunately for the America, one lone solitary event was to doom the Armory system of weapons procurement. Robert McNamara had come to power with JFK in 1961. McNamara made no secret of the fact that he considered the Armory system to be wasteful and hidebound. He made a clean sweep of the former Pentagon ordnance experts and replaced them with Ph.D.s and private sector cronies, most of who had no clue as to the difference between a muzzle and a trigger. Many of these gentlemen were former members of the Rand Corporation "Think Tank". My experience with such "experts" has never been one to give me a warm fuzzy feeling as to their real world expertise. Robert McNamara made no bones about his disapproval of Springfield Armory, and would have liked nothing better than to close it down. The only thing saving Springfield was the fact that it resided squarely in President Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts, and was essentially under his protection much as was the Boston Navy Yard. One fateful day in November 1963 changed all that, and from that moment on, Springfield Armory was living on borrowed time.
The (deliberate?) Perpetuation of a Misconception:
Following the official change of barrel twist rate, a bit of disinformation (perhaps better classified as marginal dishonesty) kicked in! The individuals attempting to sell the 5.56mm as the new service cartridge had lost one of their major selling points! We were now armed with a weapon that would poke knitting needle sized holes in the enemy, but without the so-called "devastating effect" of the bullets fired in the 1-14 tubes. Since the individuals in love with the mouse gun concept were in the "selling" mode, they were somewhat reluctant to inform the powers-that-be (and the American Public) that we were no longer dealing with a "devastating" round. This is of course understandable considering human nature, but still a bit "iffy" in terms of honest evaluation of the effectiveness of the prospective cartridge for our primary "go to war gun".
Unfortunately, a sizeable portion of the American Public still believes in the "meat ax" effect of the M16. As a quick anecdotal story, while I was in the early throes of learning to live with the little black rifle, I went to our Battalion surgeons, and hospital corpsmen with a question.
"Had they seen anything during their treatment of wounds that would indicate that the 5.56mm hit harder than any other round?"
I received a negative answer, but they promised to start investigating more closely. A daily check during periods of intense combat always turned up the same answer. None of the devastating effects described by the M16’s most ardent proponents, were being encountered by our medical folks. We were not privy to the above technical information in the Spring and Summer of 1967, of course. Having been told of the rifle’s extreme effectiveness before the Battalion left Okinawa to assume the duty as SLF Bravo, I was beginning to have personal doubts about the Brass’ evaluation of Colt’s latest toy.
Quick Fixes by the Troops:
I could have lived without being armed with a "meat ax", but I as a professional infantryman was loath to have a rifle that would not repeatedly "go bang" when called upon to do so. We tried everything we could think of to remedy the problem. We were keeping our rifles as clean as any man could whose life depends upon such cleanliness. Still... there was a nagging doubt. After all, the ordnance folks were Marines, and surely they wouldn’t lie to their brothers would they?! As a result, we tried different lubes that wouldn’t pick up dirt, and even tried washing the rifles in gasoline pilfered from the motor transport types. A favorite of the time was some stuff called "Dri-Slide" (I’ll have to take a hit on spelling here, as I remember it being a proprietary one). Dri-Slide contained a highly volatile carrier with something akin to powdered graphite that would deposit a "non-sticky" lubricant on the metal when the carrier evaporated. The U.S. Mail was burdened with many cans of Dri-Slide being sent from home to the Marines in Northern I Corps.
Anything greasy seemed to pick up powder residue and acted as a carrier of the stuff to ensure that the abrasive residue was distributed in a fashion reminiscent of lapping compound. This was obviously bad "ju-ju" to a rifle that already seemed to be more than slightly susceptible to dirty powder and the residue of battle. Immediate temporary fixes amounted to such things as having your cleaning rod assembled and taped to the side of the rifle, much in the style of the Civil War musket. By making a couple of loops with ordnance tape (also know to the airborne troops as "rigger’s tape") with a piece put inside the loop to prevent the sticky side from impeding the rapid withdrawal of the "ramrod", your makeshift ejector was more easily accessed for immediate use. Unfortunately this was a double-edged sword. When a man was wounded and medivaced, the cleaning rod was often lost in an attempt to evac the Marine’s rifle and his personal gear with him.
Under ordinary circumstances, this wouldn’t have constituted a problem, but don’t forget, we were issued one cleaning rod per rifle and there were no replacements available. As a result, many of the rifles issued to new replacements (taken from our wounded) were issued without cleaning rods, but, with the instructions to "use your buddy’s." Most of the individuals that were medivaced were wounded due to the fact that their rifles malfunctioned; thus the rifles that were reissued, were those that were most susceptible to jamming and needed a cleaning rod to be used as an ejector (as opposed to a cleaning device). An already bad problem was being compounded.
An Analysis by the Bad Guys:
During my latter days with 2/3 I served as the Battalion Intelligence Officer. One of the reports that came in was an intercepted message from the Viet Cong (Vietnamese Communists). The VC were not as well equipped as the NVA (the North Vietnamese Army - the regular Vietnamese Army people who operated primarily in the North just south of the DMZ).
We as Marines, usually policed all (or as much as we could find) of our equipment left on the battle field by our wounded. Most of course, was sent to the rear with the wounded man, but there would occasionally be items on the battle field by the departing units. The VC used this recovered equipment to equip there own rather meager supplies as would any good guerilla force. The intercepted document reinforced this practice, exhorting the VC troops to police the battle fields for usable equipment. This document however, had one telling exception to the rule. It stated that all equipment was to be picked up with the exception of "the little black rifle" which is useless to our cause!
I knew exactly what they were talking about!
Enter Ball Powder:
Had we but known, the problem was not simply dirty powder or a lack of regular and conscientious cleaning by the operator, but was due in fact to the burning rate(s) and burning temperature of the powder coupled with varying gas port pressures depending on the powder. It seems that the AR-15/M16 was developed and tested with extruded IMR (Improved Military Rifle) powder. This powder is relatively clean burning, but has a relatively high pressure peak during its initial ignition. Remington had been using some stuff called IMR-4475 that worked extremely well, but wasn’t terribly consistent from lot to lot. Remington had solved the problem by using selected lots of the powder to obtain the desired burning rates and functioning in the M16. In fact the entire testing had been accomplished by using such ammunition. The double based powder (so called because it used both nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose in its manufacture) burned hotter than ball powder due to the nitroglycerine content, and the chamber pressures tended to be a bit higher than with say, ball powder. Because of the quality control problems with the double-based extruded IMR powder that had been used by Remington, all manufacturers of the 5.56mm cartridge preferred to use a less finicky ball powder. The argument was essentially that ball powder burned cooler, thus giving less barrel/throat erosion, and had a lower peak pressure, and would stay well within the pressure limits prescribed for the cartridge. The requirement for using only selected lots of IMR powder having been circumvented, not to mention the great amount of ball powder on hand, the problem seemingly had been solved. In May of 1964, the authorization to use "alternative propellants" was signed without conducting any sustained additional functioning tests. Even Gene Stoner himself issued a warning against such a procedure, but to no avail, and unfortunately there were several unsuspected flies in the ointment, much as Stoner had predicted.
The first and perhaps most important one was that they had not bothered to check the "port pressure" of the alternative powders. While it was true that the ball powders did have a lower "peak" pressure, they also had a higher port pressure. Let’s start this discussion from a simple but accurate premise. All gas-operated mechanisms must be timed. This seemingly simple truism can be applied to automobiles as well as rifles. If there are moving parts involved that are influenced by gas pressure, it is necessary for all of these parts to arrive at their appointed location as designed, and to arrive at the proper time. Since the ball powder had a higher port pressure than the IMR-4475, the gas being vented through the gas tube was under greater pressure as the projectile passed the gas port than would have been the case with the IMR powder. Since the gas was under greater pressure, it should not come as any great surprise that the gas was traveling down the gas tube more rapidly than was normal during its designed functioning cycle. This meant that the gas reached the "gas key" on top of the bolt earlier in the functioning cycle than usual. It did, in fact, arrive while the cartridge case was still firmly "obturated" to the chamber walls by the pressure of the gasses caused by the ignition of the cartridge.
By way of explanation, "obturation" is a physical process that takes advantage of the elasticity of the brass cartridge case and causes it to expand and conform to the exact shape of the chamber walls. The brass even sticks little fingers into minor (often invisible) irregularities in the chamber, thus sealing the chamber effectively and keeping gas from being blown back into the face of the operator. In of itself, obturation is a very good thing. The problem here, however, is that the gas reaching the bolt was arriving before the case obturation had subsided and the residual chamber pressure would not allow the brass to be easily broken loose from its hold on the chamber walls, extracted and ejected. The high port pressure and resulting delayed duration of case obturation often, if not usually, caused the extractor to either "jump the case rim" or pull through it, causing the case to remain in the chamber.
This "stuck case" problem was compounded by the fact that the ball powders being used by Remington (CR8136), Olin and Federal (WC846) were much dirtier burning powders than IMR-4475, and tended to "dirty" the rifle chamber area much quicker than the earlier powder. The dirt that deposited itself in the chamber and feeding areas of the rifle added to the extraction problems – dirty chambers tend to resist extraction to a much greater extent than clean chambers by increasing the coefficient of friction between the case and the chamber walls, thus making the cartridge case more reluctant to leave the chamber. Even dirty chambers can be kept clean with constant care, but unfortunately the dirty powder was aided and abetted by a calcium carbonate deterrent coating applied to the powder that addled to the fouling problem. Alas the pr