fkleinbu Wrote:I was a very young lad in 1960 when M16 was brought into service by the Air Force.. It had stocks made by Mattel, it jammed in the field, and the worst, it was just a 22 in a bottle necked case.. It got a very bad rep.. I had older friends coming home from Vietnam telling me they sure liked the AK's a lot more.. So I can understand why so many folks came to dislike it.. Indeed I had my own reasons for disliking them..
Flk k
I have a buddy who was in the 1st Cav in Vietnam. They got their M-16's on the troop ship going over. They each got to shoot a few rounds off the fantail of the ship.
Sheesh, to take away a rifle a guy has trained with from day one and give him a different one on the way to combat without proper training!
No wonder they got a bad rep.
You've probably all heard the story. In the Army's infinite wisdom, they switched from a clean burning powder to Winchester 748 at the last minute. Good powder, but if you've ever used it you know how dirty it is.
Guys put out a heavy volume of fire on auto over there. It's not very effective but it's psychologically comforting to flip it on auto and blaze away when you are under attack.
I've seen the gas tubes glow cherry red at night near the gas block. It's like a thermometer, the farther back toward the receiver the gas tube is red the hotter the gun is.
All that gunk collects in the barrel extension between the lugs and barrel breach. If you haven't been taught to clean there, swab a q-tip with bore solvent in there and see how much gunk comes out.
If they let the rifle cool down too much without cleaning it, the residue set up like glue and they couldn't get the bolt open without slamming the butt on the ground, sometimes not even then.
Or if they left the bolt open for the barrel to cool, they couldn't get it to close all the way. That was the real reason for the forward assist. Bent rounds are rare, but if the area behind the lugs of the barrel extension is dirty, the bolt might not fully lock up. If you can whack the assist to get it to lock the rotary action of the bolt when fired will tend to chop up the crud in there.
They eventually switched to a cleaner powder, chrome lined the chambers and barrels, and learned how to properly clean the rifle. But once you get a bad rep, it takes a lot of good rep to overcome it.
RR