Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The M-16 in film and in history

This 11 minute video is interesting to those of us who used the rifle.
As a new soldier in 1985, I had a pretty negative opinion of it at first. In spite of my misgivings. I found it to be a solid serviceable rifle, and plenty accurate if it was treated with care and respect.
I ruined one in 1987 by doing a four 30 round magazine dump in Hunter Ligget!😒
It was easier to turn in fired brass than unfired ammunition so they let us go nuts!😀 My days of qualifying expert were ended in a couple minutes! That thing burned the paint offs the stake used to hold it when we got through!
In 1989, shortly before my ETS, we were issued the A2 version with the 3 round burst in place of full auto.
A new rifle, even with the horrible “battle sights” was a joy to take to the range!😀 Almost as much fun as Ma Duece!😀

We often used the plastic mock-ups for drill in basic training. And we cleaned the real ones religiously after use. Those steel rods were hard on the throats, and the rifles in basic were notoriously inaccurate because of this,
But once I got to my unit, I had no problem with hitting the 400 meter target for qualifying!
We were issued blanks and blank adapters in the field for training. Those blanks dumped a bunch of carbon into the gas system, and most of us with experience refused to use them. We most often used them to clean those diesel heaters in the field! You could usually catch the camp netting over the tent on fire, and the skinniest guy had to climb up and put it out!😀
As a maintenance unit we had access to better solvent to use on the gas system, (carburetor cleaner and compressed air, but I can’t say what the infantry did.
In addition the 30 round magazines were a pain in the back. I had a 20 round that I used to keep dirt out of the receiver. When I got short, I passed it on to a friend who wasn’t. It was awful handy to have, and if you had one you had to be careful, because they were coveted.😀
Not much chance to use full auto after basic, and I never got to use the 203 grenade launcher but once. They should have made us each use them enough to be proficient, but only the guys who were issued one got to train with them. The practice rounds were too expensive, I guess.
We were taught “SPORTS” in case of malfunction.
If you think military training isn’t effective, imagine remembering that almost 40 years after ETS!😀 I also remember the 3 general orders we were taught!😀
Stop pull observe release tap and squeeze . To be honest, I never experienced a malfunction unless I was dumb enough to fire blanks in it!😀
As I said with live ammunition and care, I found that my fears of using one were unfounded.
Accurate and deadly within its range, and I never had a legitimate complaint. Not that I didn’t look for one, either.
The latter A2 model had I believe a faster twist and a slightly heavier bullet with was supposed to be effective out to six hundred meters, but I was too short to get much trigger time in it.
As a maintenance unit (REMF) I only used it to qualify one time.

Cool

The one I qualified "expert" with in USAF basic training in 1968 actually had the "Made by Mattell" logo on the buttstock. That rumor definitely was not an urban legend.

I never saw one like that. Every one I used in my 4 years had the Colt logo on the receiver. I don’t recall what was on the A2. By the time i got it, I had to reach up to tie my boots!😀
Other than a mag dump using blanks, I never had a malfunction.
Going in I had definite misgivings about both the rifle (never could say “weapon with a straight face) and cartridge.
Maybe I was fortunate never to have to rely on one for real.
Actually another reason I wanted in posting this thread. I guess by 1985, they had most of the bugs worked out? I was actually hoping to hear from guys who had to fire one in anger!
As a gun nut, I never had use for a defense rifle, although with today’s political climate, I think everybody should have one and some ammunition hoarded.
I have a Ruger model 5.56 and I really like it. Fun as heck to shoot, and quite accurate in hunting ranges. Due to Pennsyltucky’s asinine laws for hunting, it’s only used for target and defending the garden from critters.
I have a set of die’s and enough powder and primers hoarded up, God forbid needing it for real.

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I have a friend who reported the same thing.
IIRC, it was the buttstock that Matell made for some of the rifles.
Some, for their reasons, will deny this.

I think I read that somewhere as well, but I can’t remember where.
Everyone we had worked well, and even guys like me who were gun enthusiasts never complained once we got enough training to care for it and shoot it.
About the same time we got the A2, they were fazing out the M-60 in favor of the belt fed SAW. It was a belt fed 5.56. I saw a few, but never had a chance to shoot it.
The only real full auto that we had in a third shop maintenance unit was the M-2 fifty cal. Most of our deuce and a half’s had ring mounts, so we often had them in the field. Usually a trip to Yakima of some other field training involved a little trigger time with “Ma Deuce”, and we gun nuts loved shooting it.😀
I’d imagine the combat arms “Grunts” used that stuff, but our primary job was fixing trucks and hummvs, so our actual range time was limited to practice and qualifying with the M-16 for the most part. Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever having grenade training after basic!
We fired a LAW once in a great while, but mostly we trained with dummies that didn’t have rockets.
Like I said, I was hoping to compare notes with guys who actually had more experience with the rifles and weapons we used.
Most days I was turning wrenches and didn’t get much play time.

Qualified in basic in 81 w an A1 built by the HyrdaMatic division of GM
After basic I never saw another M16.
Being a helicopter crewchief all I was issued was a Ruger Security Six revolver in 38 Spcl
We had to qualify with those every 6 months

It's been a point of discussion for many years.

Matell made a close toy copy and that was the gun John Wayne smashed against the tree in "The Green Beret".

I have never seen a picture of a real AR-15/M-16 rifle with "Matell" markings but who knows. I would love to see one and Matell was good at making plastics back in the day.

The M-16 has come a long way and will be here for quite a while in different versions, such as the M-4. The Tier 1 SMUs have dropped the op rod pistons and gone back to the better Direct Impingment gas system of the original AR-15 for most use.

This is why I mentioned the M-240 SAW. Squad Automatic Weapon.
Like I said, I only ever saw a couple, and was hoping to hear from guys who had more experience than myself. Military weapons and history for a gun enthusiasts like myself is pretty interesting in some respects. One of my hobbies is Civil War artillery and modern crew served guns.

I was infantry ('77-'81) and my first issued M16A1 was an H&R, then we went to Benning, and that was a Hydramatic from GM. It wasn't until I got to Bragg that I got a Colt, and it had a 203 hooked on it (cherry paratroopers always got the heavy crap to carry). When we went to qualify with them, I couldn't zero the thing, it was used by someone to pad their PLFs and the barrel on the 16 was BENT, you couldn't zero it thataway. I pitched a bitch and got issued another M16A1 Colt, but it was Vietnam-era, and pretty well worn-out, as were all of our M16A1s in our arms room. Just before I left the Army, we all got brandy-new M16A1s, all Colts, and a couple years after that, they got M16A2s. I have no idea when they got the M4s, I was long gone by then.

BTW, I only ever threw ONE live grenade on the range, in the four years I was in, but I was a mortar maggot, and we didn't see them much, anyway. We did, however, shoot our mortars a LOT, and our mortars (81mm) were damned near worn-out, too, you could see the cooling rings on the INSIDE of the tube. Those were replaced soon after I left, with a new 60mm mortar.
We did shoot training LAWs in basic and AIT, but after that, nothing. Didn't much matter to us mortar maggots anyway. We didn't have any M2s in our unit, just a half dozen M-60s, which were replaced frequently, due to the rivets wearing out in the receivers, and two M21 sniper rifles, which never left the arms room. We also had 20 1911A1s, but only six of them worked, we had to pass them around to get everyone qualified, they were flat worn-out, tired old things.

Almost forgot the six Winchester 1200 12 gauge shotguns, which were FUBAR from the git-go, also leftovers from Vietnam, and flat worn-out, too.

When I was issued mine at West Point cadet basic training in 1985 I looked at it and thought, "Damn, this is just like that plastic Mattell rifle that my 6 yr old brother was running around playing army with when I left home the week before".

Missed it by that much!

Fort Ord ---1960-61---M1 Rifle, classroom intro to M14

Fort Worth Gen Depot ---61-62---M1 Carbine, then unit got a mix of M14's and T44E4's

Inchon, Korea---62-63 M1 carbine, M60, 1911.

Bruce

If you get a chance pick up a copy of "The Black Rifle" it is basically a history of the M16 rifle. There were a lot of issues with these rifles in the beginning and its a wonder the M16 even survived. But look at how many of them are in circulation now. Ratsmaker, when I was an E1 in my first unit I was issued an M60 machinegun. Poor guy in front of me was given a mortar base plate

I went through USAF basic training in '72 and we shot AR-15s. Later I qualified with an M-16.

I guess during the 60s and Vietnam era, the making of battle rifles was contracted out just like the M-1 Garands were during WW2. With a little bit of care, guns tend to have a long shelf life, so 10 years for a military rifle is not too hard to believe.
I know H&R was a subcontractor, and hearing that the Hydromatic division of General Motors was a subcontractor as well isn’t really surprising.
I do remember looking at them to see where they were from. Like I said, I had doubts about the rifle itself and the cartridge it was chambered in.
I never studied the wound ballistics of the 5.56 compared to the 7.62x39 or the 5.5x39, but as a shooter in know that speed is a bigger factor than bullet weight.
I can tell you in all honesty that my Ruger AR 5.56 is spitting out 55 grain pills at better than 3000 fps with an 18 inch pipe, which sorta surprised me.
I still like something bigger for deer. The 223 will surely kill deer sized critters when placed well, but I believe in using enough gun to get the job done if the shot isn’t placed well. If I lose one that’s been hit, it really bothers me.
Game animals are important to me, and I don’t like to see them wasted. Even roadkills are a shame in my mind.

We mag dumped plenty back in the 80s and never burned one up. We were never allowed to turn in opened cases of ammo, so there were usually several thousand rounds that needed turned into empty brass any time we did live fire training. We did have to turn in brass and it had to weigh within a certain percentage of the ammo we said we used. There were no telling how many rounds those rifles had through them at that point. They were never any worse off after a range day than they were before.

Seems I remember seeing a M16 with a brown stock. I think in the Philippines but not sure.