Originally Posted by flintlocke
^^^apparently a lot of officers and nco's agreed with you, in 1965 many, many stories of ''every excuse under the sun was used to delay the issue of the M16 by line units, just short of insubordination." As the dirty chamber, jamming issues continued to surface...one Marine battalion commander remarked, 'once it gets hot and dirty, you basically have a muzzle loader' (referencing the cleaning rod used to knock out the stoppage). As tested, the M16 performed well with DuPont 8208 stick, Olin's ball powder sustitute got grunts killed. The M16A1 forward assist, in '69 was an attempt to solve the problem, which of course it didn't, nothing but religious cleaning did fix the problem....which was hard to do when laying down high volume fire in the military's tactic of the time, 'fire and manuever'.
Originally Posted by Bugger
I hated the M16, since was a POS! It reminded me of a Daisy BB gun. When shooting tracers, it was evident that the bullets were tumbling. Never had a chance to put it on paper. But I hated the M16.
I loved the M14. It was much more accurate, more powerful - nothing to dislike about the M14.


One thing I've often wondered about was lube.

Today, we know how they like it wet.
Was that common knowledge/doctrine then.

A gun getting balky often goes back to good with a few shots of lube,
Was that all those guns needed?

A patch, not a fix. But would some extra oil have helped then go?

Parents who say they have good kids..Usually don't!