SwiftVets.com

[AMOS]

I seem to recall a chrome chamber solved the jamming problem with the M-16. Mine worked alright in 1968.

[Arty Guy]

The M-16 fiasco was a direct result of the Army Ordnance Bureaucracy modifying a perfectly good weapon, the privately designed AR 14, so they could call it "their own". We were issued M-16's at Ft. Irwin a few weeks prior to our deployment in May of 1967. We had all heard about the problems and our troops were quite concerned. We were able to get a large allocation of ammo for familiarization and spent a day at the range. Everybody got to shoot pretty much as much as they wanted and satisfy themselves that the M-16 worked. By that time the problems had been solved. It is a scandal that good men died trying to make the initial issues work.

[lthrneck]

When I got to Nam Oct 66, we were using the M14, I scronged a selector switch so I could rocknroll with it. Great weapon never jammed, reliable as hell and could knock a elephant down with it. March of 67 they issued us M16's, April or May I forget now exact date but we were one Marine Battalions tasked with the invasion of the DMZ "Operation Buffalo". Needless to say we got into some pretty heavy combat, the piece of **** rifle failed us miserably. Many Marines were found dead with their M16 broken down trying to clear the casing out of the breach shot while being overrun. I will remember this forever. The command didn't want to hear about the rifle failing and they tried to blame us for not cleaning our rifles properly. Any Marine grunt knows better, hell if we had one toothbrush we used it on our rifle. Didn't matter, the ammo was bad along with other problems it didn't fail in the rear or on the rifle range but it failed miserably in a combat situation. I really soured on the goverment REMF's after this for a long long time.
_________________
"Old Breed, New Breed, There's not a DAMM bit of
difference so long as it's the MARINE Breed"
- Lt. Gen Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller

Semper fi
uuurah
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