What Happened with the M16 in Vietnam?

[Music] welcome to smaller solutions today we're going to talk about a topic that is very near and dear to me and has been for most of my life because I spent most of my life studying it it was introduction of the m16 into Vietnam that's a very interesting story rebuy the changes very misunderstood there's a lot of misinformation that goes on out there as to what actually happened to the m16 in Vietnam and I want to try to clear up quite a bit of those today obviously you know I'm 43 I was not in Vietnam but I was not there however I've spent my career funding development of the m16 we're going to talk about as the mechanical issues that happen in Vietnam not so much is what the perceptions were of people who were there because obviously there's many Vietnam veterans who did have issues with the m16 they don't know why they had those issues obviously they don't care it was a it fell on them income but that's all that they know well we're going to talk about the actual mechanical issues of what happened back then the ripples that you're going to see here today are not exact models obviously they're not selective fire but the rifles that you're going to be seeing today are some nine imagines of the of the models that you have 16 of Alden and all the parts are are correct for that for the era the only difference is the receivers are not real fully automatic lower receivers starting off we want to talk about the early 1960s up until that time all US weapons were provided by US government ordinances factories for instance Rock Island Springfield all of the actual rifles that the US military used of it and developed in-house by the US military at the government-run armories that was one of the first parts where the m16 came into the ar-15 came in armored like the company who actually developed it Eugene stoner that was not an actual manufacturer they were thought of themselves as more of a think tank more of a product development but that is the manufacturing part as the war started to gear up a little bit in Vietnam and advisors over there we had issued weapons to the our South Vietnamese allies they were US World War two weapons VAR s m1 Garands so forth ones that these small seventy pound four foot ten statured people had a very difficult time with also most of them were some item an only well the Vietnamese the North Vietnamese in the Viacom are being equipped by by Russia in the Soviet Union this was the first true test of the ak-47 which is a true assault rifle even in these jungles most close quarters it was you know within feet within ten feet of each other or 20 feet of each other and the ambushes were much more precise and much more high-volume due to the fact that the ak-47 wasn't intermediate cartridge it was select to fire it could lay down control fully automatic fire the first American troops to arrive over there we riesling the m14 and it was pretty clear from the beginning the m14 was not the rifle for the Vietnam War it was heavy it fired a full-power cartridge it was very difficult to control I'm fully automatic for the close quarter battle that were there it was not practical so the new rifle came along it was the armalite ar-50 no it was completely introduced to the US military totally against the normal procurement process first of all it was a it wasn't developed there and again arm like to not have the pump or the political cloud to use something seriously looked at realize that they had and did not have the clock to actually get it they actually had sold the rights to colt's manufacturing colt's manufacturing at the time was a government contractor they had a lot of political clout and they needed something the m1911 they that sold anything in you know since the 50s they were looking for the next time it was going to keep cold stores over they saw the ar-15 they saw the potential they gambled I the first person that really look at it seriously was a general Curtis LeMay realizing he wanted to replace the existing stocks of Air Force weapons the m1 carbines and and so forth with a new rifle they had a little uh shooting get together at his of his ranges and this is a demonstration size of watermelons that was quite legendary and he warned them on the spot well the procurement process mostly was the US Army had to either be the ones who actually had to test the weapons and the US Army did not want the ar-15 for several reasons first and foremost it was designed by a private firm it was not designed by the US government at the time they were pushing out m-14s with us in Arsenal's so you can mention there's a lot of political issues there yeah guys who want to keep their the Armory's open officers who were in charge there's a lot of careers mistake and also you had the people who were I would want to say you know we're so entrenched in tradition that to them a true weapon is going to be steel it's going to be thirty caliber it's going to be a full-powered cartridge so yeah a couple things that that one against the ar-15 the air force got pretty upset because they requested the army to test the rifle and the army said no that you know the army had no use for such a weapon it was forced but it took up to three times before they actually had an answer for why they were boycotting the Armalite rifle called the Colt rifle at the time so they did actually get some tests to go through the first rifles were bought by the Air Force and they were the model l1 or 601 see here would be the first rifle that was put out by Colt the original ar-15 as it was sold to Colt that was not as a finalized product Jesus daughter said that himself the 5.56 millimeter cartridge and the ar-15 were developed together the cartridge and the weapon is a system once Colt got it did it make some changes to him also keep in mind that Colt affected colspan fashion is very different from the Colt today back in those days actually going to pride from his 60s right through the late 90s to really really early 2000 Colt wasn't met at some of the finest engineers in the world they were a leading arms maker for a product development putting out new products was a mandate from them there was no complacency the m16 it was a it was a gamble for him so they took the initial design and they made some changes to it and what you see here is basically a semi-automatic only version of what was sold and we're gonna take a look at this rifle from up to muzzle the first model the ones that went actually had green furniture had a green stock pistol grip and hand guards and it had the flash suppressor was a was because it was called a buck belt type it's a little bit different than what you see here for the most part other than the color of the stocks and the muzzle device decided this rifle is identical before I get too much into the differences for the rifle there is some required reading if you are really interested in the m16 and it's early it's early days most definitive study is country of publications what black rifle this gives you a very good in-depth look at what the actual issues were in Vietnam another one which is not really very much available but it is the new agree of exactly what happened this was the meaning no notes or the transcripts from the actual special subcommittee hearing on the m16 program in 1968 this was where the army was called out on their complete failure to run this program properly and provide the soldier with a proper rifle the number book is called the great rifle controversy it's not a print but it's an excellent book it talks about the US military weapons for the ultimate if tree rifle from World War two rape to the Vietnam era the next book is very very good it's called misfire this talks about how the Ordnance Corps has failed the American soldier since the Civil War it goes the right front for instance with us having the perfect weapon for World War one the Thompson submachine gun that the US military organization Ordnance Corps didn't have the vision to see how important of a weapon and how effective that would have been it talks about the failures with the m1 garand and go with box magazine into staying with a broad clip because they didn't want to waste ammo it shows just a lot of how the failures by tradition and also by people's own misguided loyalties to themselves rather than what was best for the US soldier book was the m16 controversies this is another excellent book on the development of the m16 and all the problems that went along with it you would not expect a rifle to have this kind of books written on it you think you know a jet or a tank or missile or something along those lines but the story of the m16 is a very interesting it shows a lot of mishandling it shows a lot of in some cases fraud people deliberately fixing tests to try to make the rifle look bad because these guys didn't want to lose their jobs and stop producing guns at Rock Island armory now this world will require rain for the early parts of the m16 early days of the m16 we're going to go later my personal book is a black rifle too that takes you from the m16a2 development right through for right through 2004 but in my opinion these are the definitive works on the history of the m16 rifle during the Vietnam War looking here is the original model l1 this was built off of the Colt a supporter one receiver upper lower receiver set however every single part on this rifle is 1962-1963 era so it is all correct looking at the rear we have our for the first generation fiber right stock the original stock as you can see had no trapdoor also the rear was actually a sling swivel rather than just a fixed swivel the receivers originally against genes donors wishes were manufactured of 6061-t6 aluminum and just the genes are inspected once they got to Vietnam the corrosion their perspiration to sweat the actual environment caused what was referred to as intergranular exfoliation or corrosion a lot of it was found in this area here because people would hold it like this so you would actually see magazine wells that were actually eaten all the way through where you can see the magazine and immediately that was changed back to the recommended 7075 t6 aircraft aluminum looking at the pistol grip again I was it was a fiber right type of material pestle grip the magazine originally was a steel magazine it was referred to as the waffle pattern magazine those were issued at first however they were found to have a lot of issues with them and they switched over to the aluminum 20 to 20 round magazine now one of the fallacies were going to start with is that you can only put 17 to 18 rounds of the magazine because the spring would get weak that was not true normally what happened was was the reason they didn't put them in was because if you had a full 20 round magazine it can be difficult to insert the wholly loaded magazine again it's something that was it got around that you oh you can't do this if you were to put 220 rounds which it was made it was manufactured for you would have had no problems but if you try to put in 21 rounds and you would have problems it's a lot of people were just told that they were said because it was a spring that went bad that's what was told but from an actual mechanical standpoint that was not the case you see people today with the 30 round magazines only pointing 29 round magnet 29 rounds of them because of that same fact that if you have to reload a magazine on a closed bolt you need to have that extra spring tension in there so it will just pop in so that's one of the first fallacies that we're going to get through getting back to the right foot you'll see that there was no offense around here the main difference between this receiver and the actual one is the actual one had a removable front pivot pin that pops right out so the original ejection port cover this was not nearly as durable as what we had there and the next thing was the actual charging handle itself the first charging handle was quite different from the original another one we have right now no it's how much smaller it is it's a more of a triangular shape this was the original design but it got noticed really quickly that it was too small people's hands were slipping off of it so it was changed again we had a carrying handle the original one did not have this type of a descent the reason why they went with this where you actually had to use a projectile to move it they wanted this sight that was not easily changed so somebody could be filling around with it and just rotating it and taking out a zero this made it where he hit the very deliberately you have to stick a bullet in there to actually rotate the the sight to make adjustments so this was actually done to make a little more difficult so it would only be zero did you know at the time that it needed to be and it wouldn't be changed an actual chrome-plated bolt carrier we're gonna go over that in a few minutes we have actually have a rounded off slip ring the Delta ring came later that's the one that was actually canted we had triangular shaped hand guards and we actually had a I believe this was the actual milled from our sight base rather than the forge that we use today it came out of a forging and we had the Evo three prong flash suppressor when we look over here we're gonna see there's actually a 12 there well that indicates this was one 12-inch twist barrel the early air 15's had a one-in-four teenage twist the problem was is when the rifle was tested in the Arctic they found that the M 196 tracer would not stabilize with the one turning 14 inch so they switched to the one in 12 now this is the original barrel that caused much of the problems in Vietnam this was this was a steel barrel there was no chrome plating into it okay now on the left side you will see the original bolt catch notice this is very difficult to try to actuate by hand to lock the bolt open it was very difficult so this was something that was pretty quickly changed you also noticed that there is a dimple in between air inside the selector lever this was had to do with the actual manufacturing process and that same dimple is on the would be on the rear takedown pen now we're going to take a look at the bolt carrier it's group itself the original bolt carrier was actually chrome-plated the original AR tender like that that was done for several reasons first the chrome is corrosion resistant second is it's very easy to clean and third is when chrome heats up it has some vicious properties to it which makes it feed more reliable and the parts moving together more reliable you notice that there's no forward assist notches on here again this was prior to the introduction of the ex m16a1 they were staked in place but you'll notice that there was just two pin punches it's different than they do it today and the bolt itself was chrome plated as well I don't know if we can get this on camera now but you'll see there is an acid etched MP on here that refers to this bolt and Barrel was protested with a 70 thousand psi proof cartridge and then it was Bank particle inspected that was the proof marks on the revolt it stated that it was MP that that was done to it actually this is several up now using a projectile tip you push inward on the pin and you'll notice on here that this pin is actually a machine pin it's not like the cotter pin that we see today this was excellent it was a unfortunately it was very expensive and that was one of the reasons for its demise [Music] this also is the original firing pin I want you to pay attention to the fact that how large this is in the rear here as well as the front this would prove to be a problem that they would have to deal with very soon once it's right flat hit the field you have a chrome-plated cam pin as well now we have the actual chrome-plated bolt itself and of course the inside of here was also chrome-plated the inside of the bolt the carrier key was all chrome plated as well then we could take a look at the actual extractor assembly itself we also noticed there is no buffer inside of the extractor at the time so those are issues that were looked at later on but this was actually the original bolt carrier group in theory it looks about the same as it does now but as we're gonna go through through the m16 81 we're gonna see how that actually does change it also procured the rifle as well except they had some changes that they wanted made some of them carried over to the the Air Force the first things we're gonna take a look at is from the outside same stock assembly same pistol grip the issue with the front pivot pin being removable was it was a problem it would be lost and once it was lost the rifle was unusable so they actually put in a gonna call it a boss here with a captive front pivot pen so that was a one of the first changes that were made it also the army wanted to have a forward bolt assist this is a very controversial change and my pain still lists of the day brave was designed by Jean stoner not to need an external link if you look at some of the modern air tens you'll see they don't have forward assist either originally our 10 was against it they were against having it and when he actually read into the minutes from the I Corps congressional hearing you'll see that stoner recommended against it he felt that it would cause more problems than it would actually fix and it also added about 3 bucks at the time at the time of cost to the actual rifle the whole purpose of the forward bolt assist was was if the bolt itself didn't actually lock you'd be able to push forward that little bit better I like it that actually would force the ball closed now the last thing that you want to do if the bolt does not fail is to lock on its own stuff force it in especially back in those days you would happen you would have a reason for it so you Jam a cartridge into the chamber you were asking for much more problems failures to attract that's how use there's something inside there there's some kind of obstruction you want to get it out of there the Army basically put this on for more of a psychological need and it did any kind of a mechanical need I can tell you I fired well over a million rounds over my life well over a million rounds are these rifles and I've never once had a mechanical failure that would solve in later years people put this into their doctrine for checking if it was loaded they would you know check to make sure it's there's a round mind and they would slap it forward or whatever that was created later but again I'm not going to talk about the training aspects that they've I'm talking about the actual mechanical standpoint itself before was this was a mistake it was something that the army wanted the airforce fought that for quite some time we're gonna look at that a little bit as well the barrel was the same everything else was the same this model here all the components you see here came from a 1965 era would have been in the configuration the rifle was when it first went into Vietnam first time this rifle was used in battle was the battle di Drang Valley in 1965 that was the first time that American Union armed with this rifle encountered enemy resistance greater North Vietnamese Army I had had the opportunity to interview Lieutenant General Hal Moore during our project I did for the US government and I asked him what he thought of this rifle especially back then he thought that this rifle was part of the reason that they were able to get through it obviously the real winner was on the air the air force in the artillery and and all that but on the ground with a close quarter battle that they have everything was so close the m14 would not have been suitable for that he had said that the rifles worked very well they didn't have any extensive problems at all in the battle yard during rally the only primary problem he could have had was excessive operation without maintenance due to the fact that they were it was three days before 90 days and three nights it was just constant fighting machine rifle also worked so well that it caused general Westmoreland's he wanted every ground element in Vietnam to be equipped with it this one got the original one one time by which we were talking about in a bit as well first far as of now [ __ ] were concerned yeah they didn't really have them because the rifles that they received during the battle egad yeah during Valley they didn't go to Vietnam of those weapons they train with the m14 back in Fort Benning when they got to Vietnam they were issued these rifles they had no real training on them they were using the original ammunition that the rifle was designed for and the rifles weren't in country long enough to have any corrosion issues it wasn't until later on with the rifle went into production and they were in Vietnam longer if they were exposed to the elements where a lot of these other issues had come out but the XM 1681 is probably my favorite rifle again on this rifle and the one you saw prior to there you'll see several of the original components that were changed later on to make this rifle the durable and reliable rifle that it's known for today the X m16a1 evolved into the m16a1 the m16 81 is the cumulative rifle with all the lessons learned and all the problems that the early x m16 and the original ar-15 had this was probably around 1968 that area when the m16a1 s came out again this one here was an X M meaning it was not yet type classified as a weapon yet it was still experimental m16a1 one in production the Air Force still had their own version which were too in a minute but we're going to talk about right now is the actual differences caused and malfunctions and how they were solved and this literally will go from what the muzzle and with some of the actual changes that were we're not going to go into the actual problems in Vietnam would actually happen mechanically to the rifles the word we're going to start is first and foremost as ammunition the rifle was developed it was about doesn't weapon system you had a particular barrel you have particular gas port location you had a particular spring guide you had everything was around at the 5.56 millimeter projectile it was loaded with the I amount of powder or a extruded propellant or what I call it stick powder psychic rate was generally around eight to nine hundred rounds in verse 17 rounds a minute and that was the image that the rifle was tested with it worked properly with there was no issues with and again I will tell you that team stoner had said when he testified that that was the preliminary cartridge it wasn't the finalized version well right around the 66-67 area the US cover decided they were to change four powers they're having some difficulty getting the quantities of ammunition that they wanted from Remington Barrington was the original developer of the a mission along with stoner they had problems supplicating the propellant and doing the quantities so the US government without any consultation with Colt or with Gene stoner went to the old stockpiles of world war ii bought propellant and they went to load the ammunition with ball propellant well they were able to reach the exact necessary you know fifty-five thousand psi chamber pressure however they found when they fired it that the pore pressures were quite different the pore pressures were much sharper which means that the cyclic rate was increased significantly and what that means is the entire timing to the rifle was thrown off again with the original propellant you had from the time the projectile fired to the time the projectile reached the gas port where he actually had the proper peak of the propellant and then you had the plug time for the dwell time between the gas port and a muzzle and all that worked out the actual timing which allowed the round of fire the bullets entered the atmosphere the pressures to drop in a chamber so the cartridge case we could track back into place and they both could unlock extract and inject that cartridge case well with the ball propellant it spent that entire entire sequence up so what's happening was was the bolt was trying to unlock and extract a cartridge case that was still attracted there was still residual pressure in there which caused the extractor to slip over or even the extractor to actually rip the rim off of the cartridge case that was one of the most serious problems with ball propellant there was an issue with fouling additional fouling that was caused by a bomb propellant the issue was very over stepped as to have the severity of the actual following itself the true problem was not the following it was the actual timing it caused the bolts to wear quicker it cost parts to break faster because you're driving the rifle beyond its design parameters we're going to talk about with the a1 later it was not that the rifle could not work with ball propellant is that it was qualified with I am our propellant the rifle cabin was eventually designed to work with ball propellant but the additional rifle was not for the problem of the ammunition it caused a couple issues first bolts to break it caused failures to extract it had also what's called bull carrier bounce ball carrier bounce is is when the rifles place an automatic the bolt is booked header hgroup is just moved rearward the idle sear tips back and the hammer is actually caught by the automatic sear so the bolt carrier reached its full rearward motion and then the spring recoil spring action spring starts pushing the boat forward if the bolt moves into the locked position and goes to lock the bottom portion of the bolt carrier actually tips the auto steer and it releases the hammer to fire well there was such excessive speed in here due to the harbor cyclic rate that at the same moment the hammer would drop and fire the bulk carrier actually bounced off of the receiver extension so the boat was closing and bouncing back momentarily at that point you hammer would follow and in the hammer would ride the frame pin forward until the bolt Locker wasn't enough energy to set the primer off in the cartridge case so what that design induced a malfunction so you had to get that round out of there and fire again and again the similar thing would happen it would get even worse as the rifle would wear because when you would have the gas port of motion of a lot more guests and and then also its speed the rifle up so you took a rifle here that was designed to fire around seventeen hundreds of minute and you're boosting up 950 to over a thousand rounds of that in all that wreaked havoc with the actual timing of the mechanism this was a problem if the ordinance court was aware of in fact Coltrain your Colts patent fire manufacturing I told them when they received the new animation with ball propellant did they could not me decide the great limits that he was always too high so the army knew that there this was a problem so if they told them to do was to qualify it with the original ammunition so they could actually make the shipments so knowingly that the omission that they were using in Vietnam was this ball propellant and the rifle was not compatible with it the army still made the decision to send test the rifles with one type of ammunition and then feed him a different kind of ammunition in Vietnam so we talked about was a change some of the changes I'm not into that the first issue ahead deal with a bulk carrier bounced itself the original rightfully used what's called a spring guide much like a pistol you have this guy that holds the spring action spring a recoil spring in alignment that's really all this was because the weights and everything were balanced with that original m193 ball were 5.56 millimeter with the IMR propellant well to stop the bolt carrier bounce its actual buffer was used to replace that this has actually five weights here you can hear that and what this did was when the bolt would come back is it would move forward all of what the weights would would I'll catch and it would actually halt the bolt from being able to bounce back this actually stopped issue with the bolt carrier bounce that was the first issue the next issue had to do with the bolts themselves due to the higher cyclic rate the actual bolts were actually breaking so there were some manufacturing improvements that went in for instance shot peening as heat treating issues that made the bolt stronger to be able to withstand the higher rates of fire and you also see that on the X m16 we have a chrome-plated bolt carrier the m16a1 we have black well even though the chrome is superior to manganese phosphate there was a couple issues one was cost the chrome plated bull carriers cost more than the manganese phosphate and two and those early days of these bolt carriers in bolts there's an issue with the actual chrome plating process themselves coltd and do that themselves they sent out to various vendors and if the chrome plating was not applied properly you could get cracks and in those cracks you would start corrosion and corrosion and pitting so you have issues with that with the chrome plated bolt carriers so to go with an actual manganese phosphate which is what was started back then and is still in use today it's not as good as systems as the conus but it's definitely very suitable the new bolts chrome plated is we're not chrome plated either they were also naming these phosphate what they did chrome plate was the inside of the bolt carrier and the inside of the carrier key inside of the carrier key was to make it easier to clean so fine will be less lucky to stick and inside of the carrier where you had the metal of meat metal gatherings meeting it would make that friction much less and it's also almost better for corrosion resistance so that was changed themselves the actual trigger mechanism themselves the disconnect er was one of the parts that also was seriously affected by the higher rate of fire there was actually which would call hammer slap which the bolt carrier would as it would move rearward it would strike with such violent force on the hammer the hammer would come back in a tell of the hammer would hit the rear that this connector and he will break the tail of it right off so the new disk connector was designed which hadn't was much dick so I had much more strength in that area they went with a different manufacturing process for the selector levers which got rid of the need for the hole that was in there the m16a1 did keep the forward assist you can also see right here we have the new charging handle now you will find rifles that have mixtures of these components because rifles were modified and updated the rifles I'm showing you here are the correct x7 16 e1 in the correct EMA 1681 but as I said the parts that I'm showing you you can find these parts mixed on a new gun you will find ones that were repair old and so forth I will talk a little bit more about this but you can see the improved charging handle that was actually easier to grab and those you can see the both of them have the forward assist as well looking at the stocks that we have here as well you'll also see that we have the swivel here now we have the fixed end swivel looking at the rear the XM 16 e1 you'll notice we have the fixed butt pad we have no trapdoor on the m16 because of the necessity of the cleaning kit we actually have a trapdoor where I think it could be installed and kept for for use also the materials of the stocks were changed to again this was the early fiber right this was a nylon that was much it was actually much stronger you can also see the pistol grips here this is a much more durable material than was originally used looking at the receivers themselves the biggest thing to notice is the full mag fence here or it's also called a boss the original rifle this is primary purpose was solely to have a captive friend pivot pen this one here had another one because of the way this was exposed the magazine release was exposed to had problems in doing low crawls or carrying the rifles where the magazine be accidentally released what the fence did here was it protected the magazine release button from up from unintentional release go look at the barrels right now as well there was a very big change that happened with the barrels failures to extract oK we've covered for the issues with bolt carrier bounce we have covered the cyclic rate the increased cyclic rate which had caused the bolt carrier bounce that it caused the arse breakage of the disconnect er Bulls to crack we've talked about how those changes those changes were made we're now going to talk about the principal cause of malfunctions of this rifle in Vietnam the principal failure and the most serious failures were caused by the failure of the army to chrome plate L'Amour's the chambers of these rifles this was something that the US military had known about since the Pacific that chrome plating of a barrel the chamber will prevent corrosion it's easier to clean and it prevents debris from sticking to it what happens when a chamber corrodes it forms pits and when the cartridge case expands the brass will actually expand into those pits and it will lock the cartridge case in place as the pressures decrease then we remain in those pits so what will happen is when the bullet comes back either the extractor will will slip over the cartridge case leaving the cartridge case in the chamber or it will actually rip the rim right off and the only way to get that cartridge case out was to get the cleaning rod and to ram it out and many of you have seen pictures of guys in Vietnam who had cleaning rods taped to their rifles this was a problem that was induced that was warrant they knew was going to happen the original rifles that you saw that I showed you had the twelve on there those were the actual barrels did have the standard steel which due to the humidity and other environmental issues being out being outdoors caused chambers to actually corrode and contrary to what people like to say is that these rifles would fail because they were dirty no they did not fail because they were dirty they failed because the chrome-plated their lack of chrome plating the Chamber's once you have a pin in chamber it doesn't matter how much you clean the rifle or how clean it is or how dirty it is you will have failures to extract and many would feel that you know hey we'll clean it it may work better for a round or two but the issue was not that the rifles need to be clean more it was once that Corvette got corroded and pitted the malfunctions began this all came out of the 1968 congressional hearing also so the army was forced to answer for it for many of these problems that they knew about they failed to correct in fact the committee said that the Army's performance in this LED was practically criminally negligent because of their failure to address the issues so there was a fixed in the barrels the first was to actually chrome plate the chambers period just the chambers and what we have here is we have examples of the actual barrels as they were changed so we're gonna show you the actual evolution of the correction to correct the fire to chrome plate the chamber my first of all we see here would be a typical model 601 with a 12 this was the actual rifle that did not have any chrome plating in it at all it was one it was the problematic barrel the next one you'll see cmp see i'll see us for Colt MP is 4 Matic particle and proof tested in C is for chrome chamber homely for a very brief time they actually tried to go to Rock Island it's and these upper receivers there and they would try to chrome plate the chambers only they would try to do conversions as well it was not very successful they did actually manufacture some that were chrome plated the Chamber's only but that was not really to fix the real fix was to have an entire chrome plated bore and chamber the next one you see cmp D which means Colt Mac protocol proof tested at a chrome bar and chamber the entire bar in chamber clockwork chrome plated this did a couple things first of all it took care of the failures to eject for the most part and also by chrome plating the war and increase the barrel life because the chrome plating is two to three times harder than barrel steel so many of the barrels were written in like this and then probably towards the end of the Vietnam War rampant through the end of the production of the m16a1 they were actually marked cmp chrome bore so see you guys II for called MP and then actual chrome bore and you can also see we have a little bit of an evolution here between the muzzle devices as well the original rifles used a three prong flash suppressor this was actually an excellent device but a lot of the rumors were that you guys would catch this on vegetation so they went to a what they called a birdcage which is you have openings all the way around with a closed muzzle so this basically will show you the evolution from conforming fighter bars to the chrome plated chamber from the chrome by a chamber to the chrome-plated boring chamber and I saw from the three-prong to the birdcage flash suppressor there is another model we also refer to the standard m16 itself as I previously seen with the forward assist II Air Force they didn't want it here did the Marine Corps so we had what's called the m16 itself and well the only real difference is lack of forward assist because they didn't want it you know see there was no matches on the bolt carrier group itself the Air Force and both the rancor felt that you know it was unnecessary and they didn't see the need to put it on there to increase costume for something that would not be useful so the definitive m16 is an a1 the are identical rifles with the exception of the m16 a1 has the forward assist and the standard m16 does not again you'll see these guns in many configurations and you know mix match of parts but this would be one that you would see in the Air Force you know right up probably right up well into of the early 90s you would see the quintessential m16 a1 use with the Air Force in fact the Air Force had many of the original model L once the first rebel that we looked at and then I'm sitting in their war stock for quite some time and then towards the early 2000s those rifles were pulled out of inventory and they were converted to m16a2 s they'll remove the entire upper receiver they would use the new conversion upper receivers the new stocks and a pistol grip the burst mechanism they would actually put a stamp burst and safe semi burst on the right side and they would modify the auto with an X and it would burst on it so the Air Force had used these for quite some time the rest of the military had gotten rid of them and the m16a1 would go on to be the primary rifle from the Vietnam War right up and through the late 1980s when the m16a2 was adopted both carriers is another issue then we're going to go over because there has been some evolution of the bolt carriers as well shown here is the original metal oh one chrome-plated ball carrier I notice what we referred to as a slick site and there's no pharmacists notches this one had been issued mostly air force and identical to it is the ex m16a1 which is also a chrome-plated but you will notice that there is actual forward assist notches during the issue that the m16 went through there was a change made to the firing pins themselves one of the issues that came up was slam fires caused by the inertia of the firing pin when the rifle would cycle most of you would notice that if you were to load around into the rifle and pull it out you'll see a tiny dimple on the back of the primer and that's just from the frying pan free-floating beside the the bolt well they were having an issue with primer sensitivity with the emission they're bruising in 5.56 millimeter early in the Vietnam War and what's happening was was a primary sensitivity was so bad did this original firing pin would actually fire when what would close slam fires the slam fires were not safe by Omi's and also a cosmonaut functions and it was a far easier for the military to address the front end and it was the primary sensitivity so to light the frank pin as you can see from the original to the current a standard D significant amount of material that was removed and once they got this down the issue with Empire pretty much went away however over the intervening years the primary sensitivity issue was corrected and the a mission it was made properly Harbor these firing pins when they were replaced or retrofitted these were supposed to be destroyed so they would not find why I find their way in any other rifles because of the problem there was a retrofit pretty much immediately a firing pins and of the new buffers were that were issued along with the other the changing of the barrels as well so if you were ever to see these in the rifle today that you're firing easy to be removed you're risking a safety issue as well and this went for both the early rifles as well as the X m16 eight months also the earlier rifles used a machined Franken retaining pin very very high quality yet very expensive in fact today you can still see this couple manufacturers who have brought them back because they are very nice quality but they were very expensive or what needed to do the switchover went to the current cotter pin design which is in use today as we previously discussed with changing the bolt carriers you got rid of the chrome plating and went to the manganese phosphate ready here shows an air force carrier which you can see is the same carrier with a manganese phosphate finish on it this carrier had a very short life due to the fact that it was not interchangeable with the m16a1 as we see over here what the pharmacist notches the US government did one did not want to order two different components that were basically identical and have one of them that wouldn't work on the other by stopping production of the m16 bolt carrier and only buying the m16a1 one they could use this one in both rifles afford assist notches wouldn't matter in the slick side receiver of the airforce guns but it would work in the Army rifles so these were basically both phased out and this one became used for all of them so you'll see original m16 rifles and in later production have 16 rifles with this bolt carrier now so again we stated before but I'm gonna reiterate again the changes that I was saying I'm showing you right now we're not ones that were carried across the board at the same time new production rifles were made the way that I showed you the rifles of the field were changed the change is discussed here are again were basically four brand new rifles the actual retrofits were however there we could actually do them whether they sent buffer buffer spring replacements out to the guys in the field or they change the you know the framing pins in the field the other major issue that was dealt with I also came out of the register hearings with weapons maintenance due to the fact that the original time buy was always supposed to be yes that at one time by the army dissident wisdom decided they were not going to procure cleaning kits the rifles were touted as self-cleaning rifles now it doesn't matter what kind of a rifle or machine gun or whatever it is everything needs maintenance nothing will work forever without any kind of maintenance whether it's an ak-47 or an m16 soldiers were not receiving cleaning kits there was no 22 caliber cleaning kits in Vietnam so soldiers would have their parents send them 22-caliber kidding kids they would get in Sporting Goods shops instead of over there guys in Vietnam lubricant was another issue there was no proper lubricant for these rifles it wasn't until the congressional hearings where they had found out that these weapons were in such dismay coltd actually had sent a team of guys L'Amour to vietnam to see the condition of these rifles when they're having all these malfunctions and mr. Ito was name was mr. Keating was you know he said he would look down Boris and he couldn't even see daylight because of all the corrosion and how the part of how the rifles the parts were just so come together that really showed there was a real lack of weapons maintenance to begin with and it all started with not having proper cleaning kits so the cleanup did begin around 1967 or so 68 I think it was actually designed and issued the most important parts was the actual chamber brush itself so the purpose of having the trapdoor was to be able to have the cleaning kit and this was the cleaning kit that came out of the congressional hearings with the proper tools to actually whom this rifle again we have patches of CLP again this was the CLP was later on towards the 80s and 90s as well as early into the 2000s this was garbage this was actually a tough line base that caused a lot of problems so this was not something I recommend anybody use at this point but this was at the time of the rifle I was out in the 80s this was what was used an actual all-purpose brush some more position rod segment with handle an actual burner brush itself slotted tip and most importantly the chamber brush this chamber brush was one of most significant tools for cleaning the m16 rifle now I only did it scrape all the garbage out of the chamber itself but you also had a brush in the rear to take care of the Bernal extension itself so as you get in there you would only clean the chamber itself but also the barrel extension this would get a lot of the crap off of it which was necessary the bore brushes it would get all the fouling the gun powder residue the barrel during the Vietnam War you had something that was called Elvis a lubricant small-arms it was a basic Korean era lubricant and a whitish color to it it was it was not very good the operating characteristics of the m16 we actually have some heat it's inside the carrier itself that stuff a burn off rather quick there was also a controversy of lubricants early in the Vietnam War as well I believe one of them was called slick side which was one of the ones there was a problem but guys are getting anything he could get their hands on they were using motor oil but once the cleanup began the barrel speaketh did they give the barrels were both coal mine bores and chambers the firing pins were changed the trigger assembly was beefed up the bolts were improved now the rifle is actually designed to work with ball propellant and those who encountered complete m16a1 rifle with all the improvements very little people had any problems after 1968 1969 the problems pretty much had gone away so just to recap what the actual issues were contrary to popular belief number one was a change in ammunition it caused the rifle to get his timing thrown off which caused bolt to try to open too soon before the cartridge case was actually contracted enough or easily removed most important problem was the failure to chrome plate the chamber the corrosion and depending is what caused all the major failures in Vietnam which is what caused the cartridge cases the stick which required the actual cleaning rods to be used to knock about the finding the bolt itself having been shot peened and having some metallurgical issues corrected stopped the bolts from breaking the issuing of the clean kit in actual training on how to maintain the rifle that was that was another one of the more significant changes but with the world true lesson of a series you never develop a rifle in the field the m16 was rushed into service and we did not go through a proper development process even though even though uh Secretary of Defense McNamara ordered the Army's organist corps to take that rifle get it ready for deployed to deploy our troops and get him a working rifle their army did not follow that one they fought tooth and nail they thought that therein will justify the means and the issues of not correcting the issue collecting problems they thought the rifle would fail and they would go back to their trusty m14 to find at the m16 was truly the rifle for Vietnam it was the perfect rifle for the Vietnam War our smallest attribute nummy as allies liked it our Special Forces who first had it loved it the rifle was introduced outside of the normal procurement process it had its fans it fought its way with the army the army failed to rent through a proper development process rushed it into Vietnam didn't give the troops the proper tools approved a propellant that was against the wishes of or the advisement of both the designer Jean stoner as well as Colt they had all the documentation that showed that the problem was going to have adverse effects on the rifle they ignored it the fallacy about how the rifle got a little bit of dirt on it it would that work you know I have seen videos in fact I'm sorry to say I was part of a video they was done by a British film crew it was called the greatest military clashes I had spent significant time with this film crew explained to them what actually happened in Vietnam mechanically to these rifles well they went and got some Vietnam veterans infantry guys and they basically told them that we want to hear about malfunctions well everyone these guys didn't really know many so they made some up and it's not that they made up was just completely ridiculous the one gentleman said that you know he was digging a hole or something like that he had the rifle sitting with his right side up he got a little bit of dirt on it and then the you know somebody opened up from a tree line and he pull a trigger and just went click people please the only way that god is gonna go click is one if you didn't love it and two is if you had a dud round any dirt that you're gonna put on top that is not gonna affect the actual firing so a lot of people who talk about it who were asked for for malfunctions this stuff makes no mechanical sense again I know that malfunctions did happen you talk to a lot of military experts that the thought that a soldier knew that it would happen was worse than any malfunction than it ever had because all you had to do was hear the stories and it would cause you to lose faith in your weapon and that's one thing in extreme I could not do as was faith in this weapon so did we have to have problems yes were they is Wiley distributed and did they happen as well according to all the documentation after-action reports that I read it did not it did happen there were mechanical reasons for it it wasn't a lot of the popular things that you hear about the rifle just need to be cleaned all the time I personally have fired over a thousand rounds a lot of warnings a lot clean the army considers a battle three hundred rounds if a rifle can fire three hundred rounds without cleaning and these do that in flying colors most malfunctions of the rifle would experience would be due to a bad magazine or magazine with bent Phillips which is another interesting fact that these aluminum magazines were not designed to be used over and over and over and over the aluminum design magazine was designed by Armalite to be a throwaway magazine the magazine will be issued with a full 20 rounds of them and then they will be used and then discarded and due to lack of supply that wasn't what happened they kept reloading them time after time and the magazine Phillips would Bend that would also cause malfunctions as well again using it for something it wasn't designed for magazines are considered a disposable commodity in the military they're replaceable which was another issue that happened over there as well I hope you find this video very interesting because you know highly enough that all listed happened back in the 60s is still relevant today you still have people who are saying a lot of the same things about the rifle there's a lot of misinformation of what happened coming from this angle I'm talking talking about the actual mechanical issues mechanical issues aren't really up for interpretation it's all something malfunctions what causes it to malfunction that's a mechanical issue yes we really wanted to explore here and they wanted to explore also how max will run a weapons program how you how you actually select a rifle and then from that point you run through a development you work out all the kinks and then you deploy it this rifle dish did not have that luxury the war in Vietnam escalated very very quickly and they had rifles that had XM's instead of em's meaning experimental instead of actually models these are pre technical data package rifles the X m16 in the model L ones did not have you know TDP for them at the time the m16a1 was the first one to be typed classify there's actually a technical data package for development this rifle did have issues as we said were they serious as some people like to play him up I don't believe so I believe that it damaged him around more that did anything else with it it did do one thing that was very interesting it was the last nail in the coffin for the US Army Ordnance Corps after one too many failures of the US soldier Secretary of Defense McNamara shut down Rockpile memory the m14 enjoined an entire six years of service life which is a shortest of any US military small arm after the m16 was finally adopted for the US military all the production of the m14 ceased within those six years and also had the closing of both raka almond Springfield Armory's and the total disbanding of Hornets core and from that point forward every US military small arm future was designed by a private company not by the US Army and this was a very good move because it brought the impartiality in into it you wouldn't think there would be a good idea to have a Secretary of Defense to tell the army what rifle that they need but in this case he knew better than what they did he know that that this was a different kind of a war that there was new technology perhaps him being an executive at Ford Motor Company had a lot to do with with his understanding of the process he saw the infighting and he was brought into it and it was certainly one of his fighter moments of his career regardless of the rocky start in the 60s this rifle has gone out to be the most manufactured 5.56 millimeter in the world and even as of today it's on four variants equipped the most elite military in the world our Special Forces is used by Special Forces all over the world whoever thought to this rifle who was that was the army destined to destroy in the early 60s would still be here in 2016 perhaps that's the tribute to Jean stoner and his ability to see the future his ability to take modern practices and to develop higher tech weapons he had that vision where the US military did not or perhaps it goes to cult in the early days Colts manufacturing co spec fires manufacturing company Colt industries perhaps had to do with their ability to continually to modify and improve the rifle to keep it up with a minor warfare and to this day if you use a testament to the weapon system itself where you have many many companies who have designed and evolved and turned it into the most popular rifle in the United States to have adaptability and have a diversity that no other weapon in history has ever had but it's sure to be we're gonna see this rifle and many years to come throughout the world I know many of you are wondering where is the shooting well to be honest with you these top two rifles here are made from original parts from the 1960s early 60s they're more my collectors items I really don't want to fire them the only one here that's wood fire is the a1 but I don't think that would be really be too exciting this video was primarily the issues that haven't never really be covered the range it's been covered more of a I want to call it a classroom setting I hope you enjoy this very long video and if you do please click like and do subscribe thank you you

Channel: SmallArmsSolutions

Views: 505,674

Rating: 4.9174957 out of 5

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Id: NYar4Zf8jH8

Length: 55min 41sec (3341 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 06 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Sabo_cat]

Ian has recommended this video and channel before so i figured i would post this video here.

[u/NoNameFist]

I just watched this, good stuff.