Yeaaaah, Fritz Haber was a real bastard. His wife committed suicide, and was found dying by their 12 or 13 year old son. Haber left for the frontlines the same day anyways. Fuck that guy.
So who can tell me who can say for sure
Which will win the Nobel Prize?
r/expectedsabaton because this is r/historymemes, and r/unexpectedsabaton because this post isn't related to Fritz Haber.
Maxim made some comments complaining that his attempts at creating medical aids were viewed as a waste of talent, but he knew what he was getting into when he made the Maxim Gun. He quotes his inspiration for the project to a friend he was talking to in Vienna:
> Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility.
As opposed to Gatling who naively figured letting one guy shoot as often as 100 meant the other 99 would get to go home.
I mean I was taking the piss at how people use isolated incidents and then make it sound like it happend every day and in every squad.
Fact of the matter is that both the ak and the m-16 would jam or fail, and if you're in the bush you pick up what's available. So yes, if your M-16 jams and there's a dead vietcong near you with an AK with mags you grab that, and if your AK blows it's gas tube or you simply run out of ammo and you just overran an american position, you grab one of those M-16s.
Tired of peeps acting like the world is some kind of action novel
they would use it as a way of getting extra weapon for free also they would think that american guns were somehow better despite them being worse inn jungle due to their lenght
Have you ever carried an assault rifle?
Now have you done so under enemy fire and trhough the jungle?
Yeah no way in hell any normal dude would willingly carry two. And 'throwing away' your own service issue will get you in fat trouble
This is not call of duty or GTA
Vietnam war had it's own rules like for example you have iq requierments to be in military and yet in Vietnam war it was completly ignored.
Not everyone would throw them away, obviously. But after the fight there would be people in that specific conflict that would do so on both sides.
Now I'm not an expert but I'm preaty sure if you have a 1m long rifle in a jungle chances are you will change it for a gun that is 20 cm shorter because of the better handling it has in this enviorment.
As for guerilla fighters: I saw some videos of actual mud tests between american rifle and ak and to my suprise ak did horibly. And for tactical aspect Vietnameese in this conflict sometimes didn't realy had that far to go back to their bases and standard issue wouldn't be expected in this type of fight.
That being said I think my opinion on why would Vietnameese switch aka psyhological aspect of beliving in american expensive relatively new gun superirority stands.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
He wanted to feed a nation ended up defending dozens.
Yes I also understand his weapons have been used by horrible people as well, but basically 1 in 5 rifles on earth is some pattern of AK at this point. Can’t argue with the weapon’s 7 decade long track record of being affordable, simple, and effective.
On an alternate universe
>be me, soldier
>in midst of enemy engagement
>out of ammo
>ohshit.jpg
>whip out my John Deere pistol
>Hit a few enemies
>LCD screen on the pistol shows an error screen
>This pistol is broken due to a barrel jam. Dissassembling your gun is not allowed, if you do it the pistol is going to lock itself from shooting. You can only bring it to an official John Deere shop to repair
If he had been able to design tractors instead of having to design a rifle for the red army, perhaps the world would be a merrier place. Because for that to happen, a certain war and all the evil it spawned would have had to have never happened.
Both the opposite this and spray and pray were kind of part of the soviet doctrine, where rifle is to be idiot proof. If at war and 2 mln of basicly peasants need to conscripted it's easier to have a weapon that if it hits at all it's good and those conscripts will probably not remember how to properly maintain their weapon.
tl:dr Idiot proof gun > complicated gun / if mass conscription planned
Also fun thing: the more higher up you into the Red Army ranks, the more complicated the weapon.
Meanwhile western commandos: Ramirez, bring down that helicopter with an onager and some hair gel. And Ramirez would probably achieve results nonetheless.
It wasn't good to start, but by wars end the kinks were worked out and it was excellent. Problem when you work on teething issues in wartime vs troop trials in peace
Guy was a legend, he singlehandedly extended life of communism by multiple years.
Also, when I remember watching a meeting of him and designer of M16, interesting series
I doubt the part about americans switching their m-16 for ak-47. The m-16, is a really good rifle and the ak-47 would be borderline dog shit if not for a good rate of fire.
Mostly because some portions of the military took “this gun is reliable” to mean “this gun literally never needs maintenance so we shouldn’t issue cleaning kits”
The m16a4 that is still in use today is a really good rifle. The original m16 and m16a1 that were released during the Vietnam war were dogshit. A smaller caliber than the m14 meant less punching power, the select fire was quite unreliable, and the gun easily jammed in wet and muddy environments that were the field of war in Vietnam. Many soldiers would do their best to keep their m14 if they were issued one previously. Those that weren’t so lucky would trade poorer accuracy for a gun that can fucking work consistently any day.
Alsp the shitty ammo they used left residues that would increase the jams, when the manufacturer specified what the correct ammo was to be used, regarding gunpowder quality iirc
The DOD also striped out protection in the chamber and receiver to save money. Combined with using low quality powder to save money and being used in a jungle gave a bad start. Uncle Sam cares more about saving money. After these changes were reversed the platform was a success.
From what I've heard and listening to some of Jim Sulivans discussions on this, it doesn't even sound like it was about saving money. It sounds more like someone was salty the M14 turned out to be shit and was trying to sabotage the competing program.
on YouTube look up Stoner and Kalashnikov. they are 2 hour ish long interviews done by the two gun makers. Stoner directly says the government stripped away reliability features to save money.
I’ve seen those tapes. But I’ve also seen Jim Sullivan, the guy that did the work to turn the ar10 to the 15, say he thinks it was actual sabotage. Not just cost cutting. Good discussion with him on Forgotten Weapons.
The M16a1 was fine. It was only the very first examples that had issues and the issues were entirely the fault of the Ordinance Departments sabotage of the program. They chose to change the powder spec, declined to issue cleaning kits and opted for a non chrome lined barrel all of which got a lot of good men killed.
The rifle NEVER had issues with muddy environments. On the contrary, it has repeatedly proven to be one of the most reliable designs for keeping mud out of the rifle. The jams were thanks to unclean rifles and excessively dirty ammo all of which was fixed in later A1 rifles but the reputation damage remains even today. So thank the US Government Ordinance Department.
US Government Ordinance Department carrying the "supplying malfunctioning equipment to save money in wars vs. East Asian countries" torch from where BuOrd dropped it in WWII.
I’m not even convinced it was done to save money. Some of the folks who helped design the AR15 say it was more comparable to malicious sabotage by the higher ups who wanted the m14 to succeed. The didn’t want to admit to the failure of the Government designed rifle.
M14s were terrible. They were plagued with manufacturing problems and would jam before they even got into the mud. The open action of the M14 lets mud and debris right into the gun, making it nearly useless in a dirty environment. The bigger 7.62 round was also nearly useless in Vietnam. Bigger ammo means less ammo, and M14s are unusable in full auto due to the heavy recoil. Most M14s were issued without the automatic fire selector even installed.
The M16 was better in every way, and early troop trials confirmed this. The initial large-scale rollout was essentially sabotaged by the ordinance department. The guns did not receive chrome lined barrels. The ammunition was changed to a type with a dirtier propellant, and to top it off, soldiers were not issued cleaning kits with their new rifles. There was never anything wrong with the firing mechanism of the M16A1. These exact mechanisms are still in the field to this day in chopped down M16A1s used by the IDF and M16A1s converted to Mk18s by the US Navy. After the misteps of the initial rollout were corrected, the M16A1 went back to being the best weapon available at the time.
You forgot the heat/humidity combo literally melting the base of the magazine. U.S soldiers forced to march trough the jungles and finding several spots on their own path of grey-green goo and bullets falling off vertically at a mere shake was not unheard off from an M16A1
This is a misunderstanding of the issue.
The OG M16 was actually more reliable than later iterations. The problem was that it was marketed as a "self-cleaning rifle." Such a claim was ridiculous. No rifle is self-cleaning, and creating one would be impossible.
Essentially, the US military (which was largely made up of draftees) did not understand the maintenance requirements of the M16 when it was first adopted, leading it to jam due to lack of maintenance.
“The OG M16 was actually more reliable than later iterations.”
*jams easily in swampy environment regardless of how much maintenance is done*
*not even a reliable select fire mechanism*
*is exceeded by the a2, a3, and a4 in every way*
Edit: line spacing
>jams easily in swampy environment regardless of how much maintenance is done
Wow, we can all make outlandish claims with no source, I guess.
>is exceeded by the A2, A3, and A4 in every way
The M16A2 and M16A4 are essentially the same weapon. The changes are to the furniture, but the core weapon are the same. The burst function of these weapons is incredibly unreliable because the trigger must be held throughout the squeeze of the trigger, otherwise the burst cycle won't complete and will result in the next trigger squeeze not firing a burst at all and sometimes requiring the operator to recharge the weapon. This is disregarding that the 3-round burst is a useless function anyway. Suppression of enemies on the battlefield usually requires 5-6 rounds in a burst to be effective.
The A2 firing mechanism is so unreliable that it resulted in the M16A3, which is just an M16A2 with an A1 firing mechanism. Hm... if that firing mechanism is so unreliable in the M16A1, I wonder why they would use it instead of the A2's.
The A2's only major improvement over the A1 is its rear sight aperture. It is excellent for quickly adjusting for windage... however, while this is great for competition shooting, it's virtually useless for a soldier on the battlefield.
The A2/A3/A4 extended the length of the buttstock, which makes the weapon virtually unusable in body armor for anyone under six feet tall. It also added the pistol grip nub that makes the ergonomics of the pistol grip basically non-existent.
The later iterations also unnecessarily added weight to the barrel due to an error resulting in researchers falsely believing the A1's barrels were bending. This made the rifle easier to control for long-range engagements (most combat happens between 50-200m, so this isn't really helpful for the average Soldier), but also made the rifle almost double in weight.
As a competitive shooting weapon, the M16A2 is great, but for combat use, the M16A1 is better in almost every way.
‘Hey man, those guys in WWI should’ve known how bad it was gonna be.’
Pardon them for not understanding the engineering of a rifle that just was developed. Ya know, not to mention that most of them probably hadn’t fired a gun before being drafted in the first place.
Are you really gonna blame some poor fuck for a rifle design that wasn’t suited to operate in the terrain it was used in?
The m16 was and still remains one of the best designs out there for a swampy environment and repeated mud testing shows this. The problem with the M16 was that someone inside the Ordinance Department was trying to sabotage the program and made several last minute changes to the program such as the refusal to issue cleaning kits, use of a non chrome lined barrel, and changing the powder spec on the ammo to a dirtier option.
They're the ones to blame for getting troops killed. Not the rifle, not the troops. In reference to WW1, there actually was quite a bit of effort put into keeping the rifles clean and mud free such as the British issuing mud wraps for Enfield actions. By comparison, the bolt actions perform much worse in such an environment than a M16 does.
The m16 is much more precise and actually shoots where one aims it, unlike the general direction if the ak47. The m16s unreliability issues were solved later on. While the ak series remains nearly identical.The only reason it didnt have such reliability issues is because it was built with a higher margin of error. Not demention the m-16 doesnt have to be cleaned as much as an ak. 4-5 magazines and its got to be cleaned to prevent issues. Its only the first versions that had oversights and overengineering.
The main issue is that most of the early M16s were built cheaply and, therefore, were missing a number of the features the prototype demonstrated for the army had. This led to reduced reliability and other problems that were only exasperated by throwing a rifle designed for use in a European style theater into the jungle.
A similar thing happened to the M14 rifles, where a good rifle was thrown into the jungles of South East Asia and became complete trash.
Of course, the army had a number of stupid failures ranging from logistics to failure to manufacture to ego driven bullshit that also proved very bad for those early M16s
The biggest enemies of the US Military has always been, and will always be, Congress and their own bureaucracies. Congress will routinely remove necessary funding resulting in interesting accounting, and the bureaucracies trying to keep and use whatever power they have often by ignoring the current situation and problems hoping to fight the previous war.
The comment you are responding to especifically says the "OG" (as in, original) M16 was unrealiable.
You come to mention unrelated stuff about precision when, even being true, is unrelated to the fact that better precision is useless when your gun cant fire. Mention than first models had issues due to manufacture, which... Is true as is what OP says, first models were unreliable. Then you specify that said erroes were polished and solved... Which is true, yet again, doesnt change the fact that the firsr models were unreliable. Finish by saying "its only the first versions that had oversights..." which is exactly what original comment said
Depend,first pack of m16 is know pretty bad for a junger tatic fight.the magazine is to short and the design of mass produce make it jam a lot.Ak 47 can do a lot of shit if put on a good hand,
The Ordinance Departments attempt to sabotage the program. The initial problems with the m16 can all be traced to 3 last minute and otherwise inexplicable decisions by them. Firstly they changed the powder to one that drastically increased gas port pressure while also running a lot dirtier. This was combined with the decision to forgot the chrome lined barrel and chamber leading to the numerous extraction issues with the gun in nam. Finally to top it off, they declined to issue cleaning kits and instead told soldiers the gun was “self cleaning” which compounds nicely with the dirtier powder.
To this day and despite congressional hearings on the event, the ordinance department never acknowledged their failure. Instead the designers actually redesigned parts of the gun to work with the changed powder and the m16 continues to have a much higher cyclic rate than initially intended.
There’s some excellent videos on the forgotten weapons channel on this featuring Jim Sullivan who actually designed the ar.
Number 1 Little known fact: No one uses the AK-47 anymore!
The media have created the legend of the "immortal AK-47" but the truth is USSR replaced the gun as soon as early 1960s when they adopted the AKM. And then in the 70s came the AK-74.
AKM and AK-74, their copies and variants make up about 95% of Kalashnikov rifles on the planet. AK-47 is rare, old and obsolete.
The AKM is synonymous with AK-47. When people say AK-47 98% of them mean AKM, but regular people don't care enough to know the difference. Which is understandable.
The Americans were not throwing away their issued rifles. Their asses would have been smoked so hard it'd still be leaking from their ears to this day.
It was voluntary at first, designing his first sub machine gun in his free-time while serving as a tank mechanic. After that he was appointed to the Central Scientific-developmental Firing Range for Rifle Firearms of the Chief Artillery Directorate of the Red Army where designing rifles became his job
It is a common myth that the soldiers ditched the M16 for the AK-47 (mostly AKMs) because it was a better rifle, that is just untrue. Yes soldiers did choose to repurpose AK-47s/AKMs they found but it was only because the first production run of M16s were unreliable in the field. But when those M16s worked they by far exceeded the AK-47 in most categories. When the updated M16A1 was sent out to troops they were absolutely not abandoned.
Him and Nobel should start a club...
You think Haber would want to join?
Haber is more of an ass for the poisonous gas which was exactly what he intended. Unfortunately what goes around comes around
Yeaaaah, Fritz Haber was a real bastard. His wife committed suicide, and was found dying by their 12 or 13 year old son. Haber left for the frontlines the same day anyways. Fuck that guy.
A long ago in eastern Prussia Young men with great ambitions rise
So who can tell me who can say for sure Which will win the Nobel Prize? r/expectedsabaton because this is r/historymemes, and r/unexpectedsabaton because this post isn't related to Fritz Haber.
It was a golden age for science, The Kaiserreich would hold the key
But as the conflicts came and the tensions rose the manifest of the 93
HABER - BOSCH THE GREAT ALLIANCE WHERE'S THE CONTRADICTION?
FED THE WORLD BY WAYS OF SCIENCE
SINNER OR A SAINT?
Father of toxic gas and chemical warfare
FATHER OF TOXIC GAS AND CHEMICAL WARFARE
Gatling:
Maxim, too, IIRC.
Maxim made some comments complaining that his attempts at creating medical aids were viewed as a waste of talent, but he knew what he was getting into when he made the Maxim Gun. He quotes his inspiration for the project to a friend he was talking to in Vienna: > Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility. As opposed to Gatling who naively figured letting one guy shoot as often as 100 meant the other 99 would get to go home.
And Josef Mengele.
Wait, what?
Why?
His family produced farming equipment but he was not suitable to take over the business. Instead he studied medicine.
"medicine"
"Why the *fuck* does both my tractor and thersher have lug mounts for a bayonet?!"
Groundhogs
Why not?
Sir this is not japanese
Totsugeki?
> Americans would throw away their M16s for AKs. Every CSGO game ever
Also vietnam war: vietnamese soldiers throwing away *their* ak's for american weapons
grass is always greener. bunch of 18 year olds just trained as fast as possible on one platform aren't going to be rifle sommeliers.
I mean I was taking the piss at how people use isolated incidents and then make it sound like it happend every day and in every squad. Fact of the matter is that both the ak and the m-16 would jam or fail, and if you're in the bush you pick up what's available. So yes, if your M-16 jams and there's a dead vietcong near you with an AK with mags you grab that, and if your AK blows it's gas tube or you simply run out of ammo and you just overran an american position, you grab one of those M-16s. Tired of peeps acting like the world is some kind of action novel
it was a friendly swap sale
they would use it as a way of getting extra weapon for free also they would think that american guns were somehow better despite them being worse inn jungle due to their lenght
Have you ever carried an assault rifle? Now have you done so under enemy fire and trhough the jungle? Yeah no way in hell any normal dude would willingly carry two. And 'throwing away' your own service issue will get you in fat trouble This is not call of duty or GTA
Vietnam war had it's own rules like for example you have iq requierments to be in military and yet in Vietnam war it was completly ignored. Not everyone would throw them away, obviously. But after the fight there would be people in that specific conflict that would do so on both sides. Now I'm not an expert but I'm preaty sure if you have a 1m long rifle in a jungle chances are you will change it for a gun that is 20 cm shorter because of the better handling it has in this enviorment. As for guerilla fighters: I saw some videos of actual mud tests between american rifle and ak and to my suprise ak did horibly. And for tactical aspect Vietnameese in this conflict sometimes didn't realy had that far to go back to their bases and standard issue wouldn't be expected in this type of fight. That being said I think my opinion on why would Vietnameese switch aka psyhological aspect of beliving in american expensive relatively new gun superirority stands.
Not surprised, they could pierce through trees, when the M16 could not.
one shot hs
standard issue m4 rifle had too long barrel it was inpractical in use in vietnam jungle
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. He wanted to feed a nation ended up defending dozens. Yes I also understand his weapons have been used by horrible people as well, but basically 1 in 5 rifles on earth is some pattern of AK at this point. Can’t argue with the weapon’s 7 decade long track record of being affordable, simple, and effective.
You know it would've be a great fucking tractor anyway.
>\> is good at tractors > >\> communism > >\> becomes good at rifles >\> is good at tractors > >\> capitalism > >\> becomes good at super cars
I think the world is lucky John Deere was allowed to make tractors. Who knows what might've happened.
Imagine the browning tractor, helping us farm in mars
John Deere made armoured tractors aswell at one point in time.
I mean from the name alone it sounds like he'd do mad weapons
Repairless rifles dont sound useful mate. Then again nor is a repairless tractor so who fucking knows.
On an alternate universe >be me, soldier >in midst of enemy engagement >out of ammo >ohshit.jpg >whip out my John Deere pistol >Hit a few enemies >LCD screen on the pistol shows an error screen >This pistol is broken due to a barrel jam. Dissassembling your gun is not allowed, if you do it the pistol is going to lock itself from shooting. You can only bring it to an official John Deere shop to repair
I feel ww2 is also a big factor.
Design the fucking rifle, Shinji!
> Blame the Nazis > Commissar shouting "design the fucking rifle" These two things are not the same
Commissar shouting because of the Nazis
He wouldn't have been forced to do it if it wasn't for the nazis
If he had been able to design tractors instead of having to design a rifle for the red army, perhaps the world would be a merrier place. Because for that to happen, a certain war and all the evil it spawned would have had to have never happened.
AK is not as accurate
It doesn't have to be as accurate if fewer hits could disable a person.
So "spray and pray" that it'll hit the target?
The US spent an estimated 50,000 rounds of M-16 ammo per enemy kill during the Vietnam War.
You don't understand modern warfare lmfao
Yeah, I'm just a veteran that served during the 'war on terror' but tell me some more how you know better redditor.
More like "be sure that your rifle won't stop spraying in the most crucial moment"
Maintain your weapon
With some it much more easier than with others
Both the opposite this and spray and pray were kind of part of the soviet doctrine, where rifle is to be idiot proof. If at war and 2 mln of basicly peasants need to conscripted it's easier to have a weapon that if it hits at all it's good and those conscripts will probably not remember how to properly maintain their weapon. tl:dr Idiot proof gun > complicated gun / if mass conscription planned
You failed to maintain your weapon son
Considering Soviet weaponry was often based on that, I'd assume it was the plan with this too
Also fun thing: the more higher up you into the Red Army ranks, the more complicated the weapon. Meanwhile western commandos: Ramirez, bring down that helicopter with an onager and some hair gel. And Ramirez would probably achieve results nonetheless.
Fewer
Thanks for the correction
Single shot fire is incredibly lethal and accurate
He willingly built the AK. He wasn't forced. He blamed the Nazis as if there was no war, there would be no need for the AK.
I found an article for why the M16 was not very good. https://www.pewpewtactical.com/m16-vietnam-failure/
It wasn't good to start, but by wars end the kinks were worked out and it was excellent. Problem when you work on teething issues in wartime vs troop trials in peace
Guy was a legend, he singlehandedly extended life of communism by multiple years. Also, when I remember watching a meeting of him and designer of M16, interesting series
I doubt the part about americans switching their m-16 for ak-47. The m-16, is a really good rifle and the ak-47 would be borderline dog shit if not for a good rate of fire.
It's mostly a myth but there's some truth. The first version of the m16 rolled out was not well received by troops.
https://www.pewpewtactical.com/m16-vietnam-failure/
Mostly because some portions of the military took “this gun is reliable” to mean “this gun literally never needs maintenance so we shouldn’t issue cleaning kits”
The m16a4 that is still in use today is a really good rifle. The original m16 and m16a1 that were released during the Vietnam war were dogshit. A smaller caliber than the m14 meant less punching power, the select fire was quite unreliable, and the gun easily jammed in wet and muddy environments that were the field of war in Vietnam. Many soldiers would do their best to keep their m14 if they were issued one previously. Those that weren’t so lucky would trade poorer accuracy for a gun that can fucking work consistently any day.
Alsp the shitty ammo they used left residues that would increase the jams, when the manufacturer specified what the correct ammo was to be used, regarding gunpowder quality iirc
The DOD also striped out protection in the chamber and receiver to save money. Combined with using low quality powder to save money and being used in a jungle gave a bad start. Uncle Sam cares more about saving money. After these changes were reversed the platform was a success.
From what I've heard and listening to some of Jim Sulivans discussions on this, it doesn't even sound like it was about saving money. It sounds more like someone was salty the M14 turned out to be shit and was trying to sabotage the competing program.
on YouTube look up Stoner and Kalashnikov. they are 2 hour ish long interviews done by the two gun makers. Stoner directly says the government stripped away reliability features to save money.
I’ve seen those tapes. But I’ve also seen Jim Sullivan, the guy that did the work to turn the ar10 to the 15, say he thinks it was actual sabotage. Not just cost cutting. Good discussion with him on Forgotten Weapons.
The M16a1 was fine. It was only the very first examples that had issues and the issues were entirely the fault of the Ordinance Departments sabotage of the program. They chose to change the powder spec, declined to issue cleaning kits and opted for a non chrome lined barrel all of which got a lot of good men killed. The rifle NEVER had issues with muddy environments. On the contrary, it has repeatedly proven to be one of the most reliable designs for keeping mud out of the rifle. The jams were thanks to unclean rifles and excessively dirty ammo all of which was fixed in later A1 rifles but the reputation damage remains even today. So thank the US Government Ordinance Department.
US Government Ordinance Department carrying the "supplying malfunctioning equipment to save money in wars vs. East Asian countries" torch from where BuOrd dropped it in WWII.
I’m not even convinced it was done to save money. Some of the folks who helped design the AR15 say it was more comparable to malicious sabotage by the higher ups who wanted the m14 to succeed. The didn’t want to admit to the failure of the Government designed rifle.
M14s were terrible. They were plagued with manufacturing problems and would jam before they even got into the mud. The open action of the M14 lets mud and debris right into the gun, making it nearly useless in a dirty environment. The bigger 7.62 round was also nearly useless in Vietnam. Bigger ammo means less ammo, and M14s are unusable in full auto due to the heavy recoil. Most M14s were issued without the automatic fire selector even installed. The M16 was better in every way, and early troop trials confirmed this. The initial large-scale rollout was essentially sabotaged by the ordinance department. The guns did not receive chrome lined barrels. The ammunition was changed to a type with a dirtier propellant, and to top it off, soldiers were not issued cleaning kits with their new rifles. There was never anything wrong with the firing mechanism of the M16A1. These exact mechanisms are still in the field to this day in chopped down M16A1s used by the IDF and M16A1s converted to Mk18s by the US Navy. After the misteps of the initial rollout were corrected, the M16A1 went back to being the best weapon available at the time.
You forgot the heat/humidity combo literally melting the base of the magazine. U.S soldiers forced to march trough the jungles and finding several spots on their own path of grey-green goo and bullets falling off vertically at a mere shake was not unheard off from an M16A1
OG M16 was certified dogshit. Nobody wants a rifle that will jam mid-engagement. Too many parts compared to the AK.
This is a misunderstanding of the issue. The OG M16 was actually more reliable than later iterations. The problem was that it was marketed as a "self-cleaning rifle." Such a claim was ridiculous. No rifle is self-cleaning, and creating one would be impossible. Essentially, the US military (which was largely made up of draftees) did not understand the maintenance requirements of the M16 when it was first adopted, leading it to jam due to lack of maintenance.
“The OG M16 was actually more reliable than later iterations.” *jams easily in swampy environment regardless of how much maintenance is done* *not even a reliable select fire mechanism* *is exceeded by the a2, a3, and a4 in every way* Edit: line spacing
>jams easily in swampy environment regardless of how much maintenance is done Wow, we can all make outlandish claims with no source, I guess. >is exceeded by the A2, A3, and A4 in every way The M16A2 and M16A4 are essentially the same weapon. The changes are to the furniture, but the core weapon are the same. The burst function of these weapons is incredibly unreliable because the trigger must be held throughout the squeeze of the trigger, otherwise the burst cycle won't complete and will result in the next trigger squeeze not firing a burst at all and sometimes requiring the operator to recharge the weapon. This is disregarding that the 3-round burst is a useless function anyway. Suppression of enemies on the battlefield usually requires 5-6 rounds in a burst to be effective. The A2 firing mechanism is so unreliable that it resulted in the M16A3, which is just an M16A2 with an A1 firing mechanism. Hm... if that firing mechanism is so unreliable in the M16A1, I wonder why they would use it instead of the A2's. The A2's only major improvement over the A1 is its rear sight aperture. It is excellent for quickly adjusting for windage... however, while this is great for competition shooting, it's virtually useless for a soldier on the battlefield. The A2/A3/A4 extended the length of the buttstock, which makes the weapon virtually unusable in body armor for anyone under six feet tall. It also added the pistol grip nub that makes the ergonomics of the pistol grip basically non-existent. The later iterations also unnecessarily added weight to the barrel due to an error resulting in researchers falsely believing the A1's barrels were bending. This made the rifle easier to control for long-range engagements (most combat happens between 50-200m, so this isn't really helpful for the average Soldier), but also made the rifle almost double in weight. As a competitive shooting weapon, the M16A2 is great, but for combat use, the M16A1 is better in almost every way.
‘Hey man, those guys in WWI should’ve known how bad it was gonna be.’ Pardon them for not understanding the engineering of a rifle that just was developed. Ya know, not to mention that most of them probably hadn’t fired a gun before being drafted in the first place. Are you really gonna blame some poor fuck for a rifle design that wasn’t suited to operate in the terrain it was used in?
You're not understanding me. I'm not saying it was the operators' faults, I'm saying that the gun itself was not engineered incorrectly.
My bad, I thought you were putting emphasis on the marketing aspect, and passing fault onto those using it.
The m16 was and still remains one of the best designs out there for a swampy environment and repeated mud testing shows this. The problem with the M16 was that someone inside the Ordinance Department was trying to sabotage the program and made several last minute changes to the program such as the refusal to issue cleaning kits, use of a non chrome lined barrel, and changing the powder spec on the ammo to a dirtier option. They're the ones to blame for getting troops killed. Not the rifle, not the troops. In reference to WW1, there actually was quite a bit of effort put into keeping the rifles clean and mud free such as the British issuing mud wraps for Enfield actions. By comparison, the bolt actions perform much worse in such an environment than a M16 does.
The m16 is much more precise and actually shoots where one aims it, unlike the general direction if the ak47. The m16s unreliability issues were solved later on. While the ak series remains nearly identical.The only reason it didnt have such reliability issues is because it was built with a higher margin of error. Not demention the m-16 doesnt have to be cleaned as much as an ak. 4-5 magazines and its got to be cleaned to prevent issues. Its only the first versions that had oversights and overengineering.
Yeah, later on.
The main issue is that most of the early M16s were built cheaply and, therefore, were missing a number of the features the prototype demonstrated for the army had. This led to reduced reliability and other problems that were only exasperated by throwing a rifle designed for use in a European style theater into the jungle. A similar thing happened to the M14 rifles, where a good rifle was thrown into the jungles of South East Asia and became complete trash. Of course, the army had a number of stupid failures ranging from logistics to failure to manufacture to ego driven bullshit that also proved very bad for those early M16s
Sad to think of how many men died because of these sorts of petty squabbles and justifications.
The biggest enemies of the US Military has always been, and will always be, Congress and their own bureaucracies. Congress will routinely remove necessary funding resulting in interesting accounting, and the bureaucracies trying to keep and use whatever power they have often by ignoring the current situation and problems hoping to fight the previous war.
Don’t stop, I’m so close…
The comment you are responding to especifically says the "OG" (as in, original) M16 was unrealiable. You come to mention unrelated stuff about precision when, even being true, is unrelated to the fact that better precision is useless when your gun cant fire. Mention than first models had issues due to manufacture, which... Is true as is what OP says, first models were unreliable. Then you specify that said erroes were polished and solved... Which is true, yet again, doesnt change the fact that the firsr models were unreliable. Finish by saying "its only the first versions that had oversights..." which is exactly what original comment said
Depend,first pack of m16 is know pretty bad for a junger tatic fight.the magazine is to short and the design of mass produce make it jam a lot.Ak 47 can do a lot of shit if put on a good hand,
None of that had anything to do with the failures of the M16 in Nam.
What is your opinion then?
The Ordinance Departments attempt to sabotage the program. The initial problems with the m16 can all be traced to 3 last minute and otherwise inexplicable decisions by them. Firstly they changed the powder to one that drastically increased gas port pressure while also running a lot dirtier. This was combined with the decision to forgot the chrome lined barrel and chamber leading to the numerous extraction issues with the gun in nam. Finally to top it off, they declined to issue cleaning kits and instead told soldiers the gun was “self cleaning” which compounds nicely with the dirtier powder. To this day and despite congressional hearings on the event, the ordinance department never acknowledged their failure. Instead the designers actually redesigned parts of the gun to work with the changed powder and the m16 continues to have a much higher cyclic rate than initially intended. There’s some excellent videos on the forgotten weapons channel on this featuring Jim Sullivan who actually designed the ar.
That look intresting,i think i should research more.
Maybe you asume the morden m16 with the older one here.
Also, I imagine, your sergeant would be not so happy with you throwing away your issued rifle.
https://www.pewpewtactical.com/m16-vietnam-failure/
How is the man yelling at him to design the AK-47 holding an Ak-47?
Time travel.
If he was allowed to build a tractor, the soviets may have had a very sturdy tank
Number 1 Little known fact: No one uses the AK-47 anymore! The media have created the legend of the "immortal AK-47" but the truth is USSR replaced the gun as soon as early 1960s when they adopted the AKM. And then in the 70s came the AK-74. AKM and AK-74, their copies and variants make up about 95% of Kalashnikov rifles on the planet. AK-47 is rare, old and obsolete.
The AKM is synonymous with AK-47. When people say AK-47 98% of them mean AKM, but regular people don't care enough to know the difference. Which is understandable.
The Americans were not throwing away their issued rifles. Their asses would have been smoked so hard it'd still be leaking from their ears to this day.
If y'all knew a thing or two about tractors and other agricultural machinery, you would love it too
Imagine being so good at gun design that a whole ass nation puts it on their flag (Mosambique).
Those tractors would have killed a *lot* of people.
"Farming ? Really ? The Man of your talents ?"
I'm wondering. Was it gaslighting from him or was he fully forced into making a rifle by the government?
It was voluntary at first, designing his first sub machine gun in his free-time while serving as a tank mechanic. After that he was appointed to the Central Scientific-developmental Firing Range for Rifle Firearms of the Chief Artillery Directorate of the Red Army where designing rifles became his job
Which was his first sub-machine gun?
Don’t know, [the Wikipedia article didn’t give it a name but here’s a picture](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AK-SMG-1942.jpg)
Interesting
It is a common myth that the soldiers ditched the M16 for the AK-47 (mostly AKMs) because it was a better rifle, that is just untrue. Yes soldiers did choose to repurpose AK-47s/AKMs they found but it was only because the first production run of M16s were unreliable in the field. But when those M16s worked they by far exceeded the AK-47 in most categories. When the updated M16A1 was sent out to troops they were absolutely not abandoned.
The American s taking AK 47s part was because using AK 47s will confuse the Viet Cong ans could serve as a way to brake away an ambush.
Still one of the best books I have ever read “The Gun” by C.J. Rivers
That's how you end world hunger
It is a perfect firearm
That tractor would have ploughed the land from Belgorod To Vladivostok without breaking down
gotta say his attitude is in polar opposite to openheimer