What weapons were most likely to get the user killed during the Vietnam War?


 The first M16 rifles were so poor that a number of US GI fatalities were found with jammed weapons.


The M16 was designed to use ammo loaded with extruded powder, a propellant with cylindrical grains. As an economical move the Army Ordnance Corps decreed a change to ball powder, which had spherical grains and included a calcium carbonate additive to keep it from deteriorating. This allowed the Army to recycle propellant from obsolete rifle ammo and artillery rounds for M16 ammo, and since Ordnance didn’t retest the rifle after switching powders, troops in the field became the unfortunate beta testers.


The M16 had been overzealously promoted as a “self-cleaning rifle,” and troops were issued insufficient cleaning supplies. Unfortunately, the ball powder additive and other detritus fouled the gun’s chamber. The most grievous result was “failure to extract,” in which a spent cartridge case jammed inside the chamber after firing. The only way to remove it without a cleaning rod was to disassemble the weapon. Troops were found dead after firefights, their M16s lying beside them in pieces.


The early M16 also lacked a chrome-lined chamber, so it corroded in humid conditions, and its light rounds were all too easily deflected by foliage. By the late 1960s it had become so unpopular with troops that its reputation has yet to recover, despite numerous improvements to the weapon and to its ammunition... Continue reading 

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