Every time you mention that the FAL wasn't the shittiest 7.62 NATO rifle ever made...
Someone just HAS to bring up Israel dumping it.
Guess how long the Romat was in front-line service? We're not going to consider service in the reserves, national guard, navy or coast guard. Nor special forces.
Has to be really short because it's the exemplar of the FAL being an epic failure.
19 years. 1955 to 1974. Partial replacement began in 1972 with the M16A1 and was officially replaced in 1974 by the Galil.
That is not a short service life. Production continued to 1980.
How long was the M14 the front-line US service rifle? I mean it's so much better than the Romat after all... 5 years and production ended the same year enough M16A1's were in service to fully supplant it.
The M14 is not an inherently bad rifle. It's a very difficult rifle to make correctly.
Don't think that because Springfield Armory is successfully making M1As that it's the same as making an M14. SA made a LOT of changes to the parts to make them easier to make, not least of which is the cast receiver.
Quick! How many nations adopted the M14? Remember, this is adoption as the service rifle, not special forces, ceremonial, sniper variants or line launcher.
Now, compare that list to the number of nations who adopted the FAL.
Then look at how many years those rifles were the front line gun. The average is 30 years.
But the FAL sucks because the IDF only used it for 19 years.
Personally, I feel the M-14 was the best battle rifle I was ever issued. An enlistee in 1969, I did 2 RVN tours and was never issued an M-16(RVN troops got them before we did). My preferred weapon was an M-3, made in 1942 by the General Motors Hydramatic Division, just right for use in a deuce-and-a-half cab. But that's another story....
ReplyDeleteBut were you issued any other battle rifle?
DeleteI'll keep repeating it: There's nothing wrong with an M14 that has passed its acceptance testing. But only about 10% did. A 90% fail rate on acceptance means it's a shitty overall design especially when three of the manufacturers were experienced gun makers. You've got to be able to make them in order to be able to use them.
I have a soft spot for the M3A1 myself. I got to shoot a Guide Lamp made one in basic.
The M14 was a great rifle for re-fighting WWII, and probably should have remained in service in the ETO well into the late 1980s as standard issue. For that matter, they should still be standard issue for the 10th Mountain Div, the NG in AK, and any active or reserve unit in the Northern Tier of the Lower 48.
ReplyDeleteFor toting in 100°+ tropical heat and humidity, and for hand-me-down use to any number of smaller-configured allied troops, from SVN to anywhere else, not so much.
IIRC, we were still using neutered and upgraded M14s in the sandbox down to the rifle squad level, and the Rustbucket Navy still keeps them on hand for mine clearing, and such.
It's not a bad rifle, to this day.
Just a product-improved Garand.
But being the larger component, once Big Green went to the M-16, the die was cast. Having two service rifles is anathema.
Once we got to the A2 and later variants, they're pretty useful too.
Using South Vietnam for 5-8 years of beta-testing was an unfortunate choice.
But the M-14 and M-16 series are certainly not very interchangeable.
And while one may dislike the weight and klunk of the FAL, to be truly fair, one must compare it to the mostly bolt-action anachronisms previously toted everywhere from Britistan to the Urals, and Norway to Turkey, prior to 1948.
Compared to those antiquated and obsolescent sorry sods it replaced, it was positively revolutionary.
Once one gets south of the Sahara, AKs and M-16s come back into their own, just as in SEAsia.
If we were serious, we'd keep a 5.56 battle rifle, and one in 7.62x51, and depending on base location and mission, one would be standard, and qualled on every year, and the other kept in reserve, and only annually fam-fired, for bare proficiency. It would provide everyone with practical experience to inform consensus. I daresay had the basic issue Hadji been regularly knocked on his @$$ DRT with torso hits by M-14s, after watching those hit instead with little penetrator holes by M855 ball out of shortened
M-16s scamper off to fight another day, it would have changed opinions rather rapidly on the ultimate worth and utility of the M-14. In the day, no one threw down BARs and Thompsons because of weight or complexity, because they worked as intended.
FTR, I suspect splitting the difference with a .26ish caliber rifle will only achieve the worst of both worlds, but I'm open to counter-evidence from future developments.
Not being bound by Army thinking, I have exemplars of several service rifles, and they each have their own fortes and foibles. And serving for one, instead of 1M, it only minimally complicates my own logistics burden.
Not least of which by giving me a belt and suspenders solution to most physics problems.
YMMV.
I have hope, though.
It only took three wars and thirty years for TPTB to realize the M198 howitzer was too damned heavy to field, and too manpower-intensive to service, and subsequently sh*tcan. And that there's still a place for a light 105mm gun, after ignoring change for 60 years. (When they start fielding Light Guns or the equivalent, and towing them behind CUCVs, HMMVs, or modern deuce-and-a-half equivalents, or putting them on a M113/Bradley chassis, and with 12-gun batteries, and using them one gun per infantry platoon in direct fire and fire support, instead of employing them en masse as juicy and slow counter-battery targets, they'll finally be on the right track. But I digress.)
So if they can finally grasp a glimmer of how artillery is supposed to work, maybe they'll figure out small arms some day, and for the most part, stop screwing around with the holy relics of St. John Moses Browning, et al. At least until we get death rays, and phased plasma rifles in the 40W range.
I dunno what it is that makes people defend the rifles that made it to the hands of the troops while completely ignoring why the M14 was dropped.
ReplyDeleteOnly TRW was consistently making parts to spec. Springfield, H&R and Winchester were not.
TRW was complaining that it was losing them money making the parts to spec.
Acceptance was on the order of 10%, which means 90% of M14's made were rejected and scrapped. H&R and Winchester indicated that once they were relieved of their contractual obligations they would not be making more.
A design which cannot be produced to spec repeatedly is a bad design.
To keep the M14 in service as an alternate standard would have meant figuring out why they were nearly impossible to make to spec. The modern Springfield Armory, in essence, did just that, and their functioning rifles would NOT pass the milspec. Their receiver casting which solves the main problems because it's closer to net shape than the forging would have been impossible in 1964, the metallurgy had not yet advanced.
If we'd insisted on a 7.62 and 5.56 pair and issuing them as the terrain dictated we'd have likely ended up with an FAL or AR10 and not the M14 (maybe even a G3). The production problems and the attitude of Springfeild led to them being summarily closed and the other three manufacturers didn't want to renew their contracts to make M14s.
As far as 7.62 knocking them down and 5.56 not... The problem isn't caliber but projectile. M855 was designed to defeat body armor which it has never encountered, AP rounds typically don't do soft tissues as well as normal ball. Mk. 262 has been well regarded for dropping malnourished bad guys. I don't have any data on the M855A1 in the field, but its gelatin performance is encouraging.