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Some of the best content here comes from Willard and I screaming at each other making barely related points.
Today's shouting match:
The Rifle, 7.62 M14.
First off, something we both agree on. The FAL is simply better. Hands down. Disagree and you're wrong. Learn to accept it.
Where it goes off the runners is how good the M14 was and why it was withdrawn from primary issue faster than any other service rifle save the Krag.
Individual riflemen fondly remember their issue M14 and only complained about relatively small issues. Like the front sling swivel ripping loose.
Why, then, was it shitcanned after a mere five years?
I've said many times that the US Army doesn't give up on equipment that's working like intended. Hell, they stick with things that aren't working correctly so often that you KNOW something is fucky when they nuke their service rifle so fast.
The reason the M14 left service so fast was that it was failing acceptance testing at an appalling rate.
Which is shocking considering that Springfield, H&R and Winchester successfully managed to make a shit-ton of Garands under wartime conditions.
Especially after spending ten damn years doing the development only to have Beretta create almost the same thing in less than two, the BM-59. Did I say ten years? That's not right. A clear ancestor is the wartime T20 so we're looking at 15 years.
Beretta was on time, under budget and had an excellent acceptance rate.
Plus those ten years of development and testing just kept revealing scandal after scandal with our arms procurement process and a sinking feeling that caving to politics, false familiarity and buying outright lies about tooling... we'd bought the wrong gun.
The Royal Army and Canada were making something very similar to what we would have made had the T48 won the competition.
a class of 67 alumni and friend , usmc major vietnam vet, was issued an m14. he says he learned to carry a spare bolt in each pocket b/c the roller flew off at the worst possible times. its a common occurrence among our 1500 rifles as well and most of them have never been fired since we got them in '69. the wood stocks are mostly crap too. extractors disappear given the slightest opportunity as well. i am amazed though that they still function at all after fifty years of cadets jacking the slides and dropping them on the pavement.
ReplyDeleteps- disclosure- i work on m14's, but i own 3 f.a.l.'s
ReplyDeleteThe FAL has a bit less potential for accuracy than the M14, but has unfailing reliability. It's the right trade-off for a battle rifle with iron sights.
ReplyDeleteYup. The FAL also benefits from the far simpler sight arrangement too.
DeletePlus no tools needed to disassemble and nothing critical can come unscrewed... I've seen a couple of gas plugs on M1A's plunk down in front of the bench from lack of torque.
Funny, since the 7.62 modified M1s seem to, from what I hear, work quite well. But a modified box fed Garand only lasted 5 years?
ReplyDeleteWhich is weird. I thought they tinkered with a box-fed Garand during WWII? Or I may be wrong, again. Eh. It happens.
The T20 was a select fire Garand modified to take a BAR magazine. T20E1 was a select fire Garand modified to take a new design 20-round detachable box magazine.
DeleteThose experiments date to late 1944 and are the real beginning of what becomes the M14. The prototyping and testing which results in the M14 starts in 1949.
Beretta noticed the same thing about 7.62x51mm working fine in Garands with a short block in the magazine to keep the rounds seated in the clip. The BM-59 made fewer changes to the basic Garand receiver than the M14 did. I think this is why Beretta didn't have near the issues that H&R, Springfield and Winchester did in making M14's.
Only TRW was able to consistently hold the tolerances and make acceptable parts. But they lost their asses on the costs to do so.
The Army has (and always has had) the worst procurement system of all the services. If you really want a headache look into the history of the Lewis Machine gun, and why other nations fought WW1 with it & we suffered with that French abortion the Chauchat. Even at the height of the Cold War they'll spend millions developing a (barely) medium tank, and call it a "Fighting Vehicle". Moronic self-serving cretins every one. ....of course, I'm not bitter.
ReplyDeleteI love my Springfield M1A. Not an actual M14 of course, although it is mostly all TRW parts except the receiver. I don't have enough intimate time with an FAL to make a serious comparison.
ReplyDeleteI cam almost guarantee that you're going to prefer the M1A because it's an excellent range/target gun.
DeleteYou're almost certain to not put it in conditions where the FAL's going to shine against it.
If the fal was so why didnt i IDF keep them?
ReplyDeleteDidn't adopt the M14 to replace the FAL, did they?
DeleteThat would have been a "gotcha!"
I know why the IDF replaced the Romat. Do you?
IDF doesn't think so
ReplyDeleteMissed the part about moderation and made two comments because you didn't understand that you'd be waiting for me to approve or disapprove? The IDF most certainly DID think so. They adopted their custom FAL after looking at what else was available at the time. Again, it wasn't an M14, so your commentary about the Romat is off topic and a clear attempt to appear smarter than you are... Which making two back to back comments saying the same thing in a moderated blog shows you're not. The FAL is a superior battle rifle to the M14. The IDF did not adopt the M14; ergo the IDF thought the FAL was better than the M14. They did not go on to replace the Romat with the M14 when they discovered that all of the changes they'd insisted upon didn't make the gun work better or put up with the abuse their undertrained troops subjected it to. The Galil replaced the Romat. Look it up. The Galil didn't last long in front line service either. That was replaced with the M16A1. Then the Tavor. But never the M14. You really should have picked a better argument to play gotcha with. Welcome to special moderation.
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