What If?

[Blain]

Pick a significant battle of WWII or Korea. Suppose that the M-16 had been developed 20 years earlier. Would the outcome of the battle have been any different, if the U.S. troops had been armed with the M-16 instead of the M-1?

I'd choose the landing @ Iwo Jima. I predict that we would have had far more weapons malfunctions with the M16 than we did (which we DID have) with M1.


Another intersting tid bit to keep in mind, this being from the Korean war.

During the Chosin campain in Korea a Marine from the 1st Marine Div during one of the mass human wave attacks killed 52 Chinese troops with 8 Garand clips,64 rounds, from the standing position as fast as he could load. He assumed he was going to die anyway so he stuffed some clips in his parka pockets stood up and give them hell.

Ranges was from about 125 yards to powder burn distance.

The temprature was about 30 below.

He lived to tell about it.

The M-16 most likely would not have even worked in this temprature. If it did how many that he hit with the .223 round would have stoped in their tracks like they did when hit with the 06 round?

 

[Iain]

You really don't like the M-16.

As far as I can tell from what I have read - the ''evidence'' goes both ways on the M16/.223 round.

 

[AZTOY]

WORLD WAR II battles in North Africa

Well if the M-16 was is desert of North Africa, chasing the German general Rommel.

Thing could have been very different.

 

[Jeff White]

Blain,

Have you ever fired an M16?

Another intersting tid bit to keep in mind, this being from the Korean war.

During the Chosin campain in Korea a Marine from the 1st Marine Div during one of the mass human wave attacks killed 52 Chinese troops with 8 Garand clips,64 rounds, from the standing position as fast as he could load. He assumed he was going to die anyway so he stuffed some clips in his parka pockets stood up and give them hell.

Ranges was from about 125 yards to powder burn distance.

The temprature was about 30 below.

He lived to tell about it.

The M-16 most likely would not have even worked in this temprature. If it did how many that he hit with the .223 round would have stoped in their tracks like they did when hit with the 06 round?

I personally have used an M16 at temperatures below that in the interior of Alaska during Brim Frost '83. Worked fine. And at 125 yards to contact distance it is well within the range for optimum velocity which means the excellent terminal effects the 5.56x45 round is noted for. Even out of a 14.5" M4 barrel you'd still be above 2500 fps at that range. So instead of zipping right through like M2 .30 caliber ball would, the rounds would break at the cannelure as they yawed and fragment causing a large permanent wound cavity and causing the Chinese soldiers to rapidly bleed out.

As for invading Iwo Jima, it would have worked about as well as any other automatic rifle in that volcanic sand.

I really don't understand what you're trying to prove. If the M1 or M14 was so superior to the M16 we never would have dropped either one. The M1 had it's day in the sun. For most of WWII it was to paraphrase George Patton said; "The finest battle implement." But by the end of that conflict the Germans had the STG-44. It was a rifle that truly was designed to complement maneuver warfare. Powerful enough for the ranges that most Infantry combat occurred at and with enough fire power that soldiers equipped with it could achieve fire superiority when necessary.

The M14 however, never had it's day in the sun. A design that was never perfected in a caliber that was forced on NATO by US industrial might, it served a shorter time then any other rifle in the history of the US Army. I wouldn't doubt that the history books will look at Dr. Frederick A Carten as a military luddite, who forced his idea of a full power battle rifle on the free world and set military firearms development back more then 50 years. Only now are we getting back to the true intermediate cartridge with the 6.8x43 mm round. We danced around this in the 1930s when the M1 was developed. If it hadn't been for depression era defense budgets, we would have fought WWII with the .276 caliber. When the NATO standardization trials began, everyone was working with intermediate rounds. .280 was the caliber of choice of the European allies. But because of Dr. Carten and his position as Civilian Assistant to the Chief of Ordinance all the lessons learned in WWII were ignored and we took a detour down a dead end road with the full caliber battle rifle. Imagine what our European allies must have thought when we went to a small caliber because the the M14 wasn't suitable for combat in Vietnam. Yes, that's right, the troops over there we begging for them. Which partially explains why they were fielded in such a hasty poor manner.

Love the M16 or hate it, love or hate the round it fires...doesn't matter, you can't deny the fact that the full caliber battle rifle doesn't fill a very big niche in modern warfare. It wouldn't exist at all if it hadn't been for Dr. Carten and the full caliber mafia in the US Ordinance Department. NATO would have went right from the full power rifles of WWII to true intermediate caliber assault rifles (most likely .280 caliber) and we know that the Soviet block quickly standardized on the intermediate 7.62x39 round, first in the SKS then in the AK series.

Jeff

 

[telewinz]

Regardless of what Patton said about the M1 Garand (it was a PR statement anyway, he also said the Sherman was a great tank!) evidence pretty much shows that just about ANY good military semi-auto design would have done well in WW2. The US needed a semi-auto against the mass charges made by the Japanese. The M16 would have excelled in this situation, a trade-off of firepower at the cost of reliability. The Germans pretty much had the same situation against the Russians but I can't see them trading off the SVT (popular capture weapon)or the STG-44 for the M16.

In both situations I'd opt for the SKS, AK47, FN49, or Hakim over any M16. I own three AR15's and they are my favorite/enjoyable rifles to shoot, but they still have a serious design fault. The AR is fine as a pampered police weapon or a civilian "sporter" but its second rate as a combat weapon.