Ah! rumors about the early M16's "unstable bullet"

THEY WERE 1 IN 12 twist ,and as long as you use 55 grain ammo they stabilize just fine .Any problems with the early M16's were the falt of 2 a$$holes 1 named Kennedy and the other named McNamarra ,they changed mr Stoner's spec's and took off the chrome lined barrel and chamber .they fu*ked up the ammo and tryed to use left over powder the gov had in stock .once they went back to spec no more problems .Mr Stoner and Armalite did a fine job ,if those 2 idiots didn't piss in the soup there would have never been a problem .you keep them clean and oiled and no problem .some folks are lazy pigs and don't take of thier weapon and have problems .I used said issued weapon (1971/1972)and i never had a problem .
 
That's the Kofi Annan school of management (i.e. see Bosnia, Rwanda, and then Kofi's promotion to Sec Generalship . . .). In jobs where you can manage to be held unaccountable for anything you do, no matter how utterly disastrous, how can one help but move on up?
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How? Well, if you did your job right, you'd probably be booted ASAP. The last thing a criminal syndicate wants is an honest man.
he told me of hitting guys running in the upper shoulder (entry) and then seeing the exit wound come out of their lower abdominal, blowing out intestines.
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I find this hard to believe. Were these guys hit from straight ahead, at an angle while passing, or straight from the side? If from straight ahead or at an angle, the bullet must have had a lot of momentum to make such an abrupt change in direction and still blow out someone's intestines. If straight from the side, the bullet must have had a lot of momentum to power past bone, tendons, and muscle, then head south and still blow out someone's intestines.
when they came back to these old sites the fox holes would be dug up. anyways, supposedly if they got the slightest rust/corrosion the ammo would really jam.
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Something must have gotten garbled in transmission. Why would anyone bury ammo they felt was crap, and then dig it up later and use it when it was certainly crappier after being buried, especially in a rifle where cleanliness is highly important to proper functioning?
 
THEY WERE 1 IN 12 twist ,and as long as you use 55 grain ammo they stabilize just fine .Any problems with the early M16's were the falt of 2 a$$holes 1 named Kennedy and the other named McNamarra ,they changed mr Stoner's spec's and took off the chrome lined barrel and chamber .they fu*ked up the ammo and tryed to use left over powder the gov had in stock .once they went back to spec no more problems .Mr Stoner and Armalite did a fine job ,if those 2 idiots didn't piss in the soup there would have never been a problem .you keep them clean and oiled and no problem .some folks are lazy pigs and don't take of thier weapon and have problems .I used said issued weapon (1971/1972)and i never had a problem .

also my understanding.
 
Interesting. Since the ammo was a caliber they couldn't use, did they dig up the ammo for the components? It's difficult to see how the ammo would help them, unless they used the components for some sort of anti-personnel IED.
 
most likely for rifles they had stolen through working on base maybe or picked up after a firefight. They had plenty of our rifles :eek:
 
My understanding is that the VC were pretty opprotunistic as far as weaponry goes, including stuff captured from US or ARVN units, so they probably could find some use for 5.56mm ammunition if it was remotely servicable.

Edit to add, "What CrazyLarry said."
 
Interesting. I've read several accounts from 'Nam vets claiming the VC and NVA avoided picking up M-16s because of the supposed problems with the gun and the round at that time. However, those accounts were also written by vets who didn't like the gun and the round, so maybe their accounts were mostly BiaSed.
 
The NVA weren't as interested in our weapons as the VC. The VC were pretty much equipped with hand-me-downs. They'd take just about any functioning arm. The NVA were a trained military force, with better logistics, and tended to use Soviet arms pretty much exclusively.

After the '68 Tet Offensive, the VC ceased to exist as a combat arm.:)
 
As I recall, the original M16 cartridge was manufactured using DuPont IMR extruded bar powders (4895 & 3031 IIRC). With this powder the M16 ran clean. At some point the powder was changed to a ball powder (Olin/Winchester) I think for various reasons (my memory is fuzzy here). The ball powder was easier to load and they were able to add more powder to up the velocity of the round.

Unfortunately, the ball powders caused secondary fouling problems. Late in the war it was determined that the calcium content in the ball powders was too high and that caused sticky extraction, gummed up the gas port & tube and lowering the reliability of a dirty weapon.

According to Speer, circa 1974, the original M16 had a 1:14 twist rate which DoD found didn't stablize the boattail military bullet sufficiently at long range so a 1:12 rate was adopted.
 
There was an excellent article during the 1990s in Soldier of Fortune magazine about the whole political deal for the M16 and its ammo.

Yes, originally the cartridge used an IMR powder; the cyclic rate was designed for it at around 700 rounds per minute. Yes, Olin's political efforts led to the use of ball powder--which increased the rate of fire by around 200 rounds per minute.

I don't recall the details about the bullets; I remember there was some discussion of the two-projectile bullet.

I bought one of the first Mini-14s, whenever it was they first came out. Some guys I knew at Fort Hood through sports car stuff would occasionally "liberate" some "extra" 5.56 FMJ ammo. I noticed that at close range the bullet would blow up and fragment on jackrabbits. Say within 50 yards. Well, let me waffle a bit and say that the exit wounds resembled those from a Sierra 52-grain HPBT. Trying to find and examine the bullet leftovers was nowhere near being a priority...

Art

Art
 
I still have a hard time believing the "blowing out intestines" from a shoulder hit statement, for the reasons I mentioned previously.
 
hitting a guy while running, in the back.....would mean you shot him while he was running away from you, much like the shot Tom Berenger pulls with a short burst in the movie platoon. why is it so hard for you to see a bullet tumbling down like this? anything else you need to nit pick?
 
No charging handle? You probably mean forward assist?

The owner then began to spout off how that is truly what the M16 is all about, no charging handle/brass deflector so it is truly light,...
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hitting a guy while running, in the back.....would mean you shot him while he was running away from you, much like the shot Tom Berenger pulls with a short burst in the movie platoon. why is it so hard for you to see a bullet tumbling down like this? anything else you need to nit pick?
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It's not a nitpick. It's the only type of wound you referred to in your original post, and it's the only support offered for the thread's topic: the M-16's "unstable bullet." In fact, the rest of the post about crappy ammo is irrelevant to the topic, and the discussion of VC/NVA grabbing US weapons is a tangent.

Your original post said nothing about hitting a guy in the back while he was running away. It said "running." That could be someone running toward you, past you, or away from you. That's why I asked about the direction in my first post. However, now that you state it, I still don't understand how that particular type of hit caused that particular type of wound.

I'm not saying and have never said it didn't happen. I have said and am saying that I don't understand the dynamics involved, because it seems to me the bullet would have to do four things that, taken together, seem improbable:

1) A forward-moving 5.56 bullet enters the target's upper shoulder. Assuming relatively even ground between shooter and target, the bullet impacts either on a flat or--given the relative height differences between American and Vietnamese men--very slightly downward angle.

2) The previously forward-moving 5.56 bullet takes a drastic turn downward. Normally, I would expect the bullet to fragment, go through the shoulder, or lodge in the shoulder. But okay, let's say the bullet or a fragment of it moves downward at a roughly 45-degree angle (it may actually be a greater angle, but it shouldn't be less).

3a) It must traverse a path of about 14 inches through the shoulder joint, past the rib cage, and into the intestine area. It must somehow miss the shoulder joint--no mean feat given the hit in the upper shoulder--rib cage, both, or hit one or both. And that is assuming it misses the shoulder blade.

or

3b) If the 5.56 bullet hits the upper shoulder but does not travel internally, it must exit the shoulder and then somehow re-enter the target.

4a) A downward-deflected 5.56 bullet/fragment misses the shoulder joint and rib cage, reaches the intestine area, and changes direction again into a forward-moving bullet/fragment that has enough momentum to exit the lower abdomen and blow out the intestines.

or

4b) A downward-deflected 5.56 bullet/fragment hits either the shoulder joint, the rib cage, or both but powers through rather than deflecting, reaches the intestine area, and changes direction again into a forward-moving bullet/fragment that has enough momentum to exit the lower abdomen and blow out the intestines.

I have a hard time understanding how this could happen once, but since your original post stated "he told me of hitting guys [plural] running in the upper shoulder (entry) and then seeing the exit wound come out of their [plural] lower abdominal, blowing out intestines," this type of hit supposedly happened more than once. These dynamics seem remarkable to me.
 
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Well, bullets can hit bone and deflect; a major portion can wind up almost anywhere in a body.

One of Charles Whitman's bullets--granted, a 6mm Remington--hit a guy in the right shirt pocket. The bullet deflected off a rib, downward through the right lung and through the stomach into the intestines. At 420 yards.

Art
 
I've witnessed via autopsy (on critters) bullets do strange things when bones are hit. You may not be aware that the intestines will protrude with just a small cut - seen that a time or two as well. :barf:

One of my platoon sgts was in the 173rd in "Nam and would agree with Crazy right down the line.
 
<Art Edit>

I asked Tom if he ever saw bullets coming in one place and exiting in another strange location, so he gave me that example from his personal experience. As I recall he claimed to have seen that happen twice, and then I didn't care to REALLY elaborate on it since as a vet he might no want to recall all of the people he may have killed at 530AM on a Sunday morning.

If the shooter had higher ground (maybe even flat?) I don't see any huge fallacy in his statements
 
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