The "wait a minute" slang came out of Vietnam. The three prong open ended flash suppressor was VERY prone to catching on, or being tangled in vegetation.
Nothing says "wait a minute" like having your rifle snagged in the jungle (vines are a real treat for that), where you have to unsnag your rifle, and then make sure there isn't stuff in the suppressor before you could move or worse, shoot.
Supplies delivered by chopper were nearly always banded to their pallets with metal "banding straps" and yes, despite standing orders NOT TO DO IT, GIs often used their rifle barrels as prybars.
This came to light as a result of analyzing repair requests and finding an unexplainably high number of bent barrels. The "solution" of standing orders not to do it, was, of course, not completely effective.
Colt's "solution" was the H-Bar configuration. H-bar is supposed to stand for "heavy barrel" but the H-bar barrel isn't a true heavy barrel profile. What Colt did was increase the barrel thickness (making it less likely to get bent) in front of the handguards. Underneath the handguards, all the way back to the upper receiver, the barrel kept the same contour it always had.
Nothing says "wait a minute" like having your rifle snagged in the jungle (vines are a real treat for that), where you have to unsnag your rifle, and then make sure there isn't stuff in the suppressor before you could move or worse, shoot.
Supplies delivered by chopper were nearly always banded to their pallets with metal "banding straps" and yes, despite standing orders NOT TO DO IT, GIs often used their rifle barrels as prybars.
This came to light as a result of analyzing repair requests and finding an unexplainably high number of bent barrels. The "solution" of standing orders not to do it, was, of course, not completely effective.
Colt's "solution" was the H-Bar configuration. H-bar is supposed to stand for "heavy barrel" but the H-bar barrel isn't a true heavy barrel profile. What Colt did was increase the barrel thickness (making it less likely to get bent) in front of the handguards. Underneath the handguards, all the way back to the upper receiver, the barrel kept the same contour it always had.