Opinions large and small, worth everything you pay for them.
Saturday, July 19, 2025
Widener's has a post on the history of the M16, (they made corrections)
including some photography stuff to go along with it. Interesting piece.
3 comments:
Sailorcurt
said...
Can't leave a comment over there and you linked to it, so you get the honors.
This statement caused me to say "um...what?" and have some doubts about the diligence of their fact gathering:
"The military pushed out the early M16 in the mid-1960s as an answer to the underpowered nature of the M14. With soldiers reporting that the AK-47 outgunned them, they wanted to create a replacement."
Soldiers were reporting that the 7.62x51mm was "outgunned" by the 7.62x39mm AK-47 so they switched to the awesome power of the 5.56x45mm?
To my recollection, the "we're being outgunned by AK-47" argument was an argument used against the M16, NOT the M-14. The argument against the M-14 was that it was too heavy, too difficult to control under full auto (because .308 is too powerful for that), and a soldier couldn't carry enough of the relatively big, heavy ammo.
When I see a glaringly incongruous assertion in an article like that, I start to have doubts about the accuracy of the rest of the information provided.
Now, I could be wrong...it could be that someone somewhere complained that the M-14 was weak sauce against the AK and that we needed the mighty "poodle shooter" to bridge the gap, but unless they provide some citations and quotes, I'm not buying it.
3 comments:
Can't leave a comment over there and you linked to it, so you get the honors.
This statement caused me to say "um...what?" and have some doubts about the diligence of their fact gathering:
"The military pushed out the early M16 in the mid-1960s as an answer to the underpowered nature of the M14. With soldiers reporting that the AK-47 outgunned them, they wanted to create a replacement."
Soldiers were reporting that the 7.62x51mm was "outgunned" by the 7.62x39mm AK-47 so they switched to the awesome power of the 5.56x45mm?
To my recollection, the "we're being outgunned by AK-47" argument was an argument used against the M16, NOT the M-14. The argument against the M-14 was that it was too heavy, too difficult to control under full auto (because .308 is too powerful for that), and a soldier couldn't carry enough of the relatively big, heavy ammo.
When I see a glaringly incongruous assertion in an article like that, I start to have doubts about the accuracy of the rest of the information provided.
Now, I could be wrong...it could be that someone somewhere complained that the M-14 was weak sauce against the AK and that we needed the mighty "poodle shooter" to bridge the gap, but unless they provide some citations and quotes, I'm not buying it.
Yeah, I saw that 'undergunned' and figured a definite slip.
Oops! That was a mischaracterization of the M14. Article has been corrected. TY!
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