Word: 16s
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...solve the problem, the Army for the past nine months has been outfit ting all M-16s with a new buffer system that slows the rate of fire back to 650 to 850 bullets per minute, thereby reducing the propensity to jam. In closerange fighting, a jam can be fatal. Tests with the WC 846 ball propellant show that a buffer-equipped M-16 now jams approximately only once every 4,000 shots. According to the Army's criteria, one jam every 1,001 rounds is acceptable. To compensate for the debris left behind by the new powder...
...rounds a minute v. 60 for the M-14). Many Marines-as well as the South Korean troops in Viet Nam-are still armed with the slower-firing M-14, and as a result the Pentagon has also been faulted for failure to supply all the M-16s that the Allies in Viet Nam demanded...
...much as the .30-caliber M-14. "I could troubleshoot an M-16 much faster than I could an M-14," says Lieut. Colonel Henry Miller, chief of Army heavy maintenance in Saigon. Many Marines in the battle above Khe Sanh had been issued their M-16s only a few days before the fight, and were probably unfamiliar with the weapon's demands: constant lubrication, thorough wire-brush reaming of the barrel to prevent leading, "fire discipline" that limits bursts to two or three rounds at a crack...
...Viet Cong. Indeed, Le Xuan Chuyen, a former North Vietnamese lieutenant colonel and veteran of 21 years of guerrilla warfare, calls the M-16 "an excellent weapon." Le Xuan, the highest-ranking Red defector to date, says the V.C. also have gripes about the M-16s they have captured. They find the M-16 ammunition almost impossible to procure...
Waving their bolos, they charged straight into the stuttering M-16s of the Constabulary. Within minutes, 33 of them lay dead, 47 wounded. The rest were arrested for sedition and put in prison...