Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 67 - The M-16 Rifle: A Dumb History

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

On this episode we examine the birth of the M-16 Rifle and its deployment to the Vietnam War. How did the Pentagon take a rifle that passed every test with flying colors and turn it into a piece of shit that undoubtably killed hundreds of American soldiers? Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources for this episode: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/06/m-16-a-bureaucratic-horror-story/545153/ https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/m16-rifle-went-war-against-north-korea%E2%80%94and-succeeded-vietnam-not-so-much-32252 https://www.pewpewtactical.com/m16-vietnam-failure https://fenixammo.com/pages/history-of-the-223-remington-cartridge

If you should lose your cleaning equipment, field expedience may have to be employed. A piece of heavy wire, for instance, may serve as a limited substitute for your cleaning rod. Or, if you run into a friendly mechanized patrol, you might borrow the bore brush and cleaning rod of the.50 caliber machine gun to clean the chamber of your M16A1. Are you a gun guy? I know guns. Well, you kind of have to because of your job. But you're not like a gun nerd. No, not really.

I'm not either. I know of guns. Yeah, I'm familiar with the concept. Yeah, so I don't fucking like go, they meant to say mag, not clip, clip, isn't it? No. Because I've definitely seen those people. AR stands for assault rifle.

That's a proven fact. And hello and welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe. And back from his brave trip to the operating room is Nick. Yeah. I died a little bit on the table. Yeah. That's what happens when they give you too much drugs.

So how are you doing now with the robot leg? Terrible. Yeah. I feel like it would have been better if you just sawed your leg off and had a robot leg installed by grandma's boy. Yeah. It would have been great. I would have loved it. I would have been able to do so much cooler things. What all did they do to that? They put a bunch of

plates in there. Plates. They said an implant with wires or some shit. An implant? Gave your leg a tit? Yeah. I was like, what? They were like, yeah, we put it around your ankle. We put wires around it and then we had to crush your bone back together.

Jesus Christ. Holy fuck. That doesn't sound like a surgery as much as it does like something you do in shop class. Yeah. Just go ahead and bolt this fucking leg back together. The giant drill. And like shop class, it wasn't a surgeon. It was kind of a sad guy who definitely lost out in family court.

Single. Single. Wearing plaid for sure. Just like, well, I didn't really measure it twice, but I'm going to go ahead and put a screw in his leg. You know what they say. Measure once, put in a screw into an ankle. I mean, you know what they call a guy who got D's in medical school, right? A doctor.

You know what they probably call him? Colonel. Oh, oh yeah because he was in the army uh so before we go off a tangent um i talked a little bit about guns we're not gun guys um but we're gonna be talking about the history of a gun and it might be the most controversial history uh of a gun in American history. No, we will not be talking about civilian ownership of said gun because we are talking about the M16, a gun that we have both used and hate. Otherwise known as the musket. Yeah.

Now, obviously, we did not use this version of an M16. I know I never use any vietnam era versions if i've seen them yeah i've seen them too i played with them but i haven't shot him yeah um we did you we use much more modern versions like an a2 or something like that um still a giant piece of shit i have nothing to say about it except uh it didn't blow up in my face which has happened. What? Something I left out of this, but in the initial testing of the Eugene Stoner's rifle,

which would turn into the M16, it just exploded in the guy's hand and blew off half his face. You're supposed to throw this at the enemy so they can use it. That's the whole point. It's actually made out of pure hand grenades. We didn't think this through. Now, the M16 rifle has a wide array of opinions about it

that have only gotten more complicated in the year of our Lord, 2019. Now, that started all the way back in the 50s and 60s. And it's either considered a piece of shit or the golden standard for modern military engineering. Who says that? Gun people. Now, I will say I've seen two camps on this, and that is the rest of the world

and people who are just way too nationalist about their weapons. It's like the same reason why the military has effectively accepted the fact that the M1 Abrams is no longer the pinnacle tank in the world. But instead of just like, fuck it, we'll just use the Leopard. They'll be like, nope, just keep bolting computers on that bitch. It's the same reason why pretty much ever since world war ii or even world war ii itself we've had a an overwhelming obsession in america for ensuring that soldiers are are equipped with american rifles now machine guns submachine guns all that shit's kind of hit miss like that that m240 is't American. It's Belgian. But there's always been an obsession with ensuring that American boys have an American rifle.

Now, that does kind of make sense in the concept of what they were thinking this rifle would do. And that is fight communists, fight Soviets in a total war scenario. Now, C.J. Chivers in his book The Gun, now that book's about the AK-47, and I highly recommend it, but he kind of posits that the concept of total war no longer exists with the modern invention of assault weapons. I kind of agree, because as you've seen that that really hasn't happened since and instead it's become very very easy for um guerrilla forces

to fight much more much more effectively with assault weapons or jackson who goes to your local high school um and that is somehow spelled with a y uh now is a rifle that has all like i've kind of pointed out has uh become the go-to sex toy for the american uh modern american gun culture bro um but now a lot all this can be debated um if it really is the the pinnacle of modern firearms like people like i think even though obviously we've moved on from the m16 to the m4 but same basic design yeah very now there's a lot of small engineering uh things i'm probably gonna get wrong i'm not an engineer i'm a historian and i looked over historical aspects of this gun not gunsmithing ones because one i can't read them and two i don't

care i don't give a shit. Yeah, I don't, I just don't care. Um, I'll make this as accessible as I can, as I always do. Uh,

now what cannot be debated, however, is that American soldiers fighting in Vietnam were given a weapon by politicians in Washington, DC who knew it would fail. And it killed probably hundreds of people on the wrong end of it. Yeah. Um,

but as always, we have to go back in time before the M 16 is even thought of as a concept to figure out why it was created. So we're going back to the musket. It goes back to World War II. A study was conducted at the end of World War II into American combat units who fought on all fronts of World War II into combat effectiveness of a modern rifleman. They found something very surprising. Nearly four-fifths of all soldiers who saw active combat had never fired their rifle. That's a lot.

Yeah. That is a lot. That is, holy fuck. Remember, this is American. This doesn't bring in the Soviets, the British, the Germans, nothing. But the vast majority of American frontline combat soldiers never once fired the rifle in anger which is actually kind of funny because they um that is brought up in band of brothers where um uh not captain winners but the his like aid uh says nixon i think yeah uh he's like yeah you know i've never fired my rifle

and he's like really you know he jumped never fired my rifle and he's like really you know he jumped at normandy he jumped at martin market garden he did all his never fired his rifle once turns out not that weird yeah uh but there are if you were to pick one group of people who fired more than anybody else what weapon do you think they'd be holding i would assume a rifle right um so this is a group of soldiers who fired their rifle or sorry fired their weapon virtually 100 of all engagements they ever fought in you you want to take a guess who it was it's it's a handheld weapon it's not a cruiser machine gun is it a handgun no like what is the browning automatic rifle okay so soldiers who

carried the browning automatic rifle uh so for people who are unaware or not or even less gun people than we are the browning automatic rifle or bar was the closest thing to an assault rifle that was issued to american soldiers during world war ii um no i mean there can be some kind of argument that it was or was not an assault rifle it did not use a sub rifle round so i guess using the modern terminology yeah it was a 30 at six a big boy yeah uh now imagine firing a 30 at six and full automatic full automatic on your shoulder and i'm assuming you've done it yes please. Please enlighten us. So I've actually shot the BAR. How is it? It's cool as shit. It's a lot of recoil.

It's almost like firing a hunting rifle in fully automatic. Yeah. I don't know how accurate. It's selector, right? Yeah, it is. See, that not sure about accuracy ended up being very important in why they were okay with firing their weapon more than everybody else. The main differing points are unimportant um but the bar was a single person automatic or

semi-automatic weapon because it could switch back and forth um that could be fired in the general direction of an enemy on full automatic remember though like we said it kicked like a fucking mule which means on full automatic pretty much useless but it did go bang bang bang in the correct direction if you held down the trigger so the study found that soldiers of the bar were unsurprisingly not worried about wasting ammunition or aiming bar soldiers felt they could just pop up and spray down in the general direction of an enemy without really looking, while riflemen tended to lean towards their training

and worry about the placement of their rounds. I can see that. Meaning they would hold off a lot of the time thinking that if they shot, they would miss, therefore they would not shoot. Okay. More than that, the study found that riflemen

were much more likely to actually fire their weapon the closer they happen to be to a soldier with a bar i mean yeah so uh like the closer they were drawing all the fire well i think it has something to do with contagious firing have you ever heard that before it's super common among police officers but really common among soldiers i've done it before. And that is if people around you are shooting, you will join in even if you have no idea what you're shooting at. Definitely felt the urge before. Yeah.

Anybody who's been in combat and has fired their weapon has probably done this. Whether you want to admit or not, you probably did not see what you were shooting at. This worked in conjunction as their study found that almost every fire foot took place at no more than 30 or 50 yards away. So well-aimed rifle fire was completely and totally pointless. If you could just spray ammo

at a guy, you could literally pick up and throw a rock at. Yeah. So that gap between a full-size hunting rifle and a hunting rifle-sized machine gun was a gap, and generals wanted to fill that gap. Hilariously, one of their first solutions during the Korean War was just to give everybody a BAR.

Holy fuck, really? Oh, man. Which was a really bad idea, because BARs only have to run a 20-round magazine. Yeah. They're incredibly heavy, and they're very macular. They go through a lot of ammo. Very quickly.

Yeah. And a very, very slow-moving force. Heavy as shit. That would run out of ammo within like 20 minutes. Heavy. So that is when, and I know we have talked about it before, and if you've played, I guess, the current iteration of Battlefield V, you've seen this weapon.

That is a fully automatic version of the M1 Carbine. Oh, yes. That was their middle ground. The M2. And it sucked. Dicks. It turned out to be a massive piece of shit. It required a particular lube that would freeze in the winter,

and the return spring was so weak that routinely just break and jam when firing the bullet was also so weak that soldiers had had to be instructed uh to shoot specifically for the enemy's head so like they're in some kind of fucking zombie movie uh for instance it like for example it was such a bad weapon that when chinese soldiers which were badly on under underarmed would not pick it up and use it fuck I have my hands or yeah their choice a lot of the time was like that

or a bolt action rifle they'd rather just use the bolt action rifle I'll just wait till my nails grow now if you know enough about guns to know what the next giant one piece of shit is that soldiers are going to get you know we're talking about the M 14 now, uh,

the M 14 and really even the M one during world war two, which has gone on to become one of the greatest battle rifles of all time. We're the product of a weird system of weapon laboratories and weapons contractors. I am so biased on the M one. It's a good gun. Cause I have one. I love it.

The only thing that anybody has ever said bad about the M1 it's a good gun because I have one and I love it the only thing that anybody has ever said bad about the M1 as far as historical firearm goes like it makes an audible pinging noise so the enemy's new and they're out of rounds okay you won't be able to hear it yeah whoever has made that argument has never had a

rifle fired next to their head without ear protection because you don't hear shit afterwards yeah you don't hear it buzzing. Yeah. Um, there's absolutely no way that could be heard. It's a huge urban myth. Um,

so that, that weird conglomeration of government contractors, uh, weapons contractors and engineers became known as the ordinance core. Now I know people in the military, maybe Nick as well as like, wait, there really is a Ordinance Corps. We're not talking about those guys. Completely different.

These guys were not in the military. This collection of people were collectively responsible for over 100 years of weapons manufacturing within the military. They came up with weapons that we used against Native Americans

out West. They've been around a long time and their ideas are very fucking outdated. They heard the chorus of military leaders that want a lightweight

select fire weapon that could be fired on automatic by a regular soldier somewhat effectively. And they completely ignored them. See,

the Ordnance Corps was led by a group of people that were known as the Gravel Bellies. Why? A dumb nickname that makes a little bit of sense. It was people who only thought a quality rifle to be one that a sniper or a marksman could lay down and fire accurately at 4, 5, or 600 yards in a peacetime rifle competition that's like the idea of the the springfield it's a one shot one kill type do you remember the trapdoor rifle vaguely so they the army picked that over any lever action weapon because of you can reload it laying down The waste of ammo that they probably would have with the lever action because it gives them more. Oh, yeah.

And now, with the trapdoor, they only have one round, really. So it's purposeful restriction of ammunition. Pretty much. It's like something, it's like the Soviets did that in the Afghan war when they were like, yeah, you'll need about 100 rounds. That should be enough. They're like, but no, I really need more,

sir. Nope, that's all you get. I say this is enough. But I really need more. Because I gotta sell some of it, and then I gotta use it. And that actually goes great into the other reason why all these gravel bellies were completely against the concept of a fully automatic weapon. Like, they were even

against the concept of the BAR. They just kind of lost out. They weren't huge fans of the M1. These guys are fucking assholes. They were their, their main hit against any kind of concept of automatic weapon was that soldiers would waste ammunition. I think their bellies were just full of shit.

Yeah. They had lumpy bellies. Now, if you're paying attention at home, uh, you'll recognize everything that they wanted in a rifle was the complete goddamn opposite of what the military's own study found to be a useful rifle in combat. If the Ordnance Corps sounds like a painfully old-fashioned way to do things, you would be right. They had routinely forced presidents to adopt weapons that they had disapproved of.

How do they do that? A good example is the BAR, the M1. It bolt action rifle be fine you know a semi-automatic weapon is uh it'll lead to waste and wasteful and i mean it'll be wasteful of ammunition yeah and like the general's like that's fucking stupid give us a semi-automatic rifle and the president's like give him a semi automatic rifle and the corps is like fine i'm gonna bitch about the whole time gravel moving around and stuff who the fuck gave these guys power it's why are they still it's hard to things at this point it seems well one that it was a private public mixture and a lot of private concepts or the the private corporations concepts and contractors involved were gun manufacturers

or people who just made black powder or just made gunpowder, particular gunpowder. They all had stakes in this game. Like, shit, if things change, we can't make money. That's what it boiled down to. The black powder. So the gunpowder part of this will become hugely important later and you you will not believe how important that one component this entire rifle ended up being um so this ordnance core is exactly how we ended up with the m14 which is exactly what the generals did not want

was the m14 wasn't there a full autoauto version of the M14? Oh, yeah. So, for people who are unaware, the M14 is a large wooden rifle that fired a full-size hunting round. Again, this would be a weapon that America had originally taken to the jungles of Vietnam. The M14 was absolutely the wrong weapon due bring to Vietnam.

The M14, long story short, was an improved M1 with a larger magazine capacity and a detachable box magazine it's pretty much all it cool yeah the problem was it was expensive and tricky to manufacture furthermore the ordnance core slapped on a full auto firing mechanism seemingly at the last minute without even testing it because the m14 was totally uncontrollable when fired on fully automatic it rattled and kicked so much while uh firing in fully automatic that uh it was known for giving soldiers nosebleeds holy shit honestly when i

picture like soldiers or like anybody losing control of any full autos i picture them just just flying out of their hands and just it just keeps shooting it's it's great when you watch when you watch footage of people firing the m14 on full auto they have one hand on top of the weapon rather than underneath of it so they can attempt to hold it in place as they fire it from the hip because i mean it's i'm surprised i haven't looked up any videos of this i'm honestly it looks ridiculous um and it makes sense when you think about it because one it was not designed to be fired that way and two it was effectively a slightly modernized version of a world war two rifle. The thing is that you guys like the M one so much.

Here it is again. It is the fucking pimp my ride version of an M one. I heard you like M one. So we made you an M one and M one. So you can M one while you M one. M one with a mustache. We liked you. We heard you like the M1 and M1, so you can M1 while you M1. Here's an M1 with a mustache. We liked, we heard you liked the M1, so we just made it have 30

rounds of it and changed nothing else. So they tried some fixes to lower that painful recoil. This included a heavier barrel, bigger stocks, a foregrip, and of course, a bipod when

all this was done not only did they not fix the problem they had effectively recreated the fucking they remanufactured a bar 20 years later like they look they looked at it they were like wait a second they put up pictures next to it? No, no. No, this is different. This one's wood. It's Homer pouring the fucking cereal into a bowl and lighting it on fire. Like, hmm. Fuck! Enter a man awesomely named Eugene Stoner, which when I first heard about him when I was 15,

I thought was the coolest thing ever. I remember, honestly... This dude smokes. That's what I thought. was 15 i thought was the coolest thing ever i remember honestly this dude smokes so when i was younger i used to watch uh tv with my dad and my dad always controlled the tv so either he'd watch history channel cool yeah i mean it was good yeah back before the aliens yeah and sometimes the military channel i didn't have the military channel because that was like um whatever one step above the comcast package we could afford was so he he was watching the military channel and they're talking about old weapons and eugene stoner he was like yeah he came with a stoner light machine and i was like oh nice nice i see you sir yeah uh so enter eugene stoner and his ar-15

rifle now we are going to skip over a lot of the background of eugene stutter's rifle making attempts because he did make quite a few and a machine gun that were kind of popular but we're talking about more specifically his ar-15 uh stoner had been working on this rifle uh for the armmalite Corporation. Hence its name, the Armalite Rifle. But of course, when you're online, please call it an assault rifle. Please. I beg of you.

That's all I call it. If you don't like the AR-15, you can always get the AR-14. It is safer. Yeah, it's one number lower. Yeah, it's the assault rifle 15 because it fires 15 rounds per trigger pull um confused i'm just thinking of the worst

possible facebook comments i can make uh to everybody that's my friend on facebook um good thing i don't have facebook anymore i'm saying i would delete mine but at this point like it just acts as a photo storage device because i don't have any anymore. I would delete mine, but at this point, it just acts as a photo storage device. Because I don't have any of those pictures anymore. And I'm too lazy to go through and save them all. That makes sense. So the AR-15 seemingly fixed every single problem the M14 had. It was light, accurate, and incredibly reliable during all photo...

Let me fucking try that again. God damn it. The AR-15 seemingly fixed every single problem the M14 had. during all photo. Let me fucking try that again. God damn it. The AR-15 seemingly fixed every single problem the M14 had. It was light, accurate, and incredibly reliable during full auto fire. Like, you could control it even.

Like, weird. Nice. Like, wait, you're actually supposed to be able to point this at somebody while you use it this way? Sleek. Sexy.

Light. Stoner. Like a Calvin Klein commercial. Instead of spraying cologne, you just accidentally shoot yourself in the chest. It's all real sensual and then... Fuck! Furthermore,

its parts were stamped rather than hand machined, drastically cutting the price of a weapon. That's one of the dumbest parts of the M14. Like, here we are in the 50s and 60s with like factories and stamping uh equipment and they're like we're gonna machine all these parts by hand like it's a fucking lamborghini or something yeah like you are we're gonna give this dude with a wood dremel making the stock one drill yeah you can't rush this it has to be perfect dude someone's just gonna grab this with jizz colored

covered dirty mre hands don't worry about it um the ar was not new to the military it had been tested in 1958 at three different military bases uh i believe this is when it exploded in somebody's face at a military base yeah i think it was on a ship i I don't remember, though. And all of the reports were largely favorable. All of their complaints they had were pretty minimal, but they all came to the conclusion, like, this is better than what we have. There was one problem. It may blow up in your face, but we'll take it.

I mean, I've had an M9, which was the old army handgun, explode in my hand before. It's still there. Shit explodes. If you're pointing a controlled explosion in the general vicinity of somebody one time out of a million it could explode yeah it's just a you run the risk of using guns yeah um that's why you you

i don't know wear eye protection so you don't lose your fucking eyes um now the main problem was that the ar-15 used a 223 round which for non-gun people is much smaller um than the military standard at the time 308 uh the u.s had actually just got done with uh fighting nato over this um because the u.s loved their large caliber rifle round um and it was mostly because, and I say mostly, maybe not, had to do with their very close relationship of the ordnance corps with their manufacturers rather than anyone actually

caring about the size of a bullet. Fucking horse shit. Now, the reason why smaller bullets actually do more damage to a human being comes down to something known as wound ballistics. Which is a science I was completely unaware of a smaller round like the ar one would hit somebody hit a bone hit something and bounce around causing horrific damage while a bigger round like the m14 would punch straight through a man causing less trauma as it did so now they do create pretty big holes i've seen what an ak-47 can do to a human body it's pretty gross um but that's if you

hit them where you need to hit them someone who is trained less with say an ar-15 or what the russians end up making the ak-74 which it uses a 5.45 round, which I used to own. Great little gun. It'll hit them in the leg and come out their fucking chest. Ooh, good. Because it just bounces around so much. Fuck.

Yeah. Just gymnastics in your body? Pretty much. The wounds are horrific, as any trauma surgeon, literally anywhere in the United States, can tell you now. So that's why Eugene Stoner

and a lot of the world was looking towards smaller rounds. But because of that round difference, it was universally rejected from all the branches. Like, well, we just don't have bullets for it. Despite it being rejected from every other service, the Air Force actually adopted it. They're like, eh, fuck it, whatever.

Cool. Air Force actually adopted it. They're like, eh, fuck it, whatever. Cool. The Air Force fielding a much smaller force, probably like security forces type shit, security guards, end up having it as their main weapon.

In 1962, a cult salesman actually sold them to U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay by shooting watermelons with it and just kind of going, kind of cool, huh? Yeah, pretty much that's all I could think of. Which I think is how the Mythbusters pretty badass, right? Kind of just made their

show. A year later, Green Berets would ask and receive AR-15s for their standard weapon. Now the AR-15 had entered the weapons pipeline of the U.S. military, it began to be noticed, finally forcing the Ordnance Corps to officially test it. In short, they hated the thing for every reason you would expect them to,

saying they were underpowered and totally unreliable. It's not heavy. Which is weird. It's not wood. It's stamp. Now, this is going to become important. They said they were unreliable, which went against every other test that was ever done on them.

And we'll explain why, but I'll let you think about it for a second. Why do you think they're unreliable? For instance, when you get a gun from the store, fresh out of the box, do you just put ammo in it and fire it? No. Yeah, exactly. So this is totally disproven. Fucking gravel bellies. So, this unreliability was totally disproved when DARPA managed to get their hands on a thousand ARs and send them to Vietnam to the South Vietnamese Army. Now, if you're thinking that's because they wanted the South Vietnamese to be better armed, you are not right.

This is a combination of racism and living experiment. So... It's exactly... It's exactly as bad as you can imagine. So they thought the South Vietnamese would be too weak to fire the full-sized M14. That's so fucked up. And they wanted to do a double whammy

by like, well, let's see how these things work in large-scale combat. Because, you know, the well, let's see how these things work in large scale combat. Because, you know, the Air Force has them. They're not doing a lot of combat, you know, doing bushwhacking tours or anything. The Green Berets are a pretty small number. So they're like, let's see what a lot of these things can do all at once. So no better place to test them than an actual fucking war on people that really couldn't complain either way. That's true.

Now it's kind of fucked up. They sent thousands of mystery rifles to be tested by people in live combat, but they turned out great and had zero fucking problems. The South Indians fucking loved them. Nice. Fuck, and they're light? Hell yeah. They're not made of wood? Why is the army flying

around in jets and then using a wooden goddamn rifle? So this caused the military to look into their own failed tests. To the shock of nobody, they found the ordnance corps had totally rigged the goddamn things to make sure the M14 looked better.

What the fuck were they doing? So firstly, like I had alluded to, they fired the AR-15s straight from the box without even so much as cleaning out the packing grease. Yeah, figured. The M14s, by comparison, were not even the military models. Instead, they are hand-picked, handmade marksmanship competition rifles to be paired with what else? Specially made ammunition.

to be paired with what else? Specially made ammunition. The military also found that military officers had met with weapons manufacturers before the test to discuss how they could purposefully ruin the tests. What? Like, what do I have to do to this AR-15 to make sure it fails? Like, I don't know, have you tried shitting down the barrel?

Yeah. Just in the background, one of the fucking asshole belly gravel guys isn't doing it he's using a fucking uh funnel he's using a barrel cleaning device just packing shit down the barrel is it is it jammed yet already got it going next then i don't know why i picture these guys being also not only fat but also always having suspenders. Oh, yeah. Like pants that don't fit.

And like the suspenders. And the tucked in half untucked shirt. But their pants are also like up to their tits. Yeah, but they look super greasy too. They tuck their gut in. Yeah, they look super greasy too. I think I know like three of those guys. Yeah.

I'm related to at least one. Then in 1963, the Ordnance Corps got their hands on the AR again. They're greasy hands. So they said that these new tests showed that while more reliable, they were inadequately developed. So they decided to militarize it, as they say, and turn into what we know today as the M16. So if you're thinking like, well, it was working fine, what have they changed?

They added what is known as a manual bolt closure handle, also known as a forward assist. Oh, yeah. Now, this would allow the soldier to ram around into the rifle that refused to seat itself properly during normal operation of the weapon. That sounds kind of weird. Pretty much everybody's agreed with you. The air force and green beret said this was pointless and they never even had that problem during their years of usage. Eugene Stoner himself said it was insane because quote, when you get a cartridge that won't seat and you deliberately force it in,

you're buying yourself more trouble. Yeah. Why are you going to, you can't force anything into a gun. It make it not work. Also, uh, like if,

if, if like the guy who's now at this point, it's no longer in Eugene Stoner's hands. Like the military has it. They're going to do what they do. Yeah. But like if the guy who designed the goddamn things like, yeah,

don't do that. Like maybe listen to him. Just maybe. though i mean i would they had pride on the line yeah i mean they they wanted this to be theirs like they didn't want to take the ar-15 which worked and be like see this outside guy made this yeah copy paste we got an ordinance core this the fuck up i thought honestly if they're gonna core that's the fuck up. I thought, honestly, if they were going to ordnance core it the fuck up, they'd take away all the lightweight parts. We're going to make it out of wood. Wood.

Wood trigger. Sir, you can't make the barrel out of wood. Spring. The wood barrel. Yeah. So this device would also add cost, weight, and complexity to a weapon. And whenever you do that, you always sacrifice reliability, which was, when you treat it correctly, the M16's main asset.

Hilariously, when this was investigated, nobody could find any reason for the Handel's inclusion. Nobody. Nobody. Now, there's a reason for that, and we'll go over that. Colonel Howard Yunt, who had been the project manager at Rock Island Arsenal in 1963, and we'll go over that. Colonel Howard Yount, who had been the project manager at Rock Island Arsenal in 1963, and throughout the hearings bore the burden of explaining the Ordnance Corps' decisions, was asked how

this change could have been justified. Not on the basis of complaints or prior tests, Colonel Yount said, it was justified on the basis of direction. Direction from where, Congress asks? Direction from superiors on the army staff was all he would say the wise widespread assumption was that the late general earl wheeler then the

army's chief of staff had personally ordered the m16 to carry the useless handle largely because previous army rifles that have had them obviously like well we've been doing it we've been doing it this long like well we've also used to use muskets do you do you want to load this down the barrel we do have a magazine but uh it's easier to load down the barrel another thing that they changed is the twist of the barrel now that sounds pretty innocent, right? It turns out to fundamentally fuck the weapon up. So they increased the twist of the barrel so a bullet would be more stable during their flight path. This is, of course, also something that nobody asked for.

And the direction, again, flew in the face of the entire design of the weapon. Remember how I said less stability means more damage? Yeah. Well, the Orniscore didn't give a shit. By increasing the stability of the bullet, they reduced the amount of damage a bullet did by 40%. Because if you have a smaller bullet that is now super

stable and now hits somebody and does not bounce, you've just tried to stab somebody with a needle. Yeah. So were these guys on our side? I think they may have been Viet Cong plants. Like, I have no clue.

They're just, they sound like douches. They're not good. The reasoning for this was incredibly stupid. The Army's explanation for increasing the twist of the barrel

was that otherwise the rifle could not meet its all-environment test. To qualify as quote-unquote military standard, a rifle and its ammunition had to show that they performed equally well at

65 degrees below zero and 125 degrees above. On the basis of skimpy test evidence, an Arctic testing team concluded that the AR-15 did not do well in cold-weather portions of the test. Supposedly the bullets would wobble in the flight during the flight path at 65 below. They increased the twist of the test. Supposedly, the bullets would wobble in the flight during the flight path at 65

below. So they increased the twist of the barrel to get rid of that wobble, despite the fact this weapon was literally being designed to be sent to a fucking jungle. It's important to note here that the M16 is being sent specifically to Vietnam

and nowhere else. It was only being sent to fight in the Vietnam War else it was only being sent to fight in the vietnam war it was not being sent to western germany it wasn't being sent to units that could hypothetically fight the soviet the north pole yeah it was being sent to vietnam there you might hit a cold front yeah uh last and and probably well not definitely, the most impactful change that the Ordnance Corps would change would be the powder used for the ammunition. Ooh, you said we'd get back to this. Yeah.

Stoner had built and designed his entire rifle around the use of a type of powder known as IMR4475. What that means is completely pointless to our conversation. And it was the type used in every single prior test. Ah, yes. In 1963, the Army tested the ammunition, said it sucked, and said change it to a different one.

It was such a dumb decision that the Army to this day does not want to talk about it. Really? A journalist from the Atlantic, which, by the way, is the same article I've used for the main source of this episode titled M16 a bureaucratic

horror story because unlike some podcasts, lines led by donkeys cites their sources. That's a subtweet in a podcast. Enjoy. Notes that he tried to get access to the army, the test that the army conducted, like their actual

paperwork. And remember, this is a test from 1963 and a weapon that the army conducted, like their actual paperwork. And remember, this is a test from 1963 and a weapon that the Army doesn't even use anymore. And his request was denied, which is interesting because the Freedom of Information request absolutely brought that up. There's no national security things. We're not using this weapon anymore.

That's like asking, I would like the specs for the Springfield bolt-action rifle, please. Nah, can't do it, bro. They fucked up other things in the past With weapons Yeah we've literally openly accepted that we Sprinkled radioactive powder

On San Francisco to see what would happen But like nope won't talk about Those tests at the M16 Won't talk about the old plastic boy Won't do it Now the army made the choice to switch The powder used in the ammunition based on some calculations

they pulled out their ass, effectively. These calculations magically managed to find the perfect powder for the job. If you were to guess what powder that was, it wouldn't happen to be one manufactured by Olin Matheson who happened to work for the Ordnance Corps, would it? Fuck, would it?

It was! It sure was! Like, oh, big powder? Yeah. Once again, under the fucking grip of big powder, and this time it's not Coke, which means it's not cool. It's not Big Tolcom. Oh, that causes cancer, too.

Very true. So, yeah, they're like, oh, we, Mr. Congressman, we have discovered the perfect powder for this weapon it just so happens to be one that only i manufacture and sell to the military very high markup no i understand that it sounds suspicious but i assure you we're professionals yeah he gets accepted he starts high-fiving everybody on the board nice you have to wait until we leave the room to don't do that matheson sorry just like fist pumping his whole way down the fucking galley so in tests with the old powders and blow party on me guys hookers in the good kind of powder

uh in tests with the old powder the m16-16 firing rate. So when they switched this and then tested it, that's important. They did a ton of tests with the old powder that the Army had, not the kind specifically used by Eugene Stoner. And in the test with that old powder,

they found the firing rate would wildly increase and decrease on its own. So when you pulled the trigger on fully automatic, you had no idea what the gun was going to do. The gun just shrugged at you like i don't know spin the dial bro yeah uh its internal components struggle to deal with the new gunpowder because remember it was not meant to use it that would be like um if i let you borrow my prius

and you drive a diesel truck you're like, my truck runs on diesel and it works fine. So you put diesel in my Prius and just expect it to work. Ipso facto. It'll get you down the road until it doesn't. It's true. So this Olin Matheson powder burned way faster and way more dirty. burned way faster and way more dirty um the faster burning powder caused an immediate buildup of residue inside the gun causing falling six times faster than it would with with the eugene powder uh eugene stoner powder eugene powder powder um and it also began to jam at six times

as much rate you need that in a weapon and you, you know, it's funny because there's been two tests done with these specific kinds of powders. So you could point to this collection of information and be like, that one doesn't work. This one works. Let's do this because that's how science is supposed to work. But nope, they didn't do that.

They didn't do that, Nick. No. So here's the worst part. If you were the guy contracted to make these guns and making like money hand over fist and you're making a ton because it's a government contract you're making a fucking killing how bad does that gun have to manufacture before you're like guys you probably shouldn't do that with that ammunition like pretty bad right because you're making money yeah i imagine honestly you don't want that money train to end exactly i imagine i'd keep it going yeah even colt who was manufacturing

the m16s like this is a really bad idea and said and said that the government uh ammunition would not pass the army's acceptance tests so all these guns that they're making would fail the tests the army said don't worry about it. Test it with Eugene Stoner's ammunition and then just switch it out. That's like cheating. That's not right. And Colt was like, okay. Colt's like, what?

So Colt tested the weapons with the old powder beginning in 1964 so the army would accept them. Fuck, it works. Yeah, and then before they sent it to the army, they switched it back. So they're the same to blame! Yes. How many weapons do you think were possibly manufactured

and sent to Vietnam this way? I'm gonna assume 500,000. Little too high, actually. 330,000 weapons with the old switcheroo were sent to vietnam into soldiers hands to fight the enemy with a gun that that must have been a pain in the ass what would fucking happen yeah i mean like i hope it was just a few guys switching one at a time the labor of switching all the parts out and the ammunition had to be fucking stupid like just leave it that way yeah it's already got accepted and they already had to be fucking stupid. Like, just leave it that way. Yeah. It's already

got accepted and they already had the ammo. Yeah, you're literally bending over backwards just to fuck up this rifle. Clearly questioned building it for that reason. That makes no sense. No. I mean,

now start thinking about why would the Ornans Corps want to do this? Why? I have my theories. We'll get to that. But I have my theories. So this meant the army purposely faked their own tests and then sabotaged their own weapon before sending them to a war zone where people's lives would depend on it. And they did send them to a war zone.

In 1965, General Wes Moreland demanded the rifle be issued to all soldiers coming to Vietnam. Now, as soon as people saw combat with the new M16, not the AR-15, they noticed it was a huge piece of shit. Yeah. The fouling caused soldiers' weapons to jam in only minutes of combat. Holy fuck. Sometimes forcing them to literally strip their weapon down in the middle of combat in a vain attempt to clean up all the built-up bullshit

so they could actually fire it again. Season soldiers were running their parents and congressmen about their weapons getting people on the wrong side of them killed. Now imagine you're getting shot at. You're like, oh, gotta break down the rifle again. It's not working. One soldier wrote his family... I didn't intend throwing bullets.

One soldier wrote his family saying, quote, our M16s aren't worth much. If there's dust in them, they jam. Half of us don't have cleaning rods to unjam them. Out of 40 rounds I fired, my weapon jammed about 10 times. I pack as many grenades as I can, plus I bane it and K-bar, which is a knife, by the way, so I'll have something to fight with. which is a knife by the way so i'll have something to fight with so you if you can please send me a ore rod and a one and one fourth inch paintbrush i need it for my rifle there's a lot of guys getting killed because they jam so easily i don't want to die now you're probably wondering

did he die why none of them had cleaning kits. We'll get to that point. Because I don't know if it was... I'm assuming it was standard back then. I had a weapon cleaning kit issued with me. It was self-cleaning. Yeah. Another letter said, quote, I was walking point a few weeks back, and that piece of you-know-what, so 1960s,

jammed three times in a row on me. I'm lucky I wasn't doing anything but reconning by fire, which for people who are unaware is just firing into a bush for the most part, where I wouldn't be writing this letter now. When I brought the matter up to the captain, he let me test fire the weapon. Well, in 50 rounds, it double fed and jammed 14

times. I guess I'll just have to wait until someone gets shot and take his rifle, because the captain couldn't get me a new one. Jesus fucking Christ. I gotta wait for billy to die yeah god that sucks many soldiers noted that when american patrols were overrun and soldiers stripped naked for gear the one thing that would be left behind was the m16 oh man that sucks so bad even the vietcong who at the who are armed with a wide array of things, thought they were pieces of shit.

How do you think the military reacted to these flood of reports of the weapon failing on their soldiers? It's working. Put on your, I don't know, senior NCO cap. I don't have any of those. If a large group of soldiers were, like a piece of equipment wasn't working, is it the equipment's fault? Oh, it's their fault. Or is it the soldiers' fault? Yeah, clearly. They blame the soldiers! Now remember, the

leadership, up to and including Robert McNamara, who we talked about recently, who's a massive piece of shit, blamed the soldiers. Even though they knew it was going to fail. They blamed improper cleaning of the weapons by soldiers in the field as a reason they knew it was going to fail. They blamed improper cleaning of the weapons by soldiers in the field as a reason for the gun was jamming.

Now, like I said, there were no weapons cleaning kits for the most part. Why do you think that was? Self-cleaning. Now, the official military publication of the time said, quote, this rifle will fire longer without cleaning or oiling than any known rifle. And an occasional cleaning will keep your weapon functioning indefinitely so they so they just didn't think it needed to be cleaned and even if the soldiers like

maybe some of the farm boys who'd use weapons a lot new weapons need to be cleaned like they didn't have anything to clean them with hardly Hardly any purpose-built M16 cleaning kits got sent to Vietnam. So they're just doing the rag trick where you just do what you can with a fucking T-shirt. Spit on it? Yeah. God.

Now, if you're wondering, how did the Ordnance Corps take these piles of reports saying that they're- They were swimming in their money, I assume. Well, they took the whole thing as, well, we told you that this rifle sucked. What? We told you the AR-15 sucked.

I mean, it failed its tests. It was a piece of shit. He made us use it anyway. I fucking hate these guys. They then went on to say the chambers of the rifle should be chromed. It'll help with the fouling. So that would have never had to happen if they didn't change the ammunition.

Yeah. The chrome was only to help the following with the new ammunition they forced on the weapon. I fucking hate these guys. I just can't get over how much I hate these guys. They just sound so greasy. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, if you think this is bad, imagine how old the F-35 was made. Or the Bradley. That's another good story. That's true. This still continues, except now it's even more private. It's almost all contractors with very, very, very, very little military oversight. Like, oh, yeah, we'll have this to you in 10 years.

Cost a couple billion dollars. Look, we know it's been 30 years, and've you've literally given us hundreds of billions of dollars but a little bit more we'll cross the finish line and then you get like the zumwalt for the navy or the littoral combat ships like that's just how the it's how it works now that's why like to have a uniform made it's like it's gonna be 15 years of research it's gonna cost the army a trillion fucking It's like it's going to be 15 years of research. It's going to cost the army a trillion fucking dollars. And then it's going to be pink. Oh, yeah. Like the army combat digital uniform that the army has slowly moved past,

but which was issued to me right after I got a basic training was the process of tons of research, quote unquote research, so much money. And it was the worst uniform ever made. It blended into nothing, it was gray, it had Velcro, and was apparently made of paper mache, because it ripped if you looked at it wrong. Yeah, that's true.

They made a gun that way. That's a good analogy. That's really good. Now, like I said, the Ornans Corps use this as a pat on their own back like told you told you while they're counting their money nobody

in the ordnance corps would take ownership of any of the major decisions that were made that led to the weapon becoming less effective more effective at killing Americans for the most part there isn't like paperwork people approving this type of stuff nope less effective. Well, more effective at killing Americans for the most part.

There isn't paperwork of people approving this type of stuff? Nope. The Corps members simply blamed all those dumb draftees who did not eat, clean, or rifle. Oh, of course. Now, if you go back to Project 100,000, could have been true, but they were a huge minority.

Despite the fact that the Corps had told soldiers not to clean the rifle because they didn't need it. Yeah. Now, there's a congressional inquiry. Of course, tons of people were dying. Now, all the people that the congressional inquiry brought before them to speak, they all just like, well, it was decided it was changed by decision like i said before but decision they always pinned it on a group of people and you seemingly can't punish everybody or a dead guy oh gotcha yeah uh now what is more shocking of any of this to me is that the inquiry did not find any real corruption.

I guess the argument was the ordinance core was just incredibly competent. Like, cause there's only two, there's two sides of that coin. Did they do this on purpose or did they suck at their job? This fucking bad. Now, most of the time I have a saying,

and that is don't blame anything on a bad intentions that you can blame on incompetence like if you think somebody's trying to purposely backstab you or fuck you over it's probably a bigger chance they're just incompetent i guess like i i think i just have that attitude from being in the army for so long and working in civil service like we don't get the best guys so like i just assume a lot of people suck at their job true and i mean the the minority of the minority of people will be like no i really meant to fuck that guy over i want to get one over on him so like the inquiry somehow did not find that they were corrupt or incompetent okay that's of horse shit. So they literally came to no conclusion. Yeah.

Even though there's like, yeah we did. There's tons of paper. Even Colt's like, yeah we did that. Yeah, they told us that. Now, I think it was corruption and a little dash of

vindictive mean girl shit. Yeah. It seems super petty. They don't like being proven wrong. And I mean, the M16 did go on to be a good weapon once it was fixed, even though it did not need to be fixed in the first place. Not because the AK-47. An argument could be made. They're both good for what they do.

I mean, they definitely kill a lot of people. And the AK-47 is on flags and shit for a reason. argument could be made. They're both good for what they do. I mean, they definitely kill a lot of people. And the AK-47 is on flags and shit for a reason. But the M16 was very good at what it did once it was fixed. It's actually really good on

an enclosed office space or school or mall or abortion clinic or just any given street or airplane or government office building you're choosing or country music festival or i'm running out here i know there's more the m16 does its job which is killing people very quickly and very efficiently. Or, if you're an asshole, it's good for sports. Okay, never mind. I'm not going to say who

uses it for sports, because I probably know a shit ton of people that use it for sport. Name one other activity that is... I came into this thing, I wasn't going to say anything to gun control, but name one other activity that was invented to kill people that is now a sport like a competitive sport i know there's martial arts

but the martial arts are generally purposely made to not hurt your partner unless you're me and i broke your leg that's true that's very true we don't like hey you want to go like this the hand-grade shot put yeah you want to go throw spears at things um people We don't like, hey, you want to go like the hand-grade shot put? Yeah. You want to go throw spears at things? People generally don't do that. Badminton? Yeah, it was the ancient Chinese martial art of badminton killed millions. It's actually how the Huns were expelled. It wasn't the wall.

It was just thousands of Chinese people just hitting birdies at fucking horsemen. Those fucking nits. That's as far as I'll go on that. Now, Nelson Lynn Jr., who was a general in charge of the Army Weapons Command, was the guy who

approved the purchases of M16s from Colt. He retired during the Congressional Inquiry because that's how you get out of being questioned and keep all your benefits. He's like, I am going to professionally step aside and retire honorably.

If you've been paying attention recently... My seat's been a little hot lately. Covered in the blood of my own soldiers. What did retired generals generally go on to do? Take fucking bank positions getting warmer if he say was in charge of purchasing colt weapons for the army oh fuck

are you serious he did he went on to have a high placing job in colt no fucking way uh it's not actually i'm not this happens literally all the time i'm not shocked at all um i wish this is something that i could say that changed since the 60s definitely it's only gotten worse it's definitely gotten worse um now now sometimes they just run for office and uh i hate that even more because if there's one thing i hate more than like a veteran just pry barring his way into things by saying as a veteran is like an officer who's definitely a dork I would have duct taped to the gun tube

of my tank asking me to vote for him like fuck you man you music school degree having motherfucker that is a very super like inner I'm holding grudges holy shit I once had a tank commander who was a

west point no he didn't graduate from west he graduated from a military academy not like one of the service academies but like the cosplay version of the military academy like a parody yeah uh like vmi or whatever with a degree in music uh and he was the worst lieutenant i've ever had and i'm not gonna hate on musicians like my cousin married a musician and he's the worst lieutenant I've ever had. And I'm not going to hate on musicians. My cousin married a musician, and he's a very cool guy. My cousin's a musician. But I don't believe that a college degree and, I don't know, playing the fucking oboe means he should be commanding a tank.

But, you know, whatever. So yeah, Nelson Lynn Jr. ended up working for Colt. So there's probably a bit of grift there. To go even further, the congressional main investigator was a guy named Earl Morgan, who said, without a doubt, there was corruption.

Saying, quote, I would be amazed if there wasn't some. He went on further to say, knowing how this business is done, let's never find anything we can prove. The fact that he knows well yeah of course he fucking knows it sucks that nothing

can be done nothing could have been done if this happened today even less would fucking happen it still sucks if you were like years ago there was huge investigations into M force.

Um, and this came up during, I believe the battle of would not when soldiers were complaining, they were firing the rifle so much, they're jamming and they were having to take them apart to clean them. And like, we're going to launch a full investigation. Uh,

we're going to look into the, I believe the, the main part of there's like the magazines, which suck. Uh, and I can confirm that, uh, the, the, like the aluminum magazines that uh and i can confirm that uh the the like

the aluminum magazines that are handed out by the army are fucking bullshit and on more than one occasion i had to slap my magazine to get my weapon to fire like a bolt action rifle except it was slap powered i had a slap powered assault rifle fighting the taliban who had a weapon older than my mother working flawlessly and they like definitely didn't clean that motherfucker uh but yeah uh they had a full investigation into the failure of these weapon systems and like they came out and admit like

there's definitely some uh some problems um there's there's issues with these with these magazines these these rifles um fast forward a couple years i deployed same rifle same magazines time is a fucking flat circle Nick time is a flat circle and I hate everything like

I don't know what to do other than be mad that's how I feel right now it's kind of like whatever I mean I guess I can close this out by saying what I have prepared even though everybody already knows this.

In true government form, nothing and nobody was ever held legally accountable for what almost certainly killed dozens, if not hundreds of American soldiers. For what amounted to be a pissing contest over rifles. Yeah. Great episode. yeah i honestly i wish i could say that like we don't have a modern equivalent to this because like now we have people who just waste billions and billions of dollars and like if this costs 50 billion dollars to come up with a stupid rifle i wouldn't be mad because i don't care i mean the government misuses money all the fucking time if you're gonna be mad about how we spend you know infinity dollars on the military and the fact that like people are

dying from not having diabetic medications you're just gonna tear all your hair out and look like me but like they literally killed people to make a point yeah like the it's like the the not gonna say i told you so right i told you this sucked yeah i mean it's like the it's like the bizarro world f35 or like the bizarro world osprey where um everybody said yeah there's a whole lot wrong and they just like kept killing people and like but i mean again i mean the osprey ended up getting fixed after it killed i think like a dozen people and testing it still kills yeah um i don't know exactly how many people the f35 is killed i know it's crashed quite a few times it vanished into the sea uh but like like if this only was like the zumwalt or the lcs ships

in the navy and it was just like a money pit boondoggle i'd laugh at it i do i do plan doing an lcs episode because it's funny um but like i wouldn't bother me or upset me because like if you're gonna be mad every time the government wastes a billion dollars on like the toilet seat of a submarine like you're gonna have a bad fucking time um but this would be like if actually this is exactly something that happened um a military contractor sent kevlar vests to iraq and afghanistan they knew did not work really yeah um they got fined that was it they got fined oh a little slap on the wrist yeah uh which definitely killed people like those vests probably were put in a position where they were gonna stop something that they could not physically stop yeah um and but that i don't we

don't know how many people that killed. This killed, I'm going to ballpark and say at least 500 people. Easy. This is very early on in the war. It happened before the worst casualties of the war were starting. Yeah. But, I mean, how many, I mean, I had two letters. I found two dozen that I did not use.

People being so upset about something. They literally wrote their Congressman. That's insane. Yeah. So like if 20 people are writing about all the, all the rifles in my unit are failing, like that means it's probably a hundred or 200 or 300.

I mean, they shipped 330,000 rifles that did not work to a war. 330,000 rifles that did not work to a war. To say that it killed 500 or even 1,000 is still a huge minority of the amount of rifles they sent.

Nobody's ever held accountable, and now everybody loves the M16. So on point with our show. Yeah. I'm going to buy into the concept that the Ordnans Corps is just full of Viet Cong sympathizers. I kind of feel that too. We now see the gavel to Ornans Corps, what's your name? Ho Chi Minh.

Ah, yes, Ho Chi Minh. There's just one guy in the back like, what? Has nobody noticed this? Landon Bresnan sitting next to him. Get that man out of here. He clearly works for Eugene Stoner. So, again, that's our horribly depressing episode, per usual.

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