American soldiers in Vietnam were found dead with their rifles disassembled or cleaning rods jammed in the barrel, desperately trying to make their M16 work in their final moments. Reports came in of squads where half the rifles stopped firing in the middle of battle. Soldiers stopped trusting their weapon entirely, writing home and begging families to send cleaning kits. Only later, after hundreds had already died, did the truth finally come out. And the answer shocked everyone.
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| A U.S. Soldier with a Jammed M16 |
The Search for a Universal Rifle
After World War II, the US Army had a mess of different weapons in different calibers all mixed together in the same squad. BARs, Garands, carbines, submachine guns, and various Browning machine guns. The war showed how difficult it was to resupply units with every type of ammunition, weapon, and magazine. So the military sought a single universal weapon in one caliber.
NATO agreed on the 7.62x51mm round, and the Americans built the M14, basically an improved Garand with a 20-round magazine and select fire capability. But at 10 pounds loaded, the recoil in full auto was unmanageable, and the heavy cartridge was overkill for most firefights, which post-war data showed happened well within 300 yards.
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| A U.S. Soldier with The M14 |
Armalite designer Eugene Stoner had a better idea. He took his AR-10 concept, which used aluminum and plastic instead of steel and wood, and downsized it into the AR-15 chambered in .223 Remington. The result was a modern rifle weighing under 7 pounds with almost no recoil, incredibly controllable in full auto. The long barrel gave the small projectile about 3,200 feet per second of muzzle velocity, compensating with speed for its light weight. This became the M16, chosen over the M14 which had the shortest service life of any standard American rifle.
Flawless in Testing
The first M16s were sent to American advisers and elite South Vietnamese units for field testing. Soldiers loved them. The ergonomics, accuracy, and light weight were ideal for jungle patrols. The plastic stock didn't swell in humidity like the M14's wood. Reports described minimal to almost no malfunctions after firing thousands of rounds in both range and combat conditions. These reports sealed the M16's adoption just as the war escalated in 1965.
Then tens of thousands of young soldiers arrived in Vietnam carrying their new rifles. They had every reason to believe they were holding the most modern weapon available. The first large-scale firefights broke out, and their rifles just stopped working.
The Combat Debut
After a couple of magazines fired in battle, the M16 would seize. Soldiers picked up rifles from fallen comrades and fired until those jammed too. They were found dead beside disassembled rifles, obviously trying to clear malfunctions before they were killed. Some used rifles as clubs and bayonets in desperate hand-to-hand fighting. One platoon leader reported 32 out of 80 rifles malfunctioning during a single engagement.
Reports flooded in of half the squad's rifles failing during contact. Soldiers began carrying more grenades and scrounging for sidearms, even grabbing old World War II weapons or captured enemy rifles. There's a recorded instance of one soldier, the only man in his platoon with a cleaning rod, running from position to position during a firefight clearing jams until he was shot and killed.
To make everything worse, the M16 had been advertised as a "self-cleaning rifle." They were issued without cleaning kits. Not a single cleaning kit was sent with the first shipments of some 85,000 rifles for the whole year. And they were operating in jungle conditions with multi-day patrols through mud and rice paddies.
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| The M16 Cleaning Kit |
What Actually Caused It
The answer turned out to be something soldiers could never have guessed. During development, the AR-15 had been tested with IMR powder, a stick-shaped propellant that burned predictably, produced modest pressure, and left little residue. The rifle worked flawlessly with it.
But in 1964, just before the rifle was about to enter a full-scale war, the Army Ordnance Department changed the powder to WC846 ball powder without consulting the rifle's designer. Ball powder was cheaper, and the army had enormous stockpiles of it from artillery shell production. No prior testing was done with the M16.
Here's what ball powder did. It burned faster and produced much higher chamber pressure. This raised the rate of fire to over 1,000 rounds per minute, far beyond what the rifle was designed for. Cartridge casings would deform and swell under the excess pressure, their rims tearing off and leaving the spent case stuck in the chamber. The only way to clear it was to ram it out with a rod from the muzzle. The same rods they weren't issued.
Ball powder also left significantly more unburned residue that clogged the barrel, cycled back through the gas system, and accumulated in the mechanism. When it cooled, it hardened like plastic and caused constant failures.
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| Spent Shell Casings from M16 Rifles with WC846 Ball Powder |
On top of the powder change, Army Ordnance insisted on adding a forward assist that the M16's designer protested against. It only added another way for dirt to enter, and forcing a round into the chamber with it would deform the cartridge and make it impossible to extract. The initial 20-round magazines were cheaply made aluminum intended to be semi-disposable. After field use, feed lips bent and springs weakened, adding to the malfunction rate.
The Fix That Came Too Late
Once soldiers' letters and interviews reached the public in alarming numbers, something finally had to be done. Cleaning kits and manuals were rushed to frontline units. New rifles were redesigned with a trap door in the stock holding a small cleaning kit. The chamber and bore were chrome-lined so they wouldn't rust and would be easier to clean. A stronger buffer and spring reduced the rate of fire to a controllable 800 rounds per minute as originally intended. The powder was reformulated to work properly with the rifle. Better reusable magazines were delivered, and the flash suppressor was changed from an open three-prong design to a closed bird cage so it wouldn't catch dirt or snag on jungle vines.
The M16 became as dependable and effective as it had been during its experimental phase. Soldiers slowly began trusting their weapon again.
Nobody Paid the Price
Congress held hearings. Investigators spoke of criminal negligence or even deliberate sabotage. Yet no individual was ever held responsible for the decisions that put faulty rifles in soldiers' hands. The old Army Ordnance Department was dissolved and Springfield Armory was closed in 1968. The rifle was redesigned as the M16A1. But no one was fired, prosecuted, or demoted over a debacle that cost the lives of many American soldiers.
Soldiers found dead trying to unjam their rifles. Squads with half their weapons seized in the middle of a firefight. And behind all of it, a powder change made without testing, without consulting the designer, and without sending a single cleaning kit along with 85,000 rifles headed into a jungle war. The M16 wasn't a bad rifle. It was sabotaged by the people who were supposed to make it work.
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