Libercontrarian

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posted by: underwhelmed at June 12, 2006 08:00 | link | comments |

"Misfire"... by William H. Hallahan

I just finished "Misfire," by William H. Hallahan, about the U.S. Armory's 200-year-old struggle with its own mental malfunction about firepower. Here's my post on AR-15.com...

OK, so around to Hallahan's book...

He RAILS against the U.S. Army Ordinance department's obsession with "preventing soldiers from consuming too many rounds of ammunition." He refers to this as the "gravelbelly" belief in the soldier that places well-aimed shots on an enemy at long range. He's got a point, especially so when he breaks down in meticulous detail the ridiculous steps the Army went through to avoid placing the ultimate "anti-gravelbelly" rifle, the AR-15, into service as the M16.

A brief history: Stoner's team designed a rifle that was created with the idea of short range (400 yards or less) volume fire of yaw-prone .22-cal HV rounds (ammo fired from a 1 in 14" twist barrel) that would tumble tremendously in flesh and cause a lot of damage. This ran counter to the idea that every American is a Carlos Hathcock at heart, pegging the living shite out of everything on the battlefield with deliberate, careful, aimed rifle fire.

The Army detailed 130 changes to "militarize" the AR-15 AFTER its successful introduction to combat in VN by Col. Harold Moore and has Air Assault troops (Ia Drang valley, I believe). The NVA was terrified of the Black Rifle (their name was the name we've come to know and love) and avoided troops armed with it from 1965 to 1966, when it returned to the battlefield with all those Army "improvements" that left scores of Marines dead with their rifles laying by their foxholes.

The changes that screwed up the AR-15/M16?

1. Addition of the Bolt Assist. Deemed unneccesary after three years of use by the USAF, this "feature" added weight and complexity to the rifle. Hallahan claims it reduced its reliabilty, although I am not sure how. I will say that if I ever had to use it to get the bolt to close on a round, I probably would not be pulling the trigger.

2. Reducing the twist from 1 in 14 to 1 in 12". This apparently provided extra stability to the .223 round when the ambient air temps go below - 65 degrees F. The change improved the accuracy but made the rifle "40% less lethal," (The Great Rifle Controversy, Edward Clinton Ezell) so the author claimed the weapon was made less lethal right as it was going into combat in VN - where the ambient air temps only get down to 65 degrees below zero five or six times per year.

3. Changing the powder from the Stoner-specified (and already-combat-tested) IMR 4475 DuPont powder to a slower-burning ball powder, either DuPont's CR8136 or Olin's WC846. This was done because DuPont did not want to make IMR 4475 any more, and the new powders were chosen without consultation of Stoner - in fact, he didn't find out that Ordinance was fucking around with his design until weeks had passed by and millions of rounds had been made. "This is not the rifle I gave you" said Stoner to Frank Vee of the comptroller's office. The residues from this far-less-clean powder tended to gum up the works on the AR, and NO INSTRUCTIONS OR ACCOUNTREMENTS WERE GIVEN TO THE SOLDIERS TO CLEAN THEIR WEAPONS. The ball powders were powders that were designed for the already-dead M14. Soldiers and Marines wrote letters to parents begging them for various solvents in the field, cleaning brushes, cleaning rods (they were later issued, one to a platoon I think).

There's more - MUCH MORE, and I encourage you to pick up the book and give it a good read. Any non-history person may take less interest in the early chapters; I was fascinated by the analysis of the Armory's continued state of mental disease that fast-firing rifles would be too profligate in their use of ammunition (as if that would not have a telling effect on the battlefield) and that "indiscriminate discharge of weapons at the enemy should be avoided."

An amazing read. I encourage you to check it out.

posted by: underwhelmed at June 10, 2006 22:49 | link | comments |

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