If our soldiers in Vietnam were issued the M4A1 in it's current form without cleaning kits, it still would have been a disaster. There is very little real difference between a current AR and a Nam era AR. Parts between ARs of all eras are, with few exceptions, mix and match. I am amazed at how close Eugene Stoner was to getting it right the first time. The chrome lining was part of Stoner's design specs from the beginning. McNamara's "Whiz Kids" decided that chrome lining wasn't needed and deleting it would save the government money.Originally Posted by Kevslatvin
The original powder was NOT ball powder or flake powder. It was WWII cannon powder similar to H4831. It was a stick powder. Pressure curves are controlled by burn rate. Stick powder controls burn rate by how much surface is exposed to the flame. Surface is determined by diameter, length and sometimes the grains are hollow tubes instead of being solid.
Ball powders, on the other hand, control burn rate through the use of a retardant. If I recall, the retardant used by Olin-Winchester is powdered graphite. Winchester 748 is known to be one of the dirtiest powders known to man. It was ordered that the stick powder be replaced with the ball powder. The ball powder used also had a different pressure curve which resulted in increased carrier speeds. This lead to extraction problems.
Stick powder burns cleaner but ball powder flows better through a powder meter. In fact, ball powder was specifically designed to be measured by volume instead of weight. Ball powder is better for mass producing ammunition.
One reason the first M16s sent to Nam for evaluation were so successful is because they were in the hands of highly trained and motivated personnel- the Green Berets. They knew how to operate and maintain weapons. I have been able to verify this, but I believe those M16s were issued with the original stick powder ammo and had chrome lined chambers and bores.
The hot, humid jungles of Vietnam is a harsh environment. There are accounts describing how a brass case chambered in an unlined M16 barrel would corrode and get stuck in just a few short hours. Soldiers would chamber a fresh round in the morning at the start of a patrol and found their weapons inoperable before noon. Adding to the problem was that the rifle was sold to the Army as self-cleaning. It was issued to the troops, many who were draftees, in the field with no cleaning gear or instructions on how to lube and maintain their new rifle. This was compounded by the sticky residue left by the ball powder.
To answer the original question, while the modern M4 is a refined and battle hardened rifle, without maintenance, it wouldn't have fared much better. However, properly lubed and maintained, I think the handy size, reliability and SOCOM profile barrel for better cooling would have instantly endeared the M4A1 to the troops, especially with modern OTM ammo.
The 5.56 of Vietnam did deliver devastating wounds, but it had nothing to do with the 1:14 or 1:12 twist. It was all about how spitzer boat tail bullets behave when hitting flesh. It was noticed the 55 gr spitzer boat tail would sometimes destabilize when it hit a body and the terminal effect was devastating. The trouble was, it only happened some of the time. Other times, the bullet would pass through doing only minimal damage. When the U.S. sought to improve the terminal performance of the 5.56, top priority was given to more reliable destabilization on impact. They found that lengthening the bullet (thus making it heavier) improved destabilization on impact with flesh.
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