Teething issues with the M14?

[halfmoonclip]

Papa', arguably we'd have been better served with an inline rifle for the .308, be it the AR10 or the FAL. But they were so untradtional that they made Army Ordinance's heads to explode.
Moon

[ABNAK]

I know so very little about the history of the weapon, but I know I owned one that never malf'd with current day mags and ammo. I think they are good weapons but the LMT MWS made them obsolete. God Bless their history and what it did for our country.

As has been mentioned earlier in this tread, it wasn't great but it wasn't bad either. Maybe mediocre is a good description? I certainly wouldn't feel under-gunned or like I was stuck with a lemon. Gotta figure it worked in the jungles of Vietnam and the arid environment of the Sandbox in more recent years.

I think an 18" barreled, chrome lined M-14 would have been more well-received and might have lasted a little longer as an issue weapon.

[MountainRaven]

Seriously? I hadn't heard that before. Which ones? Have a link? (not being a dick, I'd seriously like to know)

Dunno. I remember reading SteyrAUG or Templar posting something here about it. I might be misremembering.

(A quick Google search turns up some stuff about HK21Es, but nothing about any H&K G3 or CETME chrome-lined barrels.)

Either way, in 1964, chrome-lining was not considered to be mandatory in a fighting rifle.

[T2C]

I was under the impression the M-14 was adopted to replace both the M1 Garand and BAR. We did not have major issues with the rifle when I was issued a M-14 in the 1970's.


A lighter, smaller caliber, military rifle may be more practical, but there is nothing like gripping iron and wood and hitting targets at 600 yards.

[ABNAK]

I was under the impression the M-14 was adopted to replace both the M1 Garand and BAR. We did not have major issues with the rifle when I was issued a M-14 in the 1970's.


A lighter, smaller caliber, military rifle may be more practical, but there is nothing like gripping iron and wood and hitting targets at 600 yards.

It supposedly replaced the M1 Garand, BAR, M1/M2 Carbine, and .45 Grease Gun. Pretty tall order for one weapon. They tried the same thing with the M16 but eventually brought on the SAW.

I've seen a pic of the M14 next to the weapons it replaced but I can't seem to find it right now.

[ramairthree]

First hearty laugh of day

[halfmoonclip]

In addition to the techincal problems with the chrome bore and chamber (again, said to be technically impossible early on), I'm sure we're all guilty of 20/20 hindsight. Chromed bores and chambers are now considered a standard (tho' there are some claims to degrading accuracy in the bore), but they weren't common back in the day. The M1 (Garand and carbine) didn't have them.
The notion that the M14 was a lighter replacement for the carbine is laughable on its face.
At the heart of the problem; the Army's refusal to consider anything less powerful than the .30-'06. What were they thinking, again with the benefit of hindsight.
BTW, I do recall the defense of the full powered round in gun media of the day.
Moon

[MistWolf]

The M14 is a fine rifle for it's time. Unfortunately, it's time had passed by the time it was adopted. The M14 is what the Garand would have been if it wasn't for the out-moded policies of the Ordnance Department- the same thinking that put Trapdoor Springfields in the hands of our troops instead of modern repeaters.

The Garand and the M14. If not for the rigid thinking of the Army Ordnance Dept., the US would have stormed the beaches of Tarawa, Okinawa and Normandy with the rifle the Garand should have been


Instead of developing a modern bolt action repeater using a high velocity smokeless cartridge, the Army Ordnance Department went with a modified muzzleloading musket, the Trapdoor Springfield. The first Trapdoors were made by milling out the breech end of muzzleloaders and fitting them with trap door breech plates and a weak extractor. Why? To save money by recycling old rifles and keeping down the rate of fire. They felt soldiers would sinfully waste ammo if given repeaters, a flagrant waste of Army money. It was the same thinking that prevailed during the development of the Springfield 1903 (limiting magazine capacity to 5 rounds) and the M1 Garand. The Department was worried the 8 round capacity of the proposed Garand would result in wasted ammo. Another concern was that soldiers would lose the detachable magazines, rendering the rifles useless. While there is no question as to the battlefield effectiveness of the Springflield '03 and Garand, the effectiveness of both were limited by the narrow minded frugality of the officers on the Ordnance Board. John C. Garand wanted his new rifle to use a detachable magazine.

The FNFAL is as fine a rifle as the M14, but it's time too had already passed. It's ergonomics were improved over past infantry rifles, but it was still designed based on out-dated technology. The AR10 made all other designs obsolete by simply locking the breech in the barrel instead of the receiver. This meant the receiver didn't have to contain the pressures and could be made of aluminum instead of steel, reducing the weight of the rifle by a pound or more. Forging aluminum receivers is far easier than forging, casting or stamping steel and the use of the 7075 alloy meant the aluminum receiver could not only be lighter, but more rigid and easier and faster to machine to close tolerances. Locking the breech at the barrel also made it easier to set the headspace. In contrast, the FAL (as well as its contemporaries) locked its breech in the receiver. The receiver had to be made of steel to deal with the stress of firing and headspace had to be handfitted to each barrel during assembly. Its basic design also meant that the rifle would never be better the 4 MOA even if match ammo were used. Personally, I don't think the FAL would have served in the US military any longer than the M14 did.

The Big Three. The M14, FNFAL (and its SLR counterpart) and the G3 were the main battlerifles of the western world during the Cold War. The European FAL and G3 would outlast the M14


In an ideal world, the M14 would have emerged as a 20 round Garand to become the premier infantry rifle of World War II and Korea. The AR10 would have been adopted in place of the M14 and replaced by the M16 a short time later. Or perhaps, the M16 would have supplemented the AR10, both being used according to mission dictates.

The M14 shown with an MP-10 (above) and a 20 inch AR (below). The MP-10 and 20 inch AR are shown only as representations for the AR10 and M16 as a sample of neither were available for photographing. They are included to give a rough size comparison to the M-14


The late development of the M14 ensured it was a technological dead end. On the other hand, the M1 carbine opened the door to thinking that lead to the adaption of the M16 and eventually, the development of the M4.

The M14 shown with the Garand and the M1 carbine. What's ironic is the 308 was developed to be a shorter, light 30-06 but the M14 ended up being longer than the Garand


Soldiers and Marines exposed to the M1 carbine wanted a shorter and lighter rifle with lower recoil and greater capacity than the Garand, which after the brief detour into the M14, lead to interest in the M16.

It could be argued that the M14 program delayed the development of the rifle that should have been adopted in the first place- the M4. However, the M14 ultimately drove home the futility of pursuing small arms development driven by out-moded thinking


In the end, we have come full circle. The mainstay of the US military is the M4 FOW, short, handy, low recoiling, good capacity and easy to use. Much time and money could have been saved if the Army Ordnance Dept. had used the advantages of the M1 carbine as a starting point instead of the Garand. But as the old cliche says, the Army was preparing to fight the last war.

[MountainRaven]

The Trapdoor Springfield rifle wasn't adopted at a time that anyone was using bolt actions and smokeless powder hadn't even been invented, yet.

The US wasn't particularly slow on adopting a smokeless powder modern repeating rifle, either, starting with the Krag-Jørgensen in the 1890s (about when everyone else was - the French having just invented the stuff in 1888). Which had a magazine holding 5 rounds. Its two limitations were the lack of ability to accept a charger and the 30 Krag cartridge itself (which was fine for 1892 - worth remembering that the British wanted to rethink the 303 after going muzzle to muzzle with Boers armed with 7mm Mausers at the same time the US went muzzle to muzzle with Spaniards in Cuba armed with the very same rifles). And despite all these disadvantages - in fact, most US troops involved in the invasion of Cuba were still armed with trapdoor Springfields firing black powder 45-70 cartridges - the US still managed to handily defeat the Spanish.

The theorem that single-shot rifles should still be standard does carry into the M1903 - but in the form of a magazine cut-off, not in the capacity, which was a very nominal for the period 5 rounds. And, again, the magazine cutoff wasn't exceptional. At the ranges at which Western militaries anticipated using these rifles, in the pre-machine gun world, the magazine's capacity wasn't a huge deal: You'd have a mass of troops, lobbing bullets a thousand yards en mass at an enemy formation, all while under control of an NCO or officer (sort of a super primitive machine gun, with the mass of bolt action rifles making up in numbers of soldiers firing for their relative lack of ROF) and the magazine was intended for last ditch defensive use. (Maybe inspired by the Turks at Plevna, where Turkish soldiers used both single-shot rifles, at longer ranges, and the rapid repeating fires of their lever actions at closer quarters.)

If you want to look at a country that had a view of the future and then veered off, look at the UK, where the original plan was to issue Lee-Enfields with loaded box magazines and when a British squaddie ran out of ammo, he would simply swap out magazines. And the response to concerns about soldiers losing magazines was to chain one magazine to the gun. The plan to issue out box magazines never happened (I'd guess because they couldn't make them in the quantities needed to issue box magazines while still functioning across a wide variety of rifles), but plenty of Lee-Enfields still had their magazines chained to them - with some later production guns having the mounting point for the chain, but no chain.

The M1 Garand wasn't limited - in its original guise - to 8 rounds, but to 10. Which, again, is nominal for the period (literally every other semi-automatic battle rifle of the 1930s and 1940s had a 10-round magazine). Hell, the SVD Dragunov, which is both a battle rifle and a DMR, has a 10-round magazine to this day. And the concern with magazines wasn't limited merely to soldiers losing them, but with the durability and reliability of the magazines. In fact, the BAR, M1 Carbine, Thompson SMG, and even the M14 have what are frankly really horrible magazine designs. And the M1 Garand, like the M1903, and other, previous battle rifles, was limited in its capacity chiefly by the size of the stock necessary to protect the magazine (the P14 and M1917 rifles had flush magazines because the British had found the exposed magazine of the SMLE to be vulnerable to damage - and if you're only going to have one magazine, you're going to want to protect it as much as possible), and not by some sort of backward thinking regarding magazine capacity. I've never heard any vet ever complain about having, "only," 8-rounds in their M1 Garand.

Finally, the FN FAL isn't a rifle that needs to be, "head spaced by hand." You screw the barrel in, throw a gauge in the barrel, and then pick the locking shoulder the gauge indicates. FN FALs are also quite capable of shooting better than 4 MOA - I know and know of people I consider credible who have FALs that are easily capable of sub-2 MOA accuracy. And at least one G1 rifle that regularly puts in sub-moa groups.

[halfmoonclip]

We've wandered more than a little afield. The competition for the Trapdoor was the '73 Winchester; it was a less powerful round, but could fire much faster, as Custer learned to his peril. The extractor on the Trapdoor, paired with soft (copper?) cartridge casings, had many of Custer's guys trying to pry spent cartridges out of the breech with a Barlow knife. I'm sure some of the issue with the Trapdoor was the cutback after the huge expenditures of the Civil War.
MistWolf, nice summary and pictures.
'RAven, great explanation about magazines, and concerns about the troops losing them. Oddly, I had read (here) that a trained man could stuff another 8 round clip in a Garand faster than another magazine in an M14.
BTW, it's not hard to imagine how some of these things could have gone entirely different directions. I agree that military pigheadedness was the cause of some of our problems, but then they threw caution to the winds by thrusting the M16 into VietNam without extensive field testing or supplies.
I will say that in-spec ARs make headspacing a non-issue.
Moon