military's official primary service rifle, the M14 was nevertheless a known and proven quantity, where the early M16A1's were hated as having a reputation for being unreliable, inaccurate at longer distances and severely underpowered. It was replaced by a little black rifle many soldiers just plain despised and would jokingly refer to as "the little toy gun manufactured by Mattel".
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These additional costs, when combined with weight considerations plus the rifle's substantial full auto recoil, solidified the decision to phase out the M14 as our "primary infantry weapon" beginning in 1966, relegating it to the status of "limited standard weapon".
Another complicating factor was the hot and wet tropical climate of Vietnam forced the Army to continually replace warped and swollen wood stocks with synthetic furniture. In addition, the M14 was deemed too big and bulky for jungle combat. Nevertheless, when the rifle was set to full-auto mode, it became practically impossible to control. The Marines loved them because, when set to semi- auto, the rifle accurately punched through jungle flora and enemy combatants equally well. M14.īy 1965, with America's emerging military involvement in Southeast Asia, several glaring problems became apparent with the M14. As a result of this and the fact it was slightly lighter in weight than the T48, the T44 was formally adopted in 1957 as the official primary infantry service rifle, and then re-classified as the U.S. military also carefully considered the FN-FAL for approval, referred to in field trials as the T48.Įxtensive testing conducted in the early '50s revealed the T44 and T48/FAL were comparable in terms of performance, however, subsequent Arctic testing soon revealed that the T48's sluggish gas system was inferior to that of the T44. Modifications were subsequently made to shorten and improve the gas system and the M1 Garand's long operating rod was replaced with a self-compensating gas cut-off system. The T20E2 evolved into a promising prototype called the T44. 30 caliber short action for a long action cartridge saved one pound of rifle weight over its predecessor the M1 Garand, which would be one of the deciding factors in approval of the M14 over foreign competition.ĭuring the next several years, while running on a shoe string budget with minimal funding for research and development, the project would receive input from a variety of design engineers at Springfield Armory. The T65 was then adopted into military service as the 7.62X51 NATO cartridge, and Winchester later released a hotter loaded civilian version on the commercial market known as the. 30-06, but still retained the same down range trajectory and ballistic energy thanks to a more efficient propellant recently introduced by Olin Industries/Winchester. This shorter round had less powder than a. In the years that followed, Springfield Armory began re-engineering the project around a new military cartridge initially dubbed the T65. Army deployed the new light machine gun and the War Department subsequently cancelled the project following the armistice. Designated the T20E2, the mighty M1 underwent fully automatic modifications and its 8- round en bloc clip was replaced with a detachable 20- round Browning BAR box magazine.
A closer examination of the weapon reveals the earliest prototypes were unveiled by Springfield Armory's chief designer John Garand in the final months of WWII. As a direct descendant of the M1 Garand, the Springfield M1A SOCOM-16 is a semi-automatic hybrid extension of the U.S. Low prices on the Springfield M1A SOCOM-16 CQB.
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