The Gun

by C. J. Chivers

  92. Personnel communication to author from Markku Palokangas, of the Finnish War Museum in Helsinki.

  93. Personal communication from Markku Palokangas and Robie Kulokivi, a Finnish arms researcher.

  94. Trial Report, Soviet Machine Carbine 7.62mm Kalashnikov (AK). Submitted to the Netherlands General Staff, August 1958. Copy provided to author by the Legermuseum, Delft, The Netherlands.

  95. Yugoslavia had fought off the Axis without the Red Army’s direct support, and it emerged from World War II without Soviet troops on its soil and with pride in the success of its partisans. Relations were further strained by the Soviet crackdown in Hungary in 1956 and the Soviet Union’s deception during the arrest of Imre Nagy.

  96. Personal communication from Branko Bogdanovic, a historian at the Zastava plant.

  97. Ibid. The Yugoslavs had no Soviet license and were on tricky diplomatic trade grounds as they manufactured weapons based on Soviet patterns. After Yugoslavia was dissolved and the archives were assumed by Serbia, the identity of the nation that leaked its AK-47s did not become publicly known.

  98. The Zastava team hoped to make an entire family of arms based on the Kalashnikov system and experimented with means to modify the line, changing barrel lengths and adding features.

  99. Personal communication to author from Branko Bogdanovic.

  100. In time, Zastava would become a major Kalashnikov supplier and exporter, including export to the Pentagon’s proxies in Afghanistan and Iraq, where Yugoslav Kalashnikovs are abundant.

  101. Armstrong, Bullets and Bureaucrats, p. 152.

  102. La Garde, Gunshot Injuries, p. 33.

  103. At least two studies challenged the old guard: “Rifle Accuracies and Hit Probabilities in Combat” by Leon Feldman, William C. Pettijohn, and J. D. Reed, November 1960; “An Estimate of the Military Value and Desirable Characteristics of Armor Helmets for Ground Forces,” a report published in 1950.

  104. Those tests are covered in detail in the next chapter.

  105. ORDI 7-101, Soviet Rifles and Carbines, Identification and Operation (published by the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps, May 1954), p. 1.

  106. Report No. OTIO-471. The available documents accompanying the translation suggested that the United States military did not yet have possession of the new Soviet automatics and that technical intelligence officials had not yet tested and evaluated them. One line on the cover letter when the translation was submitted to the Army’s chief of ordnance noted that “the technical accuracy of the source data has not been verified,” indicating the military had not yet handled a specimen arm.

  107. The Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), the successor organization of the Army Foreign Science and Technology Center, said that record searches had not found most of the relevant documents from the era. The author assembled the records discussed here independently, from a range of sources, including the National Archives and several museums. Among the reports the U.S. military did find under a Freedom of Information Act request was a 1961 technical report on what the American army called a “Chinese AK-47.” This report references two previous classified technical exploitations of the Soviet original—one published in mid-1956, the other in early 1957. The brief discussions of these reports in the 1961 document point to the first American military acquisition and tests of the AK-47.

  108. Edwards’s scoop carried whiffs of an insurgency within the army’s ordnance department; reading between the lines suggests that his sources included American technicians who were testing the AK-47, and that they might have let him participate in a sample shoot.

  109. William B. Edwards, “Russia’s Secret All-Purpose Cartridge,” GUNS magazine, September 1956.

  110. Ibid. An editor’s note said that Edwards’s article had been ready for publication six months before, but the U.S. Army’s chief of ordnance had asked the magazine not to print it. The magazine’s staff complied. “GUNS was happy to cooperate with the Army in the interests of national security,” the editors wrote, though it is hardly clear, looking back, what this national security interest was. By 1956, the AK-47 was no secret at all; Soviet newspapers and magazines had written about the rifle at length.

  111. Personal communication to author from Casper van Bruggen, of the Legermuseum, in Delft. The Dutch unit had no further firefights with the Indonesian forces before the two sides reached a United Nations–brokered agreement in October, so the Dutch soldiers did not use their AK-47s in combat.

  7. The Accidental Rifle

  1. Personal communication to author from Alfred J. Nickelson.

  2. The battalion’s designation as a “landing force” allowed the Pentagon to exceed troop-level authorizations Congress had approved for Vietnam. Because it was formally assigned to ships, the Special Landing Force’s Marines did not count against the number of troops on the ground though they spent most of its tour off the ships and in Vietnam.

  3. Research & Analysis Study ST67-013, “Update: The NVA Soldier in South Vietnam.” Combined Intelligence Center Vietnam, October 3, 1966, pp. 56–57.

  4. Study ST67-064, “VC/NVA Techniques of Small Arms Fire,” Combined Intelligence Center Vietnam, August 4, 1967, p. 8.

  5. Technical Intelligence Study 66-12, “Viet Cong Munitions,” March 26, 1966, p. 11.

  6. One of the claims the AR-15’s proponents would make was that the rifle had been proven to be highly reliable. In truth, the data was mixed. In some tests the weapon performed well. In others it did not. And from the beginning its manufacturer, ArmaLite, was in a poor position to know the behavior of its own products thoroughly: The company had a handful of employees and limited ability to subject its rifles to the examination that rifles in larger companies or in government development are subjected to.

  7. “Rifle Squad Armed With A Lightweight High Velocity Rifle.” Final Report, U.S. Army Combat Development Experimentation Command, May 30, 1959, p. 3.

  8. Secret Memorandum from Robert S. McNamara to the Secretary of the Army, October 12, 1962. Declassified and on file at the National Archives.

  9. A Historical Review of ArmaLite, published by ArmaLite, Inc., April 23, 1999.

  10. William G. Key, “The ArmaLite Weapons System: Background Memorandum,” Fairchild Engine & Airplane Corporation, December 7, 1956.

  11. “Flight of the Friendship,” Time, April 21, 1958.

  12. R. Blake Stevens and Edward C. Ezell, The Black Rifle (Cobourg, Ontario: Collector Grade Publications, 1994), p. 56.

  13. Dimensions and weights for the .222 Remington round are from W. H. B. Smith and Joseph E. Smith, The Book of Rifles (Harrisburg, Pa.: The Stackpole Company, 1965), p. 533.

  14. The Army’s Infantry Board at Fort Benning organized a series of evaluations of ArmaLite and Winchester test rifles in mid-1958 to assess their potential as replacements for the M-14. A review of the results by General Wyman’s Continental Army Command endorsed the concept’s merit: “Both test weapons were superior to the control weapon in lightness of weight and ease of handling. The significance of the weight-saving in the rifle-ammunition combination is such that a soldier with a battle load of 22.39 pounds, including his weapon and magazines, carries three times as much ammunition with either (SCHV) weapon as with the M-14 (actually about 650 rounds versus 220 rounds.)” The AR-15 had problems: the barrel of a test rifle had ruptured when fired after being subjected to simulated rainfall and water had collected in its bore. But the weapon was brand-new, and weapons early in their development cycle often showed mechanical and design problems. The supporters of the SCHV theory said it had “sufficient potential to justify continued development.”

  15. Letter from Paul A. Benke, president of Colt’s Firearms Division to Earl J. Morgan, counsel to the Special Subcommittee on M-16 Program, August 24, 1967, p. 5.

  16. Personal communication to author from Paul A. Benke. Benke described MacDonald as “a knowledgeable man but not a gracious man. Outspoken. He understood how to use a knife and
fork, and how to use a soup spoon. He came from a good family. But gruff.”

  17. “Practical Penetrating Characteristics of the Colt AR-15 Automatic Rifle Chambered for the Caliber .223 Cartridge,” August 15, 1960. On file at the Ezell Collection at Shrivenham.

  18. Later tests would show that jacket rupturing seemed to be especially common when the bullets hit bone, which typically shattered into fragments that radiated through tissue and caused more damage. But the jacket fragmentation often occurred, ballistic tests would show, when the bullets did not hit bone.

  19. Secret Fact Sheet “AR-15 Bullet Lethality” from Major General G. W. Power, Acting Chief of Research and Development, to the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, April 24, 1963. Also, Secret Memorandum for Record on “Wound Ballistics” from the Office of the Chief of Staff of the Army, April 23, 1963. Records declassified and on file at the National Archives.

  20. Confidential memorandum from Colonel Cao Van Vien to Commanding Officer of R&D Center, May 24, 1962. Declassified and on file at the National Archives.

  21. “Report of Task No. 13A: Test of ArmaLite Rifle AR-15,” submitted on August 20, 1962, by the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Declassified and on file at the Army War College Library.

  22. Stevens and Ezell, The Black Rifle, p. 112.

  23. In the six decades since the Thompson–La Garde pistol tests, questions had been raised in research circles about the utility and merits of firing into cadavers and live animals to determine how bullets wound human beings. Was there really a demonstrable correlation between injuries to cattle, pigs, and goats and injuries to men? These questions were unsettled, and at times the opposition to animal and cadaver tests was driven by concerns ideological as much as scientific. By the 1960s, newer means were available for assessing terminal ballistics, including firing into blocks of gelatin designed to simulate human tissue. The army’s ballistics community had accepted these methods, but had continued with the old manner of testing, too.

  24. Arthur J. Dziemian and Alfred G. Olivier, Wound-Ballistics Assessment of M-14, AR-15, and Soviet AK Rifles (U.S. Army Edgewood Arsenal, Biophysics Division, March 1964).

  25. The preexisting state of knowledge about rifle injuries should have been adequate to put into context the damage to the heads and limbs of guerrillas shot in Vietnam. But the lethality tests at Aberdeen might have put the Project AGILE report into proper perspective once and for all, had the test results not been smothered.

  26. The Biophysics Division would massage its data until March 1964, when it finally published its full report, which was not released to the public for almost five decades. After repeated inquiries, the author obtained a copy of the report in summer 2009.

  27. Office Memorandum, from the Office of the Chief of Staff of the Army to Lieutenant General R. W. Colglazier, April 6, 1963. Declassified and on file at the National Archives.

  28. Memorandum for the Secretary of the Army, signed by R. W. Colglazier, Lieutenant General, April 8, 1963. Declassified and on file at the National Archives.

  29. Forty-nine years after the Project AGILE report, Paul A. Benke, the president of Colt’s Firearms Division in the mid-1960s, referred the author to the report as a reference describing the M-16’s merits.

  30. Secret Memorandum for Secretary of the Army, “Comparative Evaluation of the M-14, AR-15 and Soviet AK-47 Rifles,” January 14, 1963. Declassified and on file at the National Archives.

  31. Stevens and Ezell, The Black Rifle, pp. 118–23.

  32. Ibid., p. 99.

  33. Office Memorandum from Director, FPAO, to General Johnson, November 30, 1966. Declassified and on file at National Archives.

  34. William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1976), p. 158. Westmoreland’s recollections did not square with accounts of the M-16’s performance in the same battle as described by Harold G. Moore and Joseph Galloway in their book We Were Soldiers Once… And Young (New York: Random House, 1992). Moore commanded the battalion whose experience was cited.

  35. Stevens and Ezell, The Black Rifle, pp. 196–97. The authors have excerpted from James B. Hall’s background paper, “Acquisition of the M16 Rifle,” 1975.

  36. Ellsworth S. Grant, The Colt Armory: A History of Colt’s Manufacturing Company, Inc. (Lincoln, R.I.: Mowbray Publishing, 1995) p. 179.

  37. “In Defense of the M-16,” Shooting Times, October 1966.

  38. “M-16: Beauty or Beast?” Shooting Times, November 1966.

  39. Letter from Paul A. Benke, president of Colt’s Firearms Division, to Earl J. Morgan, counsel to the Special Subcommittee on the M-16 Program, August 24, 1967, p. 13.

  40. The percentages come from U.S. Army Technical Note 5-66, “Small Arms Use in Vietnam: Preliminary Results, by the Human Engineering Laboratories, Aberdeen Proving Ground,” August 1966.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Presley W. Kendall, “The M-16 in Vietnam,” American Rifleman, May 1967, pp. 24–25.

  43. “Trip Report, Headquarters AWC, Rock Island, Illionois,” October 26, 1966, to Colt Inc., by Robert D. Fremont, Manager, Military Engineering, Colt’s Firearms, October 28, 1966.

  44. Letter from Lieutenant Colonel Herbert P. Underwood, who led an Army Weapons Command survey team in Vietnam, to Colonel Yount, October 30, 1966.

  45. Letter of Koni Ito, a Colt engineer, to Robert Fremont, Colt’s manager of military sales, October 30, 1966. On file at the National Archives.

  46. Memorandum for the Record of Corrosion Control Meeting at Colt’s Firearms Division, December 1, 1966.

  47. List of Rifles of Lot # FC 1821 that malfunctioned, October 21, 1966.

  48. Colt’s Transcript of IBM tape received from David Behrendt, November 11, 1966, Tape #1.

  49. Ibid., Tape #2.

  50. Trip report to Colt’s officials from J. B. Hall, Vietnam, November 5–9, 1966.

  51. Colonel Richard R. Hallock, “Memorandum For Record: Vietnam Malfunction Information,” November 15, 1966.

  52. Stevens and Ezell, The Black Rifle, p. 210.

  53. “Secret Memorandum For Deputy Chiefs of Staff, et al., from Department of the Army, Office of the Chief of Staff, November 7, 1966.” Declassified and on file at the National Archives.

  54. Unsatisfactory Equipment Report MCSA # 6069, February 8, 1967.

  55. Letter from Marine Corps Supply Activity, Philadelphia, to Commanding General, U.S. Army Weapons Command, March 16, 1967.

  56. “Vietnam Arms Race,” Washington Daily News, unsigned editorial, March 26, 1967.

  57. Appointment letter, on file at Western Historical Manuscript Collection–Columbia, at Ellis Library, University of Missouri. The collection is hereinafter referred to as WHMC-C, U. Mo.

  58. Letter from Representative Ichord to Representative Charles Raper Jones, February 8, 1968. On file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

  59. Personal communication to author from Ray Madonna, who commanded Hotel Company, Second Battalion, Third Marines during spring 1967 in Vietnam.

  60. Personal communication to author from Thomas R. Givvin, who commanded Third Platoon, Hotel Company, Second Battalion, Third Marines in 1967 and participated in the actions related here.

  61. Letter of Lance Corporal Larry R. Sarvis to Representative Ichord, June 17, 1967. On file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

  62. Personal communication from Raymond C. Madonna.

  63. From unpublished manuscript of Raymond C. Madonna, who has written his own memoir of the Hill Fights, incorporating his recollections and his interviews of many of the Marines formerly under his command. Ord Elliott, who commanded First Platoon during the attack in which the Marines fixed bayonets, also discussed the events of that day with the author.

  64. Personal communication from Charles P. Chritton, a lieutenant in Foxtrot Company, who witnessed the scene at the landing zone. The description of pins near the trigger assembly working loose is from Ord Elliott, David Hiley and Cornelio Ybarra Jr.

  65. The shortages pointed to supply failures and to pi
lferage. Logistics units had not pushed an adequate amount of cleaning equipment to the troops in the field. But the light hands of war were a factor, too. Colt’s included brass cleaning rods inside the cases of rifles shipped to Vietnam. One rod was shipped for every rifle. Colt’s field teams later found the rods were disappearing even before the rifles were handed out, apparently as local Vietnamese employees on American bases stole them to sell on the scrap-metal market. It was frustrating for Colt’s. This was a problem it could not fix. “They used them to make rice bowls or something,” said Paul Benke, Colt’s president at the time (personal communication to author).

  66. “‘Causing Deaths’—Marine Hits Faulty Rifles,” Asbury Park Evening Press, May 20, 1967. After the letter was published, it was sent to Secretary McNamara by James J. Howard, a congressman from New Jersey, on May 22. Howard’s letter is on file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

  67. Memorandum to Honorable Richard H. Ichord, from Ralph Marshall, May 31, 1967. On file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

  68. Letter from a Marine to his family, May 17, 1967. On file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

  69. “Memo to Mr. Findley re M-16 Events on Friday While You Were Gone,” October 7, 1967. Mr. Findley is Paul Findley, then a Republic congressman from Illinois. The memo noted a call from Senator Dominick’s office describing the incident in Vietnam and noting the senator’s irritation. On file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

  70. The account of the night ambush was cited in a letter from Representative Dante B. Fascell to Representative Richard Ichord, August 2, 1967. The concerns of the navy lieutenant and army sergeant preparing to ship to Vietnam were sent directly to Representative Ichord. All three letters are on file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

  71. “M-16 or AK-47? The Right Rifle For the Right Job,” a six-page fact sheet, dated November 25, 1968, intended to show the M-16’s superiority to the AK-47. Circulated by Colt’s, and on file at the Ezell Collection in Shrivenham.

  72. Interviews with veterans still provoke disgust. Many believe they were guinea pigs. Charles Woodard, a young officer in the battalion at the time, called Colt and the military leadership’s decisions “unconscionable.” Givvin (see note 60, above) said the military leadership of the time “had blood on their hands.” David Hiley, a platoon radio operator at the hill fights, said “They ought to give a million dollars to every Marine who had to carry one of those things.”