User Panel
Posted: 4/15/2024 12:37:24 PM EDT
M14: America’s Worst Service Rifle - What Went Wrong? |
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I’m enjoying mine, but I’m not slaying waves of Chinamen either
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I'd rather have that than a Garand, but the FAL is 1000x better.
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Certain relatives that served in Vietnam would say no.
They learned real quick how to handle and shoot it. |
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If I was defending an area and had to pick something in .308, I'd take an M1A and not worry about it. FAL would be my second choice.
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I LOVE the M14 . . . . . . ….but the STG.44 and AKM took things to the next level |
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Quoted: I was thinking how could the M1 be all that and a bag of chips but the M14 be shit. Other than the full auto issue. Seems to me the M14 is the M1 perfected. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: lol So why does the M1 get a pass? It's all 1930's tech. I was thinking how could the M1 be all that and a bag of chips but the M14 be shit. Other than the full auto issue. Seems to me the M14 is the M1 perfected. I haven't watched the video yet, but I agree with you. I think the gas system is superior on the M14. The box magazine a no-brainer. I do think that the basic design was already kind of dated by the time it was adopted. The M16 is a much better weapon. I don't think the FAL is that great. It was in the right place at the right time, ready to be marketed and sold in the post WWII era, same as the G3. |
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The Krag didn't have a long service life, either.
The M14 program was a forerunner of modern military procurement. It started off being a magazine fed M1 for 7.62 NATO ammunition. And then it became the replacement for the M1, BAR, M1 Carbine, the submachine gun ..... trying to do everything meant doing almost nothing well. |
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I'm a big time M14 fan. I prefer it over the FAL and G3.
But there's no discussion that it was a terrible service weapon and the M16 platform was light years ahead in every way including reliability. |
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Quoted: Rated troll View Quote Why? It's a legitimate topic to discuss. It wasn't a particularly sound decision to choose a modified Garand for the new service rifle, and making it full auto was even dumber. I've never found Ian/Forgotten Weapons to be biased and if you watch the video I'm sure you'll see the reasons he gives for the title. |
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Quoted: I was thinking how could the M1 be all that and a bag of chips but the M14 be shit. Other than the full auto issue. Seems to me the M14 is the M1 perfected. View Quote That's the problem. You couldn't perfect the M1. The Italians with the BM59 did it right. They developed an improved M1 in one or two years. The US spent a decade developing the M14 and it wasn't any better than the BM59. |
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I have a NM M1a even with the folding thing that goes up. I love it, but if I have to grab a rifle and run, it's not my first choice.
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My safe has some .308 goodness via an M1, M14 & G3 in it. Each brings people over to watch when I'm shooting them. The M1 gets the most oooh's & aahhh's.
The under 20 and over 60 crowd seems to like the M14 the best. |
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Thread title is a bit click bait.
But video is solid as usual for ForgottenWeapons. TLDW. M14 is a good rifle. It was Springfield's second choice and was chosen over the FAL because we make it here. The contract to make the rifles went poorly as the rifles shipped didn't meet the expectations of the military. Things broke, many rifles had sub par accuracy. Honestly sounds like a lot of the same stuff that tanked the AR's reputation for reliability in Vietnam. |
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Wow. Another "Stop liking what I don't like!" thread in GD.
Fuckin' 09ers. |
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Quoted: That's the problem. You couldn't perfect the M1. The Italians with the BM59 did it right. They developed an improved M1 in one or two years. The US spent a decade developing the M14 and it wasn't any better than the BM59. View Quote Going to agree with this. Straightened out the op rod so it was less prone to being bent too. Real engineers at work and not just the "M-1 Tanker" chop shop specials that will eventually fail. Viva Italia! |
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Quoted: Why? It's a legitimate topic to discuss. It wasn't a particularly sound decision to choose a modified Garand for the new service rifle, and making it full auto was even dumber. I've never found Ian/Forgotten Weapons to be biased and if you watch the video I'm sure you'll see the reasons he gives for the title. View Quote Actually what the Italians did with the BM59 was the right way to do it. BM59 was literally just an improved M1, and with the BM59 you could use M1 tooling and M1 parts. The problem with the US approach was we attempted perfection which you can't achieve if you are trying to improve the M1 design. A stop gap improvement like the BM59 made lots of sense if you accept it for what it is. But that doesn't make sense if you do it the way the US did in developing the M14 for over a decade. |
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Man who is a Killer/Soldier gun. Not for candy ass Mike Pence Race Bannon wannabees.
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Quoted: Going to agree with this. Straightened out the op rod so it was less prone to being bent too. Real engineers at work and not just the "M-1 Tanker" chop shop specials that will eventually fail. Viva Italia! View Quote The Italians also marketed their ability to modify Garands into BM59Es. They did this for the Argentine navy, which wanted FALs but the army wouldn't allow them to acquire them. So they had their M1s upgraded to BM59E status cheap. It's not the full BM59 conversion, it uses a shortened M1 op rod. Doesn't have the bipod of the BM59, etc. |
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The M1 and M14 have similar rates of sustained fire because the clips change so much faster than magazines.
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It made sense at the time but having had an FAL and seeing the masterful engineering that went into it - Saive really designed the FAL to be the rifle that traversed the post WWIII radioactive wastelands - that probably should have won the rifle trials.
That said, I have an M1a; I no longer have an FAL. |
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Quoted: The BM59 is arguably better. And the first ones of those were literally modded WW2 Garands View Quote Yes, and the development cycle was much quicker and there was a lot of commonality between the M1 and BM59 in terms of parts, tooling, etc. M14 was ok as a stopgap until we got something like the AR15, but we invested a hell of a lot of money and effort into developing something that was limited by the fundamental design constraint of using a 1930s rifle as it's basis. If we approached it like the Italians did we would have had a rifle that might be slightly better than the M14, but done so by around 1948 which could be made on existing tooling. Existing M1s could have been brought up to that standard, and we could have had it in place for Korea, potentially. |
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Quoted: It made sense at the time but having had an FAL and seeing the masterful engineering that went into it - Saive really designed the FAL to be the rifle that traversed the post WWIII radioactive wastelands - that probably should have won the rifle trials. That said, I have an M1a; I no longer have an FAL. View Quote FAL is similar in fundamental design to SVT38 and 40. The tilting bolt system is less than ideal. |
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Well, just in response to the thread title -
Nobody would pick, say, a trapdoor Springfield or a P17 or anything that predates them over an M14 if offered both and told to pick one to go into combat with, I think most would even pick an M14 over an M1 Garand because it is an incremental improvement so definitely not the worst ever even if it had its problems at the time it was adopted. |
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i think they are cool but as a general issue weapon for the masses ? no dice M-16 after the bugs were solved (and later M4s...) FTW light. reliable. accurate. low recoil. modular. decently powered. 30 rd mags. etc. it's pretty much the apex even after all these years. |
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Another bulls**t, click bait hit piece from the internet. How creative.
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