"Briarroot" wrote ...
michael adams wrote:


Let's get of this tiresome little detail in life, shall we chaps?. The
bigger question surely is if the M-16 is prone to jam in the sands of
Iraq, how long to un-jam?. Is the AK-47 prone to such un-god sanctioned
'jamming'?..

I recently read "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts" by Col. David Hackworth.
It's an account of his time as a battalion commander in Viet Nam
during 1969.

While preparing the ground for a new base, a bulldozer uncovered
a buried corpse still holding an AK-47. Col. Hackworth, after
first checking to see that the barrel was not plugged, proceeded
to pull back the bolt and fire off the entire clip into the air.
Even after being buried in the mud for months, the weapon worked
flawlessly!

The word in the barracks is that the M-16 is more accurate but jams easily.
The AK-47 is less accurate but functions more reliably.

I have fired both, and I can verify the M-16 jams *a lot*. In fact, when my
platoon was engaged in a marksmanship competition with other platoons, let
me tell you how I helped us win the competition. I am a lousy shot, because
I can't close my non-firing eye and I see double, but I have a few smarts.
So when it was my turn to go up and fire at the pop-up targets, I took my
own weapon and told my buddy to *leave his weapon* at the firing point. Sure
enough, about halfway through my qualification, my weapon jammed and I
couldn't clear it quickly. This was a crisis becase the targets are still
popping up, moving around, etc.--they wait for no man. So I grabbed the
extra weapon, switched my clip to it, and used my buddy's weapon to qualify
successfully. If I had not had the extra M-16, I would not have qualified
successfully and we would not have won the competition.

Tim Hanke