RY>> I"m going to go out on a limb here, and work from memory. Which
 RY>> means, I'll likely be wrong, But....

 RY>> Usability is a function of design.

 RY>> The .30 carbine was a supoprt services weapon primarily, Designed
 RY>> for those troops that needed a weapon larger than a pistol, but not
 RY>> as heavy as an M-1 The carbile fired what was generally considered
 RY>> a "hot pistol" load, and was accurate {?} out to
about 300 yards
 RY>> {if one know what one was doing} no more no less. This is similar
 RY>> in thought to the issue of M-3 "grease guns" to
tankers and other
 RY>> armored types.

 VH> The .30 Carbine was issued to Advisers in Viet Nam, men who served in
 VH> 4-man teams with South Viet Namese infantry units.  As a weapon, it
 VH> was pretty sorry.

No argument there.. ISTR that "Advisers" weren't "supposed" to be
"combatants"...

 RY>> The 7.62 nato was designed for both range and stopping power, and
 RY>> that it;s still used to this day {like the .50 cal M-2} testifies
 RY>> to it's worth. Not f wimps, the M-1 and M-14 {both of which I
 RY>> trained with} are heavy, rugged,, a work exceptionally well.

 RY>> The .223 was designed as a varmint round. While it's all well and
 RY>> good again woodchuck and amradillo and such, and while it does have
 RY>> range, the stoppig power and overall penetration qualities are,
 RY>> shall we say, questionable.

 VH> The .223 was designed as a military round.  It was specifically
 VH> designed for Eugene Stoner's AR 15 rifle (which became the M16 when
 VH> adopted.)  It was based on a varmit round, the .222 Remington magnum,
 VH> but was a military round before it was commercially avaliable.

Ok, I'll buy that... it was a specialty round before that, as in hand-mades, I
think, but that squares with my leaky memory.

 RY>> There is a legend told at Aberdeen that when the idea of the m-16
 RY>> was indrotuced that one of the selling points to the Army was " The
 RY>> troop can carry more ammo"... It was not metiond that the tropp
 RY>> would /need/ it  in th same manner that prompted the design of the
 RY>> .45 pistol beacuse the .38's wer not stopping the Moro Indian
 RY>> charges with any effectiveness.

 RY>> All of the other flaws of the -16  aside, one fo the big ones was
 RY>> /doctrine/ That of 'hosing down" or "fire
suppression" rather than
 RY>> the priciple of /aimed fire/  which had been taught previously.

 RY>> Having fired most everything in the inventory up to 1977, my
 RY>> preference woul be, heavy as it is, the M-14 for distance work, and
 RY>> a Thompson for short-ran duties.

 VH> I have used several weapons in combat -- I remain convinced that an
 VH> M14 with enough ammo to accomplish the mission is lighter than an M16
 VH> with enough ammo to accomplish the same mission.

I agree.. though not though any similarity of your experience, but through a
lot of training excercises where /we/ as the "agressor insurgents? had our
choice of weapons. One possible excption to this might be an individual case
of a SFC I knew thatused to prowl the range with a Thompson, stroking 3-round
bursts at pop-up targets with /phenonomal/ effectiveness..

In the main however, yeah I'd feel a /lot/ better with a -14 than a -16, to
this day.


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