Talk:M14 rifle

Inaccurate Data in Article Introduction
RE: "The M14 was used for U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps basic and advanced individual training (AIT) from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s." This data is not precisely correct. I am an honorably discharged naval veteran who served as a member of my ship's Security Alert Team and Backup Alert Force, and as such, I qualified on the 1911-A1 .45 semiautomatic pistol, the pump-action 12-gage shotgun, and the M-14 rifle in 1980 (Sacramento Class Fast Combat Support Ship USS Seattle AOE-3, launched in 1968, commissioned in 1969, decommissioned March 15, 1985). After the other (non-Navy) armed forces discontinued the use of the M-14 rifle, the Navy continued to stock, maintain, and use that weapon because of its great reliability and durability…in the event that they might be needed if there were logistics and procurement problems with regard to the other more "modern" weapons.

I can tell you that this is one really sweet weapon. My first rifle was my grandfather's 30.06 Springfield, and the first time I fired it at the age of fourteen, it nearly broke my collarbone, and it lifted me about a foot off the ground from my initial prone position as I fired upon my stationary target fifty yards away. In contrast, the M-14 had far less recoil, and FAR greater accuracy; My first time using that weapon, sixty percent of my shots went into a 3.5" index card at thirty yards, and the other forty percent were within three-quarters of an inch of that bulls-eye.

"Early 70s" my heinie! The M-14 dummy was used in disciplinary courses by the Navy at least as late as 1978 (when I was in boot camp), and the "real McCoy" was used by SAT & BAF teams aboard ship at LEAST until 1982, when I terminated my enlistment.

Also, the particular version I used was NOT, as another writer posted, selective fire; it was bolt-action single-shot.

To add onto that, I served between 1988 to 2008, and the M-14 was onboard Navy ships for both watch-standers and SAT / BAF (FFG-7 and DDG-51) until 2006/2007 when it was finally replaced by the M-4 [11 October 2019, retrograde62] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.154.178.107 (talk) 21:54, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Another US Navy Veteran here - I find the prior entry disjointed some, but I agree the US Navy continued using the M14, not adapting the M16 or M-4 for a while. I don't recall reason being the reliability and durability, but more the range and stopping power. It was probably also a matter of less, expensive, taken then from Army instead of discarded. Wfoj3 (talk) 23:10, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

The M14 and M15
The M14 was a selective fire rifle developed by the Springfield Arsenal at a cost in Excess of $10 Million. It's companion, the M15 is the squad automatic rifle version which was intended to serve as a machine gun (June 1957). The M15 was featured in the television program, "The Lieutenant." In one episode an old line soldier who is refusing training on the new gun is shown the proper method of using the M15. The M15, being very ineffective, was replaced by the M14E2.

Springfield Museum page on M15 Photo of M15 and BAR

Work on a successor for the M1 Rifle (improperly called the M1 Garand) began in 1954. The action was similar to that of the M1 Rifle with an under slung gas tube. However one criticism of the M14 was that the location of the gas tube being closer to the chamber proved to be more prone to clogging and thus the M14 was less reliable than the M1 Rifle.

A variant of the M14, the M21 was used for long range duty until replaced by the bolt action M24 in 1988.1,380,874 M14 rifles were produced. Once in service it was found that the recoil of the M14 made it very inaccurate in full automatic fire. It's cyclic rate of 750 RPM was too fast for the amount of recoil. The rifle would climb and veer to the right under full automatic fire. The round pin engaged control seen on the right of the rifle was used to disable full automatic fire.

Some of this information comes from this reference:

The M14 was completely out of service for some time. A new version, the M14 EBR is now in service in the US Army.

A balanced discussion of the many M14 faults can be found here: The M14, Not Much For Fighting ( A Case Against The M14 Legend )

It should be noted that the Marines that used the M14 in Vietnam used it as a semi-automatic. When the M16 was tested it was found to be 7 times more likely to hit it's target. Eventually the M16 was found to be superior to the M14 is ALL categories.

Further development and tests lead to the slightly modified T44E4 and T44E5 (heavy barreled squad automatic weapon) prototypes, which were finally adopted by US Army as M14 and M15 rifles in the 1957.

It should be noted that the US insisted NATO adopt the .308 Win caliber when the rest of NATO wanted a .280 caliber round. We NOW KNOW that the .284 diameter bullet is ballistically superior and that the UK designed rifle was superior to the M14 design, which use was negated by its recoil and torque effects when fired. The M14 goes down in the history as the shortest time of adoption of any US rifle. Digitallymade (talk) 03:32, 26 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Before you rely on militaryfactory.com you should read this: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 129 Felsic2 (talk) 20:29, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Automatic?
You serious? WP doesn't understand auto/semi-? Ouch ... that stings. --BenTrem (talk) 04:49, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * How is it not automatic? It sounds like you are confusing the M14 with the civilian semiautomatic model. Would you like to see one in action? here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boLN-nHfFSc MartinezMD (talk) 05:16, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Use of M1 Garand rifle in Basic Training in 1961-1962
I was a 2nd Lt at Ft Ord, CA in 1961-62 and a platoon leader in basic training company C-9-3 where we trained with the M-1 Garand rifle and not the M-14. The rifle team at Ord were issued M-14s on a trial-testing basis.(14:37, 17 April 2020 (UTC)) Ben Echeverria

Conspiratorial article
This article seems to be very biased against the M14 by claiming it wasn't adopted based on merit because the designers improved the gun while it was undergoing testing to make it perform better eventually resulting in its selection over the T48. But there are clear advantages to the M14 over the FN FAL. It uses a rotating bolt instead of a tilting bolt, the rifle is accurate enough to be used as a sniper rifle which resulted in the development of many sniper weapons in the US arsenal based off the M14 where the FAL was incapable of being adopted for the same role so users such as the UK were forced to rely on earlier Lee Enfield rifles to get adequate accuracy from a sniper weapon Also the M14 weighs a pound less than the FAL and was proven to be more reliable in cold weather.

We can see this trend with the next battle rifle design FN put into mass production the SCAR H uses a rotating bolt and was designed to be lighter than the M14 to replace it for US SOCOM. The fact of the matter is that the US will pick the best technology available to them at the time regardless of nationality hence why they adopted the M1903 and M1917 despite both being German designs rather than American and why they adopted AR-15 derivatives to replace the M14. Back in the 1940-1950 era the best technology was at the time the M1 Garand family of rifles (because the AR-10 exploded during testing) This is why the AK47 was reverse engineered from the M1 Garand instead of being based off the SVT40 design like the FN FAL was.

Military Galaxy Brain (talk) 14:00, 3 November 2021 (UTC)


 * The AK-47 isn't a reverse engineered M1 Garand, but took inspiration from the design of the Nazi Germany StG 44.2601:647:4000:12E0:E816:20CB:5773:66A3 (talk) 04:54, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

1968?
One sentence in the article says production stopped in 1964. Another sentence says procurement stopped in 1968. Seems odd that procurement would continue for 4 years after production. I am seeing other sources saying that the last orders were made in 1963. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ambroginogiusti (talk • contribs) 18:55, 2 April 2022 (UTC)