Vietnam War Veterans Give AK-47 and M16 a Rematch

As legendary guns of the US-Soviet Union and once faced each other in the Vietnam War, AK-47 and M16 recently had a fierce competition organized by American veterans.

The competition was conducted by the famous American actor R. Lee Ermey, a veteran of the Vietnam War, and his comrades. The purpose of this competition was to compare, which gun is better, AK47 or M16?

Although the results of this peaceful rematch were not announced, the power and reliability of the AK-47 over the M16 had been acknowledged many times by American soldiers themselves.

In the history of world military, AK-47 and its versions, along with AR-15 and improved M16 always compete for the number one position in personal weapons. Although AR-15 (M16) has fast firing rate, long range, high accuracy, but its power and reliability are completely inferior to AK.

During the Vietnam War, the AK-47 won convincingly thanks to its simplicity and effectiveness, especially the AK-47's perfect suitability for Vietnam's close-quarters, night-time tactics. The skill of firing two rounds at once was honed to perfection by the Vietnam People's Army during the resistance war against the US.

American soldiers use AK-47s.

The US military both admired the AK-47's combat capabilities and feared its power. There have been many reasons given for why US soldiers love the AK-47, specifically, this type of gun is designed with a trigger mechanism that slows the hammer down to reduce the rate of fire, while the M16's trigger mechanism cannot do this.

To solve the problem of too fast rate of fire, American designers came up with a solution to weaken the spring of the recoil system. However, this improvement turned out to be a disaster, the gun often jammed because the spring did not fully recoil.

When the bullet jams, the shooter will press this small lever to push the breech back and load a new bullet. Without this part, the shooter must jerk the "cock" back or replace the magazine, which takes a lot of time. However, in actual combat, the "forward assist" part does not improve this situation much.

Once a jam occurs, pressing the "forward assist" button will only help the gun fire one more bullet and then go back to the same old thing. The "forward assist" part is a patchwork improvement because the root cause of the M16's frequent jamming lies in the gas and recoil mechanism.

Another disadvantage of the M16 is that it is very sensitive to dirt in harsh battlefield conditions. The internal parts of the gun are highly accurate and have very little clearance, so if they get dirty and are not cleaned promptly, the gun will easily jam.

The M16 jamming problem became a headache for American soldiers during the Vietnam War.

M16 gun.

In a 1967 survey of 1,585 soldiers questioned about the reliability of the M16, 80% of the soldiers said they had experienced a jam while using the rifle. Despite the poor survey results, the US Army still declared the M16 the best rifle for fighting in Vietnam.

Although the M16 uses smaller ammunition, it is not compact even when compared to the AK-47 which uses larger ammunition. The AK-47 has an overall length of 870 mm, while the M16A1 is 986 mm long, and the M16A2 is 1.06 m long.

Overall, the new M16 only meets the criteria of being light but not really compact. Through the process of use and upgrading, the jamming problem of the M16 has gradually been overcome.

Clip of AK-47 and M16 guns competing:

According to Baodatviet