We were discussing M14 rifles in another thread. Which got me to wondering. In my experience in the Regular Army, we had the M14 rifle until about April or May, 1970. At that time we turned them in and received new M16-type rifles.
The When I separated from the army, I had time left on my statutory six year National Obligation and was assigned to the USAR Reinforcement Group in St. Louis. This was a kind of paper reserve army, to be called up in emergency, no drill activity. But after about a year of that, a sergeant major in the Army National Guard talked me into joining. He sold me on the deal whereby Vietnam veterans could sign up for only one year under the "Try One" program. I did that for six years, one at a time, then got out.
But I never saw an M14 in the Guard. When I first joined in 1973, they already had the M16 design. I never thought to ask at the time; did the Guard go from the M1 Garand directly to the M16? Said another way, the time gap between the end of the M14 in the Regular Army and the appearance of the M16 in the Guard was very short. The Ohio ARNG still had the M1 Garand at the time of the Kent State shootings in 1970. I imagine that changing to the M16 likely wasn't uniform across all the Guard units in the country.
In this question, I'm not counting M14's retained for ceremonial or special ops purposes, only for issue to line units.
Anybody know the answer?
The When I separated from the army, I had time left on my statutory six year National Obligation and was assigned to the USAR Reinforcement Group in St. Louis. This was a kind of paper reserve army, to be called up in emergency, no drill activity. But after about a year of that, a sergeant major in the Army National Guard talked me into joining. He sold me on the deal whereby Vietnam veterans could sign up for only one year under the "Try One" program. I did that for six years, one at a time, then got out.
But I never saw an M14 in the Guard. When I first joined in 1973, they already had the M16 design. I never thought to ask at the time; did the Guard go from the M1 Garand directly to the M16? Said another way, the time gap between the end of the M14 in the Regular Army and the appearance of the M16 in the Guard was very short. The Ohio ARNG still had the M1 Garand at the time of the Kent State shootings in 1970. I imagine that changing to the M16 likely wasn't uniform across all the Guard units in the country.
In this question, I'm not counting M14's retained for ceremonial or special ops purposes, only for issue to line units.
Anybody know the answer?