American weapons of the Vietnam war were much more advanced than the weapons that our opposition used. These weapons allowed us to be able to fight more effectively than we would have been able to using weapons from the previous generation. This report will briefly go over the M16A1 automatic rifle, the M60 machine gun, the Browning .50 Caliber machine gun, M19 60mm mortar and the Claymore mine. These are the primary weapons that US infantry forces would be found with during this war.
The M16A1 is a revision of the M16 automatic rifle, the original M16 suffered from chronic jams caused mainly by powder fouling in the action after its chrome-lined chamber was removed to cut costs and the specified gunpowder was switched to a dirtier-burning type; troops were also not issued adequate cleaning kits at first. The M16A1 helped solve this with the addition of a jam fixing lever located on the right side of the gun. The soldier would hit this button with the palm of his hand to forcibly push the next round into the chamber. With this addition many fewer soldiers were killed due to their weapons not functioning when they needed them. The M16A1 was the primary infantry weapon of the Vietnam war; it fired 5.56mm (.223 caliber) ammunition.
The M60 was a light machine gun that fired 7.62mm ammunition at a rate of approximately 550 rounds per minute. The M60 was not given to every soldier; there would normally only be one or two M60s per group of soldiers. The M60's primary use was a support weapon to lay down a high volume of accurate fire to support troops' advance. The M60 only had a fully automatic mode but since its rate of fire was low enough a soldier could manage to only fire one round at a time.
The M2 .50 caliber Browning is a heavy machine gun used for defending established bases. It weighs 128 pounds (with tripod) which means that it is not mobile enough to be used on the front lines very effectively. The M2 fires 550 .50 Caliber rounds per minute and has a maximum effective range of 2000 meters. The M2 is commonly known as “Ma Deuce” to soldiers in the field.
Artillery was the primary means of indirect fire support in the Vietnam war, but the M19 mortar gave infantry units their own close-in indirect fire capability at the small-unit level. A mortar is basically a long tube that a round is dropped into and then blasts out of the tube. The mortar has a ballistic flight path meaning that the round travels up into the air and then gravity propels it on the way down. This makes mortars perfect for hitting enemy positions located on the back side of a hill where they cannot be directly fired on.
The Claymore mine is an antipersonnel mine that fires many small pellets directed towards the enemy. The Claymore mine uses C4 explosives behind the pellets to propel them in the correct direction. The Claymore mine can be set off either with a tripwire or by remote control.
