Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK by Bonar Menninger

Author:Bonar Menninger [Menninger, Bonar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-09-19T05:00:00+00:00

The weapon was inferior in some respects to the M-14 and equal to it in others. Consequently, the gun in no way represented enough of an improvement in the “state of the art” to justify replacing the M-14.

But when Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara’s “whiz kids” began evaluating the reams of data from the numerous AR-15 tests that by then had been conducted by both the U.S. military and by foreign allies, they quickly saw the gun was in fact far superior to the M-14. As a result, President Kennedy was confronted with conflicting reports on the new gun: The Army said it was mediocre at best; the DOD said it was exceptional. The President asked MacNamara to find out who was telling the truth. This MacNamara did through an investigation by the Army’s Inspector General’s office.

The IG’s probe revealed that hardliners in the Ordnance Corps had actually rigged a number of their tests by using a dry run to select “only those tests that will reflect adversely on the AR-15 rifle. . . .”7

Mullen recalled: “We saw so much duplicity, chicanery, and double dealing, Macdonald became evangelical about this. If it took him to the grave, he was going to get the Army to adopt this weapon because it was so superior.”

With the revelations that emerged from the Inspector General’s probe, the die was cast, and by 1963 the Army was compelled to begin buying the weapon in large quantities. But the Ordnance Corps was stung by the rebuke they’d received from the Inspector General, and they were apparently determined to even the score. Consequently, the command ordered three key modifications in the gun, now known as the M-16. First, a completely unnecessary manual bolt-closing device was installed. Second, the rifling, or grooves inside the gun’s barrel, were altered. Finally, a new type of gunpowder was mandated for the .223 cartridge.8

Fallows reported that the bolt assist device was added for no other reason than that all previous Army rifles had used a manual bolt and therefore the AR-15 would have one, too. The belief was apparently that a soldier needed “something to push on, that this would be a comforting feeling for him,” according to Stoner, who argued against the modification, since it would reduce reliability and add nothing but weight and cost to the gun.9

Mullen said Stoner also urged the Army not to change the rifling in the gun’s barrel, as this would reduce the lethal tumbling effect of the bullet. Once again, however, the Army ignored him.

As for the final change, Stoner argued against it most strenuously of all. The ordnance brass proposed a switch from the DuPont gunpowder Stoner had incorporated in the weapon’s original design to a cheaper, dirtier, recycled powder manufactured by Olin Mathieson. Stoner warned that the switch would be extremely detrimental to the gun’s reliability, since the dirtier powder would burn slower and therefore increase the weapon’s cyclic rate of fire. This would inevitably lead to metal fatigue, broken parts, jamming, and finally, an inoperable weapon.

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