Book Review: Misfire

Like most people my age, I knew a lot of Vietnam War veterans when I was growing up. As a kid who developed an interest in firearms at a very early age, I ended up talking with some of them about firearms. I even when to the range with a few. A common theme amongst them was a disdain for the AR-15/M16. This came as a surprise to young me because I only knew the AR-15 as a good rifle. Of course, I knew it after it had enjoyed 30 years of fixes, improvements, and enhancements. The Vietnam veterans with whom I talked knew the rifle when it was introduced and their experiences stayed with them throughout their lives.

Misfire is a book about the M16 as it was introduced during the Vietnam War. I bought it hoping to get a detailed breakdown of why the rifle the Vietnam veterans I knew growing up differed so much from the rifle I knew.

The authors of this book, Bob Orkand and Lyman Duryea, are obviously passionate and knowledgeable about this subject. The book provides a tremendous amount of technical detail along with accompanying citations. The adoption of the M16 involved a lot of shenanigans and the typical thorough testing a rifle undergoes before being adopted as a military's standard rifle was bypassed. When the rifle was adopted, the military made modifications to the ammunition (namely changing the propellent from IMR 4475, which the rifle was designed to use, to Olin WC 846) issued to soldiers while not requiring Colt to test rifles with the modified ammunition. Colt didn't initially bother to chrome-line the chamber and barrel of the M16 and the United States military didn't make them do so. The military also failed to issue sufficient cleaning kits and supplies. The authors go over all of these topics in good detail and explain how they combined to create a nightmare scenario for soldiers issued M16s.

With that said, if ever there was a book in need of an editor (I speak as someone who needs an editor, but I'm providing this blog for free and you get what you pay for), this is the one. As I mentioned, the authors provide a tremendous amount of technical detail. What I didn't mention is that they provide much of that detail over and over again. This book repeats itself often. Likewise, the authors go off on tangents. Many of the tangents are interesting, but only tacitly related to the M16. For example, there is an entire chapter on the development of the General Dynamics F-111. The authors draw parallels between the development of the F-111 and M16 to illustrate that the issues with the M16 weren't unique to the Department of Defense at that time. While that chapter would be great in a general history book about the Vietnam War and was certainly interesting, it may not be received well by readers wanting to read about the history of the M16. The book could realistically be half as long as it is and not omit any details.

When this book is on topic, it's great. When it's off topic, it's usually still interesting to me but may not be to somebody interested specifically in the history of the M16. It's a flawed book, but written by authors with obvious passion and knowledge and is therefore packed with great information. If you do pick it up, just keep in mind that the page count is padded by repetition and tangents.