M14 Rifle
The M14 rifle, formally the United States Rifle, 7.62 mm, M14, is an American selective fire automatic rifle firing 7.62x51mm NATO (.308 Winchester) ammunition.
It was the standard issue U.S. rifle from 1959 to 1970. The M14 was used for U.S. Army and Marine Corps basic and advanced individual training, and was the standard issue infantry rifle in CONUS, Europe, and South Korea, until replaced by the M16 rifle in 1970. The M14 remains in limited front line service with the United States Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard, and is also used as a ceremonial weapon. It was the last American “battle rifle” (a term applied to weapons firing full-power rifle ammunition) issued in quantity to U.S. troops. The M14 also provides the basis for the M21 and M25 sniper rifles.
The M14 was developed from a long line of experimental weapons based upon the M1 rifle. Although the M1 was among the most advanced infantry rifles of the 1940s, it was not a perfect weapon. Modifications were beginning to be made to the basic M1 rifle’s design since the twilight of World War II. Changes included adding fully automatic firing capability and replacing the 8-round en bloc clips with a detachable box magazine holding 20 rounds. Winchester, Remington, and Springfield Armory’s own John Garand offered different conversions. Garand’s design, the T20, was the most popular, and T20 prototypes served as the basis for a number of Springfield test rifles from 1945 through the early 1950s.
Earle Harvey of Springfield Armory designed a completely different rifle, the T25, for the new .30 Light Rifle cartridge. The latter was based upon .30-06 cartridge case cut down to the length of the .300 Savage case. The .30 Light Rifle eventually evolved into the 7.62x51mm NATO and the commercial .308 Winchester round. Although shorter than the .30-06, the 7.62x51mm NATO round retained the same power due to the use of modern propellants.[8] In the background, Lloyd Corbett was tasked with developing .30 Light Rifle conversions for the M1 rifle and later the T20 prototypes. After a series of prototype designs, the T44 surfaced. The earliest T44 prototypes used the T20 receivers re-barreled for 7.62mm NATO, and replaced the long operating rod/piston of the M1 with the T25’s shorter “gas expansion and cut-off” system. Later T44 prototypes used newly fabricated receivers shorter than either the M1 or T20; the new action’s length was matched to the shorter 7.62mm NATO round instead of the longer .30-06…
The T44 competed successfully against the T47 (a modified T25) and the FN FAL (T48). This led to the T44’s adoption by the U.S. military as the M14 in 1957. Springfield Armory began tooling a new production line in 1958 and delivered the first service rifles to the U.S. Army in July 1959…
The M14 remained the primary infantry weapon in Vietnam until it was replaced by the M16 in 1966–1967…
US Army training film TF9-2970
