Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look
at an extremely cool piece of Colt AR-15 history.
This is one of Colt's toolroom
prototypes of the Model 607.
The 607 is the very first of Colt's
carbine versions of the M16 or AR-15.
So the idea is Colt was selling the AR-15 as a military rifle
not just to the US Army, but they were also looking for
international contracts for it, and they were getting some.
And in addition to the standard infantry rifle they wanted to offer
a variety of other guns as well, so you could get the whole family of small arms.
From a light machine gun version, be it a heavy-barrelled magazine fed or a belt fed,
(Colt was working on belt-fed versions, although none of those actually really ever came ... to fruition).
And they also wanted to have a carbine, or even a submachine gun version of the system.
The idea being, well, very similar to the Soviet AKS-74U, the "Krinkov",
where you can give a little tiny version of your standard service rifle
to someone like a pilot, or a vehicle crewman, or an artillery crewman,
instead of giving them a submachine gun as was being done.
That was sort of the thing. It was still happening at this point in the 1960s.
If you have a submachine gun then that's a whole different set of parts and magazines
and different calibre ammunition and different training you have to give those guys.
If you equip them with a little tiny version of the infantry rifle,
then all of that other logistical stuff is the same.
So development on this started in about 1965.
And the idea was just, "We are going to take the gun and we are going to make it shorter.
We are going to shorten it at the front end, we're going to shorten it at the back end."
So it gets the very first pattern of collapsing stock, it gets a 10 inch barrel.
And ... the first few of them actually got sent over to Vietnam.
So let's take a closer look at this, let me tell you about all of the various
different things they did to shorten it, and then we'll discuss how it worked or didn't work so much.
The receivers that were used for 607s would vary a bit
over the course of the number of guns being assembled.
This is obviously a very early one with a slab-side lower receiver.
It has no case deflector, it has no forward assist.
It actually doesn't even have a Colt mark on the receiver.
It is simply and very crudely hand marked "Serial X555".
The fire control group is three position: safe, semi and auto.
Some of these would have burst mechanisms,
some of them actually would have a four position selector with both burst and auto.
Now the stock and the pistol grip are the most visibly distinctive elements of the 607.
The pistol grip is just a shortened version of the standard pistol grip.
The idea being to make it only as long as the magazine just to make the gun a little more compact.
And I think what was realised fairly quickly is having a full-length ... pistol grip on this
really doesn't make it any ... bulkier, doesn't hurt anything.
And in exchange you get a much better grip on the gun.
That short pistol grip really is awfully short.
I think it would work, but I can certainly see why guys opted for preferring the full length grip.
Especially if you're going to use this thing in full-auto, having a better grip on it
better control for such a light and short gun would be beneficial.
Now the stock's kind of cool in that it doesn't really look like your typical
wire collapsing stock that doesn't offer much of a cheek weld, instead this is a full profile stock.
It's just about 2.75 inches shorter than the standard stock.
And in order to open it up ...
there is this lever on the back, you just flip it to the left.
Then you can extend the stock all the way out,
and then flip the lever back to the right to lock.
Now it will stay in place. That works, but this is a pretty expensive system.
You have to modify the receiver a little bit to fit this lower tube guide rail.
And you'd better remember which side is which for this lever, it's not marked.
And if you put the lever on the wrong side the first time you fire it, it's going to collapse on you.
So the ... plastic collapsing stock of later carbines
really is a much better system than this in every way.
Out at the front end we have a couple of things going on, let's start with the handguards.
607s used handguards that were just fabricated from regular M16 handguards.
So they were triangular, that would prove to be a bit of a problem,
they were a little bit fragile in the same way that M16 handguards were.
Eventually upgraded, the 607s, the carbines very quickly went to round handguards instead.
But that's ... developments after the 607.
On these, the two ways that they were made were to cut off
either the back or the front of a standard set of handguards.
So this one you can see has a standard plate at the front, and this has been cut off at the back.
So there's sort of a hand-fabricated rear cap to the handguards.
You will also see some of them that have a little bit chunkier handguards
because the back is intact and they cut them off at the front
and have a handmade front end cap on there.
Now on all of the 607s the bayonet lugs have been cut off
because well the thing's way too short to hold a bayonet.
And then we have a moderator on this, so this is just threaded on.
We can take that off. ... The actual barrel length here is 10 inches,
which is really pretty short for a direct gas impingement AR system.
And that's one of the things that Colt found is there were reliability issues with guns this short.
Not necessarily when they were clean and on a nice pleasant range.
But the right environmental conditions and the guns get dirty,
and then you start having some issues with very short barrels like this.
Now the very first ones were set up with just the M16 pattern of 3 prong flash hider.
But relatively quickly it was decided to add these guys.
... Legally speaking this is a silencer.
It was called a "moderator" and it does two different things.
This one, by the way, has the matching serial number to the gun.
This would not have been originally serialised,
this was serialised sometime after 1968 to keep it legal.
But this does two things, first off it is going to increase back pressure
to help maintain reliability of the gun, and secondly it's going to reduce the muzzle blast.
Now the purpose of these things was not to silence the gun, it doesn't do anything of the sort.
What it does is just reduce the muzzle blast
really to about the same level as that of a standard ... barrel length M16.
So yeah, 5.56 out of a 10 inch barrel is really, really oppressively loud up close.
And this is before guys were using earplugs.
I mean a lot of guys in combat still aren't using earplugs, but we've started to do that fairly recently.
This is the sort of thing that's downright unpleasant to be shooting.
And so you add on just a little tiny moderator like this
and you can ... reduce the sound level to something that was considered acceptable at the time.
Now this is the 3.5 inch version of this moderator.
(Note the extra little flash suppressor slots at the end.)
They would go on to develop a 4.5 inch long one which would get used.
That would become the standard fitting for what eventually became
the standard carbine version of the M16.
Let's go ahead and pull this apart, because I know some of you are going to want to see the inside of it.
So the rear pin is captive.
Oh, this whole time we have an early 20 round waffle mag.
That's an original waffle mag there.
Yeah, you can see the markings on it.
These were introduced before Colt had a reliable 30 round magazine.
The front pin here is actually completely non-captive, so that'll just come right out.
There's our lower.
If I pull out the buffer and spring, you can see there's your buffer.
This isn't like an early Edgewater buffer or anything quite like that.
For the upper assembly we have a chrome-plated bolt and carrier (that has been extremely well cleaned).
That's one of the nice things about chrome is it is easy to clean.
Note the early pattern of, well, it's not really a cotter pin.
Charging handle, and that's pretty much it.
A very slick, very lightweight, little teeny carbine.
There you are, a prototype toolroom Model 607.
In total, something like 50 of these guns appear to have been built by Colt.
And it's not one continuous standardised batch.
There were developments, there was iteration over the course of this development.
So the early ones like this had slab-sided receivers, no ejection buffers, no forward assists.
... Some of the later ones that were put together did have forward assists on them.
The style of the handguards changed, the style of the muzzle device changed.
And eventually what would happen is this would lead to the Colt Model 609 and 610,
which were the XM177E1s and then the XM177E2, the Model 629.
And what Colt would ultimately do is stretch the barrel out to 11.5 inches to improve reliability.
They gave it a 4.5 inch moderator on there,
to again increase some back pressure, and also reduce the sound
to more like that of a standard rifle, just to take the edge off the muzzle blast.
And of course they would develop the collapsing stock
that we're all familiar with today instead of this very early pattern.
So, a few of these guns did go to Vietnam.
There's one of them that definitely saw combat, because it
actually survives with a 7.62x39 bullet strike on it.
So we know there were some special operations guys who were
absolutely testing these things out in combat in Vietnam.
And it's the lessons from that that would come back and lead to the iteration
and the improvement of Colt's carbine models of the AR or M16.
Obviously with about 50 made
these are extremely rare today, and it's very cool to get a chance to take a look at this one.
So a big thanks to the rifle's owner who wishes to remain anonymous.
But hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.