Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Movie Armaments Group
in Toronto, Canada, where we are taking a look at a
Vietnam-era M16A1 with an M203 grenade launcher on it.
Now a little while back we did a video on the predecessor
to this grenade launcher, the XM-148.
If you haven't seen that, you should go take a look because the 148
is what really led to the development of this grenade launcher,
which turned out to be very successful.
So there were some problems with the previous version.
It was too complex, it had stuff hanging out all over the place
that got stuck in brush, and it just wasn't convenient.
And despite having ... almost 28,000 of them manufactured,
the government after some testing in Vietnam decided,
"Nope, this isn't gonna work. Scrap it all."
And rather quickly instituted a replacement program to come up with something better. That program was called GLAD,
the Grenade Launcher Attachment Development program. That was in 1967.
And there were 7 different grenade launchers that were proposed to the government ... during that project.
Three of them received development contracts, those were AAI, which developed this,
Philco in cooperation with the Ford Motor Company, which developed actually a side opening grenade launcher,
and the Aerojet company and I don't really have any details about theirs.
But after some development work AAI's was deemed to be the best and actually put into production.
And this all went pretty quickly, by the middle of 1968 AAI had been approved, they'd been given a contract to start production.
The gun actually received its designation, M203, in November of '68, and by '69 these things were in production.
Now, this replaced the XM-148 which had been developed and produced by Colt.
And by the way, Colt actually offered to provide an improved version of the XM-148, what they called the CGL-5,
for free to the government, and the government turned it down.
That's how fundamental some of the problems with that Colt grenade launcher were.
And so AAI had competed in that original contract as well, and here they are actually winning the contract in 1968.
So good for AAI. The problem was
AAI didn't have the manufacturing capacity to make these in the quantities that the Army needed.
So AAI made the original ... 600 for field testing,
thing was approved, they got a contract to make them. And they made a small number.
This is actually an AAI one, which is quite rare. But ultimately the major production contract went to
Colt, because Colt had the production capability to do it.
So despite being unable to develop a grenade launcher that would pass muster itself,
Colt ended up getting the contract to make all of these.
So by 1986 they would have produced more than a quarter million of them. And they would go on to be used until I think 2008,
when they were finally phased out in favour of HK's (what is it?), M320 grenade launcher.
Anyway, before I ramble off too far on that track, let's take a look at how this thing actually works.
Actually before we get there, I do want to point out this is a really cool rifle. This is actually a Harrington & Richardson M16.
H&R marking on the receiver and it is an M16A1, US government property.
Now the M203 here is actually an original AAI production unit,
which is pretty cool because they didn't make very many before Colt took over the project.
So we've got all our markings there: 40mm, M203, serial number. This white stamp is a Springfield Armory stamp,
presumably put on there when the grenade launcher was ... mated up to the rifle.
Now in practical use here the 203 solved a lot of the issues that the XM-148 had suffered from.
So for one thing it cocks automatically when you close it, so there's no separate cocking lever.
The safety is easier to deal with, you just flip that back and it becomes very obvious
when you go to try and fire that the safety's engaged. Flip it forward to disengage it.
Opening the ... barrel here is a much simpler lever than the
like pivoting grip handle of the 148, and so you just push that lever in and the action slides open.
You can then take your munition (this is a dummy grenade, naturally), slide it in there,
lock this to the rear, it cocks automatically as I said, pull the trigger and it fires.
After you've fired, pop this.
The case is held by an ... extractor right there.
There's an ejector pin that pops the empty case out as soon as you open the barrel.
It is fast and easy to use. It's ... definitely better than the 148.
Now, of course this whole system was intended to be a replacement for the M79, which was just a stand-alone grenade launcher.
The idea was to incorporate your grenade launching capability onto an actual rifle,
so that your grenadier wasn't running around without an actual point target weapon.
One of the elements that they really liked on the M79 was its leaf type sight. So that was added back on to the [M203].
This actually was issued with two separate sights,
it had this leaf sight which goes out to 250 metres,
and it was also issued with what was called the quadrant sight.
(By the way, this is an early one, they later would make this into a little plastic slider button that's a bit larger.)
At any rate, this guy has a flip open aperture, see that there, and front post.
And then you can pull this spring-loaded catch back
and rotate it to whatever range you would like in 25 metre increments out to 400.
Now because
of the peep sight and post arrangement. This is a more precise sight than the leaf that's over the barrel.
It is however a slower sight to use, and it is potentially going to snag on things.
Now it solves a lot of that problem by being foldable. So this can all compress in
and pretty much mates up. It doesn't extend past the side of the gun.
In practice, the guys who were really using these on a regular basis found that they didn't really need either sight.
Once you've ... practiced with it sufficiently, these were typically fired instinctively rather than using the sights.
There were a number of different types of ammunition issued with this. High explosive.
There was an armour-piercing round, but that didn't see much practical service use.
There was a buckshot round that was developed, which also wasn't really as effective as people might have liked it to be.
The most common round was the standard HE.
So, as with all things, the M203 is a bit of a trade-off.
Of course, it makes your rifle about 3 pounds heavier hanging this thing under the muzzle.
It does not quite have the practical range or quite as much muzzle velocity as the M79 stand-alone grenade launcher.
However with an M79 of course, ... you aren't carrying a rifle at the same time,
or if you are, you're carrying an extra like 6 or 8 pounds of gear.
Having a 203 allows you to combine both weapons into one platform.
Which I think is generally ... well certainly for the US military this would be the preferable option,
because this would stay in service for several decades.
As I said before, this is of course a dummy "Empty" shell, but this is the same configuration
as you would have for a standard 40mm grenade.
These had a specced out on paper lethal burst radius of 5 metres.
They have a maximum theoretical range of about 500 metres, but for practical purposes 300-350 is about your maximum range.
This is the 40x46mm, I think it's important to mention that there are two different versions of 40mm grenade
in service with the US military. This is the what's called Low-High [High-Low]. At some point actually
we'll talk about the technology in this cartridge, because the cartridge itself is interesting and worthy of its own video.
There is also a higher pressure, higher velocity version of the 40mm grenade that is used in
... stronger locked breech guns like the automatic grenade launchers, the grenade machine guns, so.
This is what they would have been using in Vietnam. Mostly HE, there were a couple of other rounds.
There was a buckshot round which wasn't as effective as people would have liked.
There was an armour-piercing round which wasn't really all that relevant to Vietnam,
but the high explosive was the standard go-to munition.
So the HK 320 that's been adopted today has a number of improvements over this.
Instead of the barrel sliding forward to open, it pivots out from the side.
That makes it much easier to load long munitions, things like flares, or less lethal munitions.
You know, on a sliding one, of course, it has to open as far as the longest cartridge that you've ever planned to shoot in it. So.
The 320, it was supposed to be lighter, it's actually not lighter than this. But it's got better sights. It's overall an improvement.
So the M203 grenade launcher had a very long and very successful service life.
And it's really ... one of the very few seriously beneficial and successful outcomes of Project SPIW.
So a big thanks to Movie Armaments Group for giving me a chance to take a look at this one.
It's really cool, this is not only an original AAI M203, it's all set up on a Vietnam H&R contract M16.
This was actually brought back from Vietnam by a Canadian soldier.
He showed up there as part of the peacekeeping force when the American troops were leaving,
and apparently this was given to him by an American soldier who was heading out of theatre saying,
"You know, there's still like a war going on here. You'll probably want something like this."
And as you can see this one actually didn't see hardly any service use, it's in immaculate condition.
Anyway, a big thanks to MAG for the opportunity. Hope you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.