American Rifle - Alexander Rose [192]
Word that the air force was looking for a new survival rifle for its pi-lots attracted ArmaLite’s attention.5 The air force was keen to prove its independence from the two older fighting services and had decided to circumvent the cumbersome armory process. Ordnance’s mooted M14 (or T44, as it was still called), it knew, would never fit the bill: it was too heavy, too unready, too army. What the air force wanted instead was an extremely lightweight rifle that would keep a downed pilot alive until he could be rescued. ArmaLite decided to throw its hat into the ring and submitted a .22 bolt-action with a four-shot magazine it called the AR-5. In keeping with ArmaLite’s innovative ethos, the barrel and action could be detached and stored in the plastic stock. With the stock sealed, the rifle—which weighed an extraordinary 2.75 pounds—could float.
The air force was mightily impressed and quickly adopted it as the MA-1. Embarrassingly for Fairchild/ArmaLite, which publicly announced the sale and told reporters it had even produced civilian versions “in vivid colors—green or red, or a dazzling gold barrel with light blue stock,” an actual purchase never followed, possibly owing to mechanical problems—it may not have floated as effortlessly as the company claimed—and only thirty were made.6 From this episode, however, one thing was clear: ArmaLite needed to be less dreamy and more practical, and that meant finding skilled arms-makers to design the guns and veteran executives to sell them.
Sullivan happened to test ArmaLite prototypes at the Topanga Canyon Shooting Range in southern California. Near him, he noticed one day, there was a man firing what was obviously a homemade rifle. His name was Eugene Stoner (1922–97), a former Marine from Indiana who had fought in the Pacific during the war and was now living in Los Angeles. In 1945 he had worked in the machine shop of an aircraft-equipment maker before being promoted to design engineer. When he met Sullivan, he was making dental plates for a living. Stoner was also, evidently, a talented amateur armorer and had served in Aviation Ordnance during the war. Best of all, given ArmaLite’s limited budget, he worked cheap. Stoner joined the firm as chief engineer.7 He was soon joined by plastics specialist Charles Dorchester as day-to-day general manager of all development programs. In short order, ArmaLite had put in place the beginnings of a competent design-and-management team.
In 1955 ArmaLite geared up for war—against the T44/M14 and the FN-30, which was then being tested by the army through its cobweb of agencies. Daringly, ArmaLite believed it might enter a surprise con-tender for the crown that would knock out its rivals at the last minute. ArmaLite’s entry, designed by Stoner and based on Sullivan’s original concept, was called the AR-10. It was a gorgeous gun, a rifle of superlatives, a weapon bursting with design charisma. The AR-10 perfectly reflected its era and the society that had given it birth, just as the AK-47 did its. The AK’s brutal Stalinist lines, sinister look, and cheap manufacturing mirrored its provenance in the Soviets’ totalitarian state and in the shoddy manufacturing that nourished its empire.
A familiar form rendered startlingly modern, the high-style AR-10, on the other hand, resembled the jet-age, optimistic, newly affluent, Tupperwareified America of the 1950s, a place where, having