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American Rifle - Alexander Rose [273]

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America.

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12. C. Aubrey Dixon, “The NATO Rifle: A British Statement on the Development of a Shoulder Weapon for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” American Rifleman 100, no. 1 (January 1952), p. 17.

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13. As bitterly related by Aubrey Dixon (who was present), ibid., pp. 17, 40.

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14. Ibid., p. 40.

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15. Quoted in W. H. Hallahan, Misfire: The History of How America’s Small Arms Have Failed Our Military (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994), p. 421.

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16. E. C. Ezell, “Cracks in the Post-war Anglo-American Alliance: The Great Rifle Controversy, 1947–1957,” Military Affairs 38, no. 4 (1974), pp. 138–41, is the best summary of the dispute.

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17. Ezell, Lightweight Rifle, pp. 199–202.

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18. Ibid., pp. 189–92.

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19. Belgium held a demonstration of its FAL near Antwerp before about one hundred NATO officers in the late summer of 1951. The Belgian hosts, said the New York Times, “contend their new weapon is less complicated than its British counterpart,” was 25 percent cheaper, could fire single shots or automatically, could pierce a steel helmet at 1,100 yards, and was almost as accurate as an M1—all music to Ordnance’s ears. “New Belgian Rifle Enters Gun Controversy; Less Complex than Britain’s Makers Say,” New York Times, September 7, 1951, p. 5.

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20. Ezell, “Cracks in Post-war Alliance,” p. 139.

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21. Quoted in ibid., p. 140.

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22. “New Light Rifle Meets Tests but Production Is Not Near,” New York Times, December 28, 1951, p. 1.

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23. Quoted in Ezell, “Cracks in Post-war Alliance,” p. 140.

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24. “Many NATO Arms Are Standardized,” New York Times, October 12, 1952, p. 9; Canfield, “M14,” p. 52.

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25. “NATO Choice of Standard Rifle Snagged,” Los Angeles Times, November 23, 1952, p.A6.

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26. E. N. Harvey et al., “Mechanism of Wounding,” in J. C. Beyer, ed., Wound Ballistics (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, 1962), pp. 144–46.The second edition of L.A. La Garde’s Gunshot Injuries appeared in 1916; L. B. Wilson’s contribution to the government-printed The Medical Department of the U.S. Army in the World War, titled Firearms and Projectiles: Their Bearing on Wound Production, came out in 1927; and the English translation (from German) of the first volume of C. Cranz and K. Becker’s exhaustive Handbook of Ballistics was printed in London in 1921. See footnotes 8–10 in Harvey et al., “Mechanism of Wounding,” p. 145.

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27. Report printed in J. S. Hatcher, The Book of the Garand (1948; reprint Highland Park, N.J.: Gun Room Press, 2000), p. 81.

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28. On BRL, see T.L. McNaugher, The M16 Controversies: Military Organizations and Weapons Acquisition (New York: Praeger, 1984), p. 55; R. B. Stevens and E. C. Ezell, The Black Rifle: M16 Retrospective (Toronto: Collector Grade Publications, 1987) pp. 7–8; Hallahan, Misfire, pp. 428–29.

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29. McNaugher, M16 Controversies, p. 57.

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30. See http://rand.org/about/history/ and V. Campbell, “How RAND Invented the Postwar World,” Invention & Technology, Summer 2004, pp. 50–59.

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31. For a summary of Hitchman’s report, see Stevens and Ezell, Black Rifle, pp. 9–10; Hallahan, Misfire, p. 432; for ORO in general, plus the quoted results of “other ORO researchers,” McNaugher, M16 Controversies, pp. 53–54; and especially Ezell, Lightweight Rifle, pp. 284–93.Also W. L. Whitson, “The Growth of the Operations Research Office in the U.S. Army,” Operations Research 8, no. 6 (1960), pp. 809–24. An excellent summary of the origins and development of the field is A. V. Grant, “Operations Research and Systems Analysis,” in J. E. Jessup and L. B. Ketz, eds., Encyclopedia of the American Military (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994), esp. 3:1961.

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32. “No further consideration [should] be given US Rifles, Caliber .30, T-44 and T-44E1,

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