the guy on the right with what looks like a tubular handguards with the Colt 3x scope on the gun. What is the deal with the barrel? A cut down 20" barrel?

I know I have seen this picture before, but I don't recall the discussion of this  gun, if any.

What is it?

According to his beret insignia and the way he is wearing his beret he is ARVN special forces.

Looks like the advisor team captain has the same set up. Looks like a RVN special forces camp

Something odd about that one! Looks to be middy length! I would also bet the handguard is a peice of carved wood! Looks lighter in color, and not the same as metal! I don't see any others like it in the pic!!

The first version of an M4.
Not really ,but sort of true.

He also is using the "magpul" grip!



 

Enlarged... looks like a triangular endcap... my vote is custom carved from wood.



John Thomas

If I remember right, I have seen pics of Australian troops over there with wood furniture on XMs.  I have a pic somewhere of an XM with wood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAR-15
A1 stock with 15 or 16 inch barrel.  It looks too long to be a XM177E2 and it has a flash supressor as apposed to a small sound supressor which is what many of the XMs were equiped with.  Australians used a FN FAL variant.  It may be wood but I can see the triangle shaped tin for the A1 forearm which is what the CAR had.  The round Forearm was adapted to have interchangeable right and left.  Two on the left look more likely to be XM177E2

The Australians also used the M16A1.


The one farthest to the left looks like an E1, while the second from the left looks like an E2.

It could be a carbine with a non-functional FSB pinned forward of the original GB and then they just fabricated some handguards

Could be a taped forearm, too.

You can't see the retaining ring for the HG and that argues for tape or a sleeve of some sort over the handguards. And I think that adds to the middy look on what is a carbine gas system.

The barrel looks slightly too long for a XM177E2 with the moderator replaced with a flash hider,  but that probably jas more to do with the aspect of the carbine in the picture. Despite all the complicated gas system and cut down whatever theories, in the real world, especially the real world of that time,  an E2 barrel would still be the most likely candidate.

Wow, I've never seen that photo before.

To my knowledge up until now the Colt "midlength" rifle that's in the Knight's museum was just a one-off prototype.  That photo certainly looks like it made it to the field.  Maybe some kind of alternative or improvised handguard... it kinda looks like a longer version of the 608 round handguard.



I'd love to get in to the museum and do some research on that rifle.

Anyone stop to think it's a 20" barrel foreshortened by the wide angle camera lens?

I'd love to get into that museum. (<< period)

If you compare the proportions of the rifle in question with the rifle from the museum photo I posted you'll see they are identical.  The "deployed" rifle has some different kind of handguard and a birdcage FS instead of 3 prong.

Bingo! We have a winner!! Thanks to gamma for the reference pic! Possible scenario is the triangle guard broke, so a round wooden replacement was used! And while they were fixing her up, they swapped out the three prong with a Bcage!

Handguard looks like a trimmed and taped XM148 guard to me.

This is an intriguing pic.

Looks like three different weapons here. The two USSF officers on the left have bog-standard carbine variants, but the LLDB officer's weapon looks odd. Note the tape on the American captain's handguards. This was and remained very common in SF for camouflage and also to reduce that distinctive hollow sound of an M16 handguard whacking a tree branch or piece of equipment. It's OD green duct tape, usually called 100-mile-an-hour tape and originally pilfered from aviation mechanics. (It's a regular supply item with an NSN, or was, anyway).

According to my mentors, back in the day, Vietnamese SF were seldom like the character played by Mr Sulu in The Green Berets. (I didn't really need to tell you guys that life ≠ movies right?) There are exceptions, but in general the LLDB were not highly thought of and it was rare for them to go out of the camps. SF guys had a lot of sarcastic english acronyms (the Vietnamese one is Luc Luong Dac Biet). Look Long, Duck Back and Lousy Little [racially pejorative term deleted] Bastards. The various forces recruited from ethnic and religious minorities of South Vietnam were much better regarded. (Montagnards, Cambodians, Nungs, Hoa Hao, etc).

I'm going with foreshortened by the wide-angle lens. I think it very unlikely that LLDB would have wound up with a tool room prototype like the middy in Reed Knight's museum. Unlike most ARVNs, they did have M16s (the regular ARVNs started getting them in 1970, before that they carried WWII vintage weapons like M1s). But they didn't have any armorer support as far as I can find out. Now it's possible some SF light-weapons guy bashed something odd together, and it wound up passing into the hands of a Vietnamese counterpart, but it's very unlikely. No machine shop in an A-camp.

Anything is possible and weird guns do show up in war zones.

I have nothing to contribute as far as that gun goes, but is that SGM Walt Shumate standing on the far right?

Could this be an Elisco Tool 653 made in the Philippines ?
They use the round handguards according to RBR

I think you nailed it Rob. He just is running a A1 FH instead of the moderator. That and the aspect makes it look weird. I wonder when someone with access to a lathe will make a set of these? Actually, I wonder if a set of L1A1 wood HGs could be modded to work and look like that? Seems like that's what I'd do if I were Aussie and wanted wood HGs.

What exactly is this "Weird Aspect"? Can you explain why only one rifle in the pic is affected by this phenomenon? If you look closely you will see a solid stock, which lends to it "Not" being an ordinary CAR/XM. Also If you look close and careful, you can see the unevenness and color change that would correspond with hand carved wood. If it were wrapped in tape or some other similar material, the color would be more even!

My 2 pennies tells me there is either tape or a camo "sock" covering that HG,and it does have a round HG frt cap.If you check JTs enlarged pic,the cover overlaps and drops down over the top portion of the HG cap.Also,when compared to that other XM177E2,it does look longer,, more like a middy.Could be camera "angles" involved,but it does look like a middy to me.

That's my conclusion also.

I posted that photo way back in Dec of 07

For more reading archive

I completely missed the thread in 07, but I think we have the same certainty of uncertainty today as we did then.

It really appears to me to be the same barrel setup as that "midlength" prototype, as was pointed out in the 07 thread also.  It has a triangular handguard cap and the bayo lug at the back of the FSB consistent with the Knight's museum photo.  It does have a birdcage FS as well as an A1 upper unlike the museum rifle.

Very curious that something that would have been essentially experimental or a prototype would be in combat use in such a manner, but things were definitely different back in the VN conflict and lots of experimental stuff got sent right to the field for testing and feedback back then.

And here I thought we were keeping the retro forum new and fresh! the XM on the left had green tape, you can see the difference. Could be a cover. But my vote is wood, on a prototype!

Remember that quite a few Xm177E1's ended up with regular A1 fixed stocks - I happen to believe to cure bolt bounce by giving them a heavier buffer.  I still want to build a fixed stock middy...

Enough already. It's an 'effin XM177E2 with a taped handguard and a flash hider in place of the moderator. No prototype, no secret new design or straight from the factory to the field testing.

I'm TDY at the moment but when I get home I'll compare/measure proportions and tell you how long the barrel and handguards are relative to the FSB so we can put this to bed.

Not much has changed...the SOCOM & seal fellas carry some exotic prototype stuff in harms way regularly. I'm not the least bit surprised.

Bear in mind, the guy holding the rifle is not a cutting-edge guy, but an indigenous ally.

Generally, unless the locals can buy their own weapons (think Kuwaitis), their special ops forces get standard US weapons. True then, true now. Simplifies logistics and training. If some engineering or test organization brought a prototype to the war zone –– like, say, the XM25s in Afghanistan now –– they wanted to know about its performance in combat. That means whoever got it would be an American, who could either write a report, or at least get debriefed in English. (The guys testing the XM25 are being exhaustively debriefed). An ARVN officer is a most unlikely candidate for a US weapons test. Not to say that some weren't brave or loyal, and they all had to deal with a war with no DEROS... Marvin was home. He had nowhere left to go... except to the USA in '75 if he was very, very lucky, or to reeducation camp.

I tried another angle by looking up who was at Polei Kleng. I knew two men on the list, and tried to make contact with them. One is off the net temporarily. The other had no opinion on the weapon. The guy I reached was there much later (1969) than this photo which appears to be from 1967 approximately, and he has guesses but doesn't know-for-sure any of these men.

The camp was open and staffed by USSF from 1966 to 1969 inclusive, during 1970 it was handed over to ARVNs. During that time about six or seven captains and maybe as many as ten to twelve lieutenants served there. (There was one captain slot and one or two LT slots on an A-team in this area at this time). Various guys I know have maybe-possibly IDs on the two USSF officers and a very low confidence level ID of one of the NCOs. No one thinks the SFC is Walt Shumate (but he could well have told some sergeant major he was, once - inside joke).

There is a publicly viewable site with an aviator's photos of the camp. He does misidentify the camp (as you can see from the photos of the airfield shot from inside the camp). The pentagon-shaped fort on the map, south of the village of Polei Kleng, was something else, maybe a 4th ID firebase. The camp was on the floor of a wide valley. It was a fortunate camp with few USSF KIAs.

Sorry I did not move the mystery of the gun along but I thought you would be interested in some of the historic context to the photo. One more angle that deserves investigation is the source of the photo –– the photographer seems to have been a professional with a wide-angle lens, a pro's tool. This could mean that he was a newsman, but it might not. (The Special Forces O&I school included an intensive class on photography, so at least two or three of the guys in the camp would have been adept photographers, and the armed services had their own journalists with first-rate equipment –– still do).

(For the record, and to forestall any confusion, I am not a Vietnam veteran, I came along later. Vietnam vets were my mentors).