Operation and Preventive Maintenance of the M16a1 Rifle

The U.S. Army teamed up with cartoonist and graphic artist Will Eisner to produce teaching tools for U.S. soldiers in a medium that they could easily understand. The M16A1 Rifle: Operation and Preventive Maintenance, first printed in 1969, features a female narrator who instructs GIs on the proper care of their AR-15 (military name M16A1) rifles—firearms notorious for jamming and malfunctioning. More than a simple manual and step-by-step guide, this unconventional yet important military document tried to appeal to soldiers with suggestive chapter titles such as “How to Strip Your Baby,” “What to Do in a Jam,” “Sweet 16,” and “All the Way with Négligé.” A copy of the thirty-two-page booklet was issued to nearly every soldier serving in Vietnam.

The  Department of the Army  (DA) is one of the three military departments within the  Department of Defense of the United States of America. Its mission is to fight and win our Nation’ s wars by providing prompt, sustained land dominance across the full range of military operations and spectrum of conflict in support of combatant commanders.

Robert A. Sadowski is a contributing writer to Gun World, Shooting Illustrated, Combat Handguns, Gun Tests, Gun Digest and several other firearms magazines. He is the author of the Book of Glock, Shooter’s Bible Guide to Firearms Assembly, Disassembly, and Cleaning, 50 Guns That Changed the World, and the editor of the original Gun Traders Guide. He resides in Hampstead, North Carolina.