Frag Out! Magazine

FIREARMS tion correctly, it was necessary to replace the bolt carrier with one equipped with an additional gas exhaust port. It worked very well with the M4 suppressor, but witho- ut the suppressor, the rifle would not function unless the bolt carrier was swapped back to a standard one. Consequently, an M16 once equipped with an M4 effectively functioned exclusively with it, and the device itself was not removed from the weapon. HEL E4A The HEL E4A solved some of the- se problems, and although it was still not light (over 800 g), it did not add as much length to the alrea- dy long M16, produced less bac- kpressure, and functioned with the standard bolt carrier. The price for this was a drastically lower level of noise reduction, amounting to only about 25 dB. I remind you that we are talking about a logarithmic sca- le, so although it is only a 10 dB dif- ference, the gap is truly enormous. The new device arrived in Viet- nam between late 1968 and 1969. A batch of 960 HEL E4A units was sent there at a cost of $42,000, me- aning a single muzzle device cost the staggering sum of... $44. They were used by many special opera- tions units, and a curious fact is that they were treated as "non-repa- irable"; once damaged or worn out, they were destroyed, even though a gunsmith could have disassem- bled them relatively easily. This has resulted in a "homeopathic" num- ber of these devices surviving to this day, as evidenced by the fact that even such giants of the sho- oting world as the 9 Hole Reviews or Forgotten Weapons channels did not have originals in their vide- os regarding the Mk4 Mod0. The muzzle device in the photos is a replica made by the Polish Ma- nufaktura Tomka. This is a small private firm run by a perfectionist reenactor with a talent for metal- work—I remember once seeing a replica of an M1919 he had made. That weapon was constructed like the original, with all possible deta- ils and stamps, and a (nearly) com- plete reproduction of the internal mechanisms. "Nearly," because al- though it could be cycled and dry- -fired, there was no possibility of fi- ring any ammunition from it, as the replica had no barrel, no way to lock the bolt, and no way to even insert a firing pin into it.

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