Coming Home

The following weapons can be seen in Coming Home: (1978)

Coming Home (1978)

M16

The movie begins a couple days before Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) ships out to South Vietnam. At one point he is seen qualifying with his M16.

The original M16, the first version, firing in a 20-round magazine, adopted in large numbers by the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam. This has the original 3-prong flash hider. It would later be replaced by the upgraded M16A1 - 5.56x45mm

Marines qualify with their M16 rifles before shipping out to South Vietnam

Captain Hyde (Bruce Dern) fires his M16.

SKS Rifle

A year later Bob (Bruce Dern) returns from South Vietnam and learns about his wife Sally (Jane Fonda) and Luke Martin (Jon Voight). He retrieves a disassembled SKS Rifle from his footlocker (which is full of war souvenirs) and reassembles it minus the wood furniture.

Chinese Type 56 Carbine aka the Chinese SKS rifle - 7.62x39mm. The Chinese SKS has a stamped receiver and a spike bayonet (aka a "pig sticker") much like one of their AK-47 copies - the Type 56 assault rifle. This version, like many imported SKS rifles, have the infamous 'orange cratewood' stocks, probably the lowest quality wood in any mass produced rifle, save for the last ditch Arisaka Type 99 rifles at the end of WW2. Many SKS rifles during the Vietnam War were issued with reddish plastic stocks, because of the incidents of 'wood rot' in the humid SE Asian jungles.