M1 Garand. Ahead of it's time?

Well you don't see the 5 bullets between the tracers though do you?

I hear he has some great time share opputunities for the Brooklyn Bridge and some swamp land as well.

 

Well back when I had better vision, on quite a few occasions I've stood behind a shooter and watched the bullets he fired go down range. You do have to be in line with the bullet so not something I'd want to do from down range.

As for avoiding a bullet at 1000 ft sec you have about half a second at 200 yards from the time it's fired. It would have to be instinctive and probably based on the muzzle flash or blast (smoke).

 

it's settled then?

 

I say think about this:

you storm into a german-held building with a M1 garand. A lone german is in there with a Kar98k, he fires and mises you. While the German pulls the bolt on his gun, you can shoot him 2 times, if you're fast enough A semi-automatic weapon gives you a big advantage at very close range. (The M1 was also very accurate at far ranges too!)

 

General Patton surely thought the Garrand played a major role as he singled it out along with a few other things as a major difference maker.

 

1. It's very likely that one or two people in the room has a submachinegun-the section leader and his assistant.

2. If the German trooper is a Volkgrenadier, the typical US opponent, he would most likely be armed with some sort of automatic weapon.

3.German infantry doctrine always centered around automatic weapons. Even the smallest combat group, the squad had one to three automatic weapons (a submachingun or a machinegun). In house defense, there would always be an automatic weapon of some sort at ground level. The doors were generally barricaded with rubble and/or large furniture that was filled with rubble/dirt.

4. US troops were actually out-gunned in terms of small arms. But at the platoon level, the US soldier had one thing the German didn't have..a 60mm mortar detached from the heavy weapons platoon. It lobbed 3 pound shells and usually came with lots of ammunition.

5. "I do not have to tell you who won the war. You know, the artillery did."

~Patton

 

60MM Mortar was a company level asset.......81's were a Battalion level asset and would be considered a "Heavy Weapon"

 

Triple C:

Yes the air cooled cal .30 machine gun was difficult to handle but with the heavy barrell it would shoot about as long as its older water cooled cousin. It also could be operated from the prone position like a bipod weapon.

We were able to make good use of them in most tactical situations. Later in the war we got all of machine gun ammo in linked belts. The old WW I fabric belts were te pits.

As Ever,

Walter L. Marlowe

( Airborne all the Way)

 

I looked it up and apparently, the platoon was just called a "weapons platoon".

There was a weapons platoon in every US infantry company (late war) armed with up to 5x Bazooka teams, 2x 30 cal. teams, 1 x 50 cal. team and 3 x 60mm mortars.

One 30 cal. team, one or two Bazooka teams, and one 60mm team was typically detached from the weapons platoon to serve each rifle platoon.

 

Correctamudo! Wolfman.........I don't even know why you felt the need to check my info.....

 

Thanks Mr. Marlowe. Were the fabric belts more prone to stoppages and jamming?

 

I know a Bataan veteran from the 31st Infantry (one of the regiments in the US Army's Philippine Division), he told me that they loved the garand. They requested a few Springfield 1903's for anti-sniper hunting but for real fighting, they were glad they all had garands. He told me that while the 1903 was more accurate, it wasn't accuracy they needed in the jungles but firepower. He also said that during the whole campaign, his garand jammed twice on him but they were easily-fixed jams.

 

Spoken like a true Marine, eh?

 

Simply the Garand was OF its time, many wanted an SA rifle, but:

a.) The US had money enough in the inter-war years to play about with various designs of action & cartridge.
b.) the US got very lucky with the Garand - a design that fell of the drawing board & basically fulfilled its promise from the word go. It didn't need tinkered with or issued in several revised variants with all the issues that entails.
c.) the US had the capacity to role out mass issue in war time when other powers might have stuck with a prolific existing weapon.

Other factors apply such as the US not having a good LMG & the 30-06 lending itself to a SA rifle (vs. the .303 or 7.62x54R.)

N.B. people have rather misinterpreted the 5% stat. This only take "small arms" as standard issue rifles & SMGs, that discounts MMG, MG42, BARs etc etc. So when we consider that a the average WW2 squad might have a Bren, MG42, x2 BAR/x1 M1919 its easy to see why these would have accounted for the lion's share of the killing esp. beyond 200yds where the bipod'd MG is going to be the real killer. So if we say that the auto-weapons in the squad do 75% of the killing at >200+yds and air, RT, etc do 75% of all killing - both of which seem modest, believable stats, then we're getting down to a very small number being killed by "small arms."

That's not to say I wouldn't take a semi-auto every time...

 

To answer the title question: No, the Garand was not ahead of its time, but it was a great design of its time.

 

My brother in law strongly agrees with you.

He used both the Garand and German Heckler & Koch G-3 rifle during his years in the Danish army.
The Garand was by far the superior weapon in his opinion, only snatch (minor one) was the 8 round magazine

Great design !

 

I would say that it was ahead of its time by a long shot. It was the first semi-automatic rifle to use a rotating bolt and the first semi to be issued in large numbers. Not to mention the battlefield performance was outstanding.

It's no wonder the ARVN armed many of their troops with M1s during Vietnam instead of the M16. Any WWII infantryman will tell you that it was a fantastic weapon (or at least most of them).

 

Uh, we gave them the Garands and M1 carbines first. The M16 was later delivered because the Garand was "too much gun" for the average 5' Marvin-ARVN. You might be thinking of the Montagnards.

 

Where are you pulling this gem from? It most certainly wasn't the first. Ever hear of the Mondragon? It's an old German dialectic anagram for Garand predecessor!