If you had a choice of weapons...

Thanks for the good posts, I personally have never fired a small arm in my life. I just read a little, which is a poor replacement.

 

Well said.

 

I knew a veteran who served in the army during WW II and Korea. We talked about these two wepons before when he was alive. He stated during WW II he carried the Garand, but in Korea they issued a carbine to him. His exact words: " I threw that piece of sh** away and got me another Garand. I wanted something I could reach out and touch somebody with"!

But, if I were airborne jumping out of an airplane, the carbine with the folding stock would be a plus.

 

The answer is yes. There have been quite a few brought back into action over in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's not to say all would or even many would all the time. It depends on what they are doing. At longer ranges in particular the larger rounds are useful and if your opponents are wearing body armor longer ranges can start getting pretty close.

 

Definitely. I've talked to Vietnam vets who were in when the m-16 (5.56) replaced the M-14 (7.62X51) and they hated the smaller cartridge and cussed it for it's lack of knockdown power. Today's soldiers never fought with the 7.62X51 (308) or the .30-06 so they have no basis for comparison and hence do not know what they are missing.

 

The 30-06 is the same length as the 300 WIN,the 300 win is just a fatter cartridge.

 

Interesting, the 7.62 isn't too much bigger than the 5.56. I have heard that it weighs twice as much, though.

 

I think you're confusing the 7.62X39 with the .308 (7.62).

 

I agree that it was ahead of it's time. The weapon and caliber probably deserve a thread of their own. (haven't done a search, so maybe one exists).

I think the evaluation boards balked at it's calling for lubricated cartridge cases and that they had surplus 30-06 from the first big one. Maybe the logistics of a "new" round spooked 'em.

Some more info. and a few pics of cartridge comparisons.

http://www.milsurps.com/showthread.php?t=3402

 

I had forgotten about the lubricated cartridge cases. I'm sure there were still Army officers in the ranks who remembered the nightmare old .45-70 cartridge case which had sometimes to be pried out of the chambers of the single shot rifles the Army was cursed with up until the 1890's. A lubricated case also introduced problems of dirt and debris clinging to the round, a sure recipe for jammed rifles.

The idea of introducing yet another caliber into the battlefield logistics mix also could not have been comforting to the quartermaster officers ranks.

 

"I do like to wonder what kind of impact the garand would have had shooting the .276 round. (.276 pedersen) A smaller recoil, and two more rounds of rock and roll. If you ask me the .276 round was ahead of it's time compared to what some would call overpowered rounds such as the 30-06 or 8mm, but was obviously never put into service. "



The .276 was hard on barrels...That is why they didn't adopt it.

 

Agreed. 30.06 is a proven man killer cartridge. Give me an M-1 Garand. Like Patton said. "The greatest battfield rifle ever designed."

 

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

 

I would choose the Garand

 

Assuming I was as tall as I am now (I'm 5 foot 1 for god's sake), I would like the carbine, since it could be used as a field weapon since it's range was around 300 meters. If I were a normal sized person, it would be Garand all the way.

 

I owned and shot a WW2 paratrooper model (M1A1) .30 carbine for years. I bought it in the fifies out of a Gambles store, where it and a bunch of its "big brother" Garands were for sale. I was only a punk kid, but I figured I got robbed when I got to the store, and all the full stock carbines were gone. I used that little sweetheart for whitetail deer hunting in the breaks and brush of Montana until I lost it in a range-fire accident.

I had taken it to a gunsmith friend for a re-stock with NOS parts from Numrich, and he was going to re-parkerize it as well. A range fire swept through his area, and the small shop were he kept all his gun works was destroyed. My little M1A1 was in the mix. Took a good amount of time to get his insurance company to pony up with its true value (they claimed they would replace it with a replica), but eventually they did. Fortunately I had all the serial numbers and such recorded, and they couldn't deny it was an original, made in 1942.

I wouldn't shoot anything larger than say a coyote over 100 yards, it just doesn't have enough power for a clean kill. Under that distance though, I have dropped many a deer over the years. Of course that was using 110 grain PowrShok hollow points (not FMJ), with a bit of an upload on powder type and power.

 

M1A1 carbine lighter(folding stock),fires more rounds and has less recoil. Popular with the air borne. Its a great hunting rifle i use mine all the time for deer with in 200 yards.

 

I have read many similar accounts exactly like this. Everybody loved the carbine because it was light and had larger mag capacity than the Garand. But reports of the weakness of the round against enemy are numerous and well documented. In many cases during the Korean war, bullets from it were not even capable of penetrating the quilted jackets of attacking Chicom troops. Gimme a good old Garand any day.

 

Just a small correction on an earlier post;

During WW2 the M1 Garand was fed with M2 Ball ammunition, not the heavier M1 Ball which was fired by the M1919 machine gun.

The M2 Ball is a short flat based spitzer which weighes 9 grams and runs through the M1 Garand at around 850 m/s.

The M1919 was fed with the 11.3 gram M1 Ball which is a long flat based spitzer, and through the M1919 it runs at around 820 - 830 m/s.

A very potent round.

 

You're not 100% correct. The '03 Springfield, The M1 Garand, BAR and M1919 series, all fired the M2 Ball. M1 Ball was discontinued in 1939 in all but Aerial applications until depleted. The M1 Ball superceded the 06 ball that was used in WW1.

( .30-06 Springfield - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )