Lucas73 wrote:I have just finnished reading the Band of Brothers book, in it it mentions that one of easy coy sargents was able to take a file and work on the tripper housing of an M1 Garrand and make it fully automatic.
John Garand didn't work on that rifle design of his for years for nothing & I'm sure that thee sgt could well have done the job of "automaticking" too... but have you ask yourself this: any chance of the garand suffering from double feeding when under real combat situation?
Das
"Say what you mean and mean what you say."
- General George S. Patton Jr
It does'nt mention in the book if any of these modified M1's were used in combat, you would have to assume that they were. It does however mention that Major Winters took his to Korea when he was called up again so he must have thought highly of it. Then again, i don't know if Major Winters was in any fire fights Korea. It would be very interesting to know if anyone else in a different unit was able to do this, I'm sure there must have been.
As for the double feeding, I'm not farmiliar with the working mech of the M1, so i cannot comment, but imagine the recoil from it. 30.06 calibre?
Must have been impossible to handle.
Oh you're here, I thought I could smell something...........
Lucas73 wrote:As for the double feeding, I'm not farmiliar with the working mech of the M1, so i cannot comment, but imagine the recoil from it. 30.06 calibre?
Must have been impossible to handle.
Much like an engine without a governor, the rifle if modified to shoot on full auto with the famed .30 06 round might even result in some very sore shoulders or maybe bruises as well... definitely not a healthy thing for any abled body fighting men on the battlefield.
Das
"Say what you mean and mean what you say."
- General George S. Patton Jr
I imagine you're right about it being like an engine without a governor. I've never seen an M-1 go auto, but have seen the model 1911 .45 caliber pistol with a worn sear do it. The recoil made the thing climb straight up and the last round was on it's way to the clouds before the shooter knew what was happening. Definitely did not make a good impression on the Navy senior chief in charge of the range.
And just my 2 cents worth, the M-14 may not be from WW II, but I liked that weapon better than it's replacement, the M-16.
My experience with military weapons is almost non-existent, most of my shooting has been with sporting and hunting rifles. I was interested to hear that you have had the oportunity to fire a wide range SMGs. A friend of mine owns a Thompson, i forget which variant, it has a fore hand grip and takes stick mags. the sad thing is he does'nt shoot it, so i have never had the chance to see a SMG in action.
Oh you're here, I thought I could smell something...........
I imagine you're right about it being like an engine without a governor. I've never seen an M-1 go auto, but have seen the model 1911 .45 caliber pistol with a worn sear do it. The recoil made the thing climb straight up and the last round was on it's way to the clouds before the shooter knew what was happening. Definitely did not make a good impression on the Navy senior chief in charge of the range.
And just my 2 cents worth, the M-14 may not be from WW II, but I liked that weapon better than it's replacement, the M-16.
Rick
JFYI Rick,
1.) If the armourer of USMC at Quantico ever go into the business of handgun production, I'd definitely go for their customised remake of the classic Colt M1911 but no amount of money can buy it 'cos its not for sale.
The original M1911 had a few flaws such as the safety selector & its high recoil but that has been rectified by the Marine armourers with the fitting of a slightly heavier heavier gun barrel for improved accuracy, change of new butt stock for better grip & addition of a new ambidexterous safety selector (similar to the M9 Barretta) to replace the old one which was prone to accidental discharge. I've tried it once & I just love it for its improvements and I'm sure that this new Colt would have made Samuel Colt mighty proud.
2.) The original Thompson came with a foregrip which was quite effective in culling the immense recoil & its tendency to "climb" when firing even when fitted with a drum magazine. Due to the Army mass procurement & request for mass production, this foregrip was taken off & fitted with a slightly heavier barrel to compensate for it but it was not to be, as short burst was still required if any hits was desired by any soldier out in the battlefield.
3.) During the 90's, I had the chance to try out the M-14, M-16 & the M4 Carbine. I found that the M-14 can't quite make it as an assault rifle in this age for any modern army, M-16 was just nice especially for the volume of firepower it can deliever but the M4A1 fits like a glove for its right balance of size, weight & accuracy... it does whatever the M-16 does, even the donning of the M203 40mm grenade launcher. IMO, this is one hell of a great weapon!
Cheers~!
Das
"Say what you mean and mean what you say."
- General George S. Patton Jr
My experience with military weapons is almost non-existent, most of my shooting has been with sporting and hunting rifles. I was interested to hear that you have had the oportunity to fire a wide range SMGs. A friend of mine owns a Thompson, i forget which variant, it has a fore hand grip and takes stick mags. the sad thing is he does'nt shoot it, so i have never had the chance to see a SMG in action.
Dear Lucas,
If you ever watched those movies based on the stories about gangsters OR mafias of the 30's (as in the "Godfather") & you see one of the guys holding a big gun with a big drum, that's the Thompson. Run like hell if you ever see one with its muzzle pointing towards you, trust me... you don't want to be on the receiving end of it lest you intend to take that shortcut to meet St Peter.
Cheers~!
Das
"Say what you mean and mean what you say."
- General George S. Patton Jr
Hi! coming VERY late to this, but the original point of the question has been missed a little......
Why did the British not update to something better? They WER, they were updating slowly from the SMLE Mark One Number Three rifle on the eve of the war to the Mark Three, for ease of production. But across the Empire they had millions of rifles to replace. And the SMLE in the hands of a trained user was in those days a better and more accurate weapon than a semi-auto in the hands of a novice. Remember the "mad minute"???....
Why was the G98k not replaced? The Mauser action round-pull bolt was the best in the word...thats where all those P14 Springfield/Remington?winchesters in .303 and .30 06 that the British issued to the Home Guard came from, theyd issued a specification in the mid '30s for a REPLACEMENT for the Lee Enfield, and went DOWN to a five-round box in favour of the better Mauser action! But production facilities in GB were working at top capacity so they contracted production to factories in the USA. As for semi-autos in the US Army? Well, when December 7th 1941 came around, the five-shot Springfield was STILL the standard issue, tho' admittedly not for long....
Why no semi-auto for the British? Do some more searching. The British experiemented thru the '30s with EVERY semi-auto rifle they could get their hands on, even a semi-auto version of the Lee Enfield! But the cost and retraining aspect for a retrenched army under an Appeasement government precluded ANY of these being uptaken.
The Sten gun was a weapon produced under VERY strict provisos. It was originally to be a weapon 1/ for airborne and special forces troops. Didnt NEED semi-auto but needed to be rugged. 2/ had to use standard 9mm AND Parabellum, so it could be supplied to resistance forces on the Continent who certainly couldnt be ALSO supplied with ALL their ammunition. Submachinegun duties in the British Army from 1940 right up to the end of the war were primarily at first the straight-magazine 30-round Thompson, and this wasnt phased out. The Sten just became vastly more common.
And lets face it - the US Army had its share of SMG turkeys - yes we all agree the straight-mag Thompson was legendary, but the Grease Gun was too....just not for GOOD reasons lol
And everywhere in the world weapons development was ongoing...I wonder how many British Squaddies in Iraq this very minute realise the SA-80 in their hands, even with all its known problems, is the end result of a government specification issued in and work begun on in.....1940??? Yep it took THAT long to get t'bugger to work!
And why? And why was the Sten so clumsy and badly made, that the Commandos first isuued with them ALSO got issued instructions on how to alter the bolt to stop it jamming? Answer is simple - a small island nation, no matter HOW great a power house of production it may be, just couldnt make EVERYTHING it needed or make it ALL to incredibly high standards. In war time quality has to slip against quality. Don't forget - in the early years of the war, we were turning out Spitfires, Hurricanes, Browning machineguns, gyro'd indtuments, Merlin aero engines.....no wonder the Sten was so bad!
A production parable.....
During the war street railings were cut up for steel and iron, housewives were encouraged to hand over their aluminium pots and pans, all the morale-boosting campaigns we remember......?
Do you know what happened to it all? It went to the steel coring for concrete. It was awful quality stuff that just COULDN'T be used for anything else. The aluminium from your gran's best saucepans? NOT A SINGLE BIT OF IT REACHED AN AEROPLANE. The best was given to second-string industries like the Triumph, Matchless, Norton and BSA notorcycle factories.....where it was found to be SO bad that pistons machined from the stuff "grew" or distorted on the shelf and went out of round!
Its amazing the Sten was quite so good, really......!
Corum mentions in his interwar book that German Infantry felt that most of the killing power of a squad was in the MGs, and concentrated their time and energy on improving that... thus the MG34/42.
The US army felt that riflemen were more important at the squad level and spent more time on great rifles.
Doctrine plays a big role. If a machine gun is the primary source of a squad's firepower, it makes sense to keep an otherwise excellent if old rifle.
If rifles are more important, it makes sense to keep an excellent if heavy MG (.50 cal) and concentrate on good rifles (M1)
Actually the US used the Springfield in most units up till 1942/43 when production started phasing it out. Most battles done by the Marines in the pacific used it or that crappy Johnson rifle.
Lucas73 wrote:
As for the double feeding, I'm not farmiliar with the working mech of the M1, so i cannot comment, but imagine the recoil from it. 30.06 calibre?
Must have been impossible to handle.
Ave Lucas,
I have fired the M1 garand and I found the recoil acceptable for repeated firing. The BAR was also 30.06 and fully automatic, and it was still quite the effective firearm that was used into Vietnam. While the BAR was longer and heavier than the Garand, I think the garand would have been hard, but not impossible, to keep under control if fully automatic.
Vale,
-Spandau
If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.
I wish I could remember the literary reference....remember reading a Commando's memoirs once, there was a bit in it about sitting in a landing boat somewhere and the entire party striping their Stens down and altering the bolt with files so that they didn't jam lol
