WHY did Garand use the en-bloc clip?

[Adam Helmer]

Dan,

I am an avid M1 Garand collector and have found a wonderful cast bullet load that functions all my Garands and, happily, shoots to the same sight settings as M2 Ball.

The Garand was the ONLY Standard Issue semi-automatic rifle issued in WWII. (Note: The semi-auto Soviet Tokarev was Limited Issue) The U.S. Military adopted the Garand in 1936, but few were made before Pearl Harbor. John Garand was a Canadian who began his U.S. government employment career in the Patent Office and then transferred to Springfield Armory. He began working on his rifle in the mid-1920s and had a final product which was adopted in 1936.

My question is: Why did John Garand go BACK in time to the discontinued and complicated Mannlicher System as an ammunition feed system for the Garand? Garand had the standard issue BAR and its box magazine (adopted by the Army in 1918) as a guide and even the 1903 Springfield had a box magazine for a way forward to feed the Garand Rifle. As it is, the M1 Rifle will ONLY function if one has the special Mannlicher clip. Without that, one has a Single Shot arm! In addition, the loading of the Garand 8-round en-bloc clip requires a bit of manipulation that is difficult with bare hands at 70 degrees and impossible with gloved hands at the Battle of the Bulge or Chosen Reservoir in Korea. Finally, had the M1 Garand had a detachable box magazine, it would have been an easy matter to "top off" the magazine when a soldier was on the firing line by simply inserting another loaded magazine.

My cast bullet is the Lee C312-185-1R. I cast it out of old wheelweights, add a dash of tin and drop the bullets into a bucket of water. I size the bullets to .309", add a gas check and put 36 grains of IMR4895 into the case and have an overall length of 82MM.

Adam