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

[Gil Martin]

I do not think it is necessary to respond to your first paragraph regarding another online site. if you are being stalked by someone known as "Prince Vallium" there may be reasons not known to us at this time.

The link below and other online sources clearly indicate that John C. Garand did exactly what the U.S. Army requested in developing a gas-operated semi-automatic military rifle in the 1930s. His rifle was carefully tested and passed severe military requirements. As we all know over five million of his rifles were produced and were praised by General Patton and others as ..."the finest battle implement ever devised". it would appear that millions of G.I.s and many high power shooters have not had any serious problems using this rifle.

Since we cannot go back and rewrite history and the M1 Garand has and continues to perform is such an outstanding manner, your question is merely academic. The requirements for a box magazine semi-automatic military rifle seem to have been addressed in the evolution of the M14 rifle. All the best...
Gil


http://www.thegunzone.com/johngarand.html

[Jack]

Adam, I have often wondered about the Garand feeding set up, too. I think the 8 round en bloc clip works fine, but, in 1936 that required making a new en bloc clip to go with the Garand, and the 20 round BAR magazine was already in inventory.
John Garand designed the M-1 to fit the criteria laid out by the military. I wonder if the 8 round clip was specified for the same reason the military didn't want to adopt the Spencer repeater in 1862- an M-1 with a 20 round feed capacity would use up too much ammunition.

[Adam Helmer]

Jack,

We are of a like mind on the en-bloc clip matter. Even IF the "Army specified it", I suspect we would have had a better WWII rifle if a 10-round BAR-Type box magazine had been adopted as was issued on the Tokarev and G-43. Perhaps the Army should had put John Browning on the committee to develop the M1 Garand. After all, it was Browning who developed the M1911 .45 automatic and not the Army. Unfortunately, John Browning died in 1926, ten years before the Garand was adopted. As far as the "Army requesting it", all I can say IS: so much for "Military Intelligence."

My fellow serious military collectors meet weekly at the local gun shop to talk. All are veterans and several were issued the Garand and others had uncles and fathers who were issued the Garand in WWII and Korea. Many disliked the en-bloc clip of Mannlicher design never used in any contemporary arm adopted in 1936 or after. My main concern was the unnecessary expenditure of scarce metal resources in WWII to make billions of en-bloc clips that would have been unnecessary if the shorter BAR box magazine had been adopted for the Garand. How unnecessary. My 10th grade history teacher, Mr. Hepp was in the 101st at Bastonge in 1944. He told me how hard it was to refill Garand clips from MG belts and Springfield chargers.



Adam

[Rapier]

How right you are. If you have ever reloaded a Garand clip while sitting under a tree in the shade, in the warmth of a spring day, just imagine the coldest winter in 50 years in Belgium or the winter in Korea when all you had were MG belts to refresh your rifle ammo, not to mention the Plingggg from the empty clip. Telling everyone around you were empty. Plus not being able to reload that clip without unloading the rifle. The original Garand based M-1A1 proved that the box mag could have been done easily. They made a bunch of the conversions at Raritan Arsenal when I lived across the street, before the M-14 and before Vietnam.
Ed

[Dan Morris]

Honestly, I had never given it a thought. When I went in...64....we had the
M14...which I loved! The ideas of the en bloc problems make sense.....actually, I've only fired a M1 a couple of times.As to the 'ping' we taped down most of the battle rattle.
Dan

[Adam Helmer]

Rapier,

My old history teacher told me that every squad went foraging for empty Garand clips in the Bastonge perimeter in December 1944. Naturally, clips were everywhere; in snow drifts, on the street, in bunkers, and everywhere else empty clips landed before a GI reloaded his Garand. The clips were wiped off with a rag, checked for damage and then reloaded from machine gun belts.

I asked Mr. Hepp about the Garand empty clip "Ping" advising the enemy to attack. He laughed and said, "The battlefield is a very noisy place. If my M1 went "Ping", neither of my squad member's M1s to my immediate left or right did so, so why would a Kraut, (Or Jap, depending on the "ping" story teller's location) run up to me?"

The Garand Rifle was the LAST time Mannlicher's Clip went into service and off to war. A piece of history, but I believe it was the wrong solution for a much better rifle. Again, I lament it is too bad John Browning was not alive to assist.

Adam