[MOONDAWG]

If you've ever fired an M-1 Garand you'd know why some of us feel it's the Rolls-Royce of battle rifles. It's one short coming was the 8 round enbloc clip. Since the BAR was also in .30-06 caliber and was fielded with 20 round magazines, one has to wonder why know one during WWII ever thought to modify the Garand to accept these high capacity quick to reload magazines. You thoughts on the issue?

 

[ikes380]

It wasn't necessary because the M1 could be reloaded in about 1 second with a new clip. I was a marksman shooting the M1 when I was in the Army during peacetime, not in battle.

During WW2 the Bar was fed by a belt magazine, not clip fed.

 

[TexasDeputy]

If you've ever fired an M-1 Garand you'd know why some of us feel it's the Rolls-Royce of battle rifles. It's one short coming was the 8 round enbloc clip. Since the BAR was also in .30-06 caliber and was fielded with 20 round magazines, one has to wonder why know one during WWII ever thought to modify the Garand to accept these high capacity quick to reload magazines. You thoughts on the issue?

Springfield actually made test quantities of an M1 with a detachable box magazine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Garand#M1E5_and_T26

Another variant that never saw duty was the T20E2. This variant is a Garand modified to accept Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) magazines, and has selective fire capability, with semi- and fully automatic modes.


The T20E2 selective fire prototype was designed to feed from 20-round BAR magazines

 

[TexasDeputy]

More photos of Garand with BAR magazine:

 

[TexasDeputy]

It wasn't necessary because the M1 could be reloaded in about 1 second with a new clip. I was a marksman shooting the M1 when I was in the Army during peacetime, not in battle.

During WW2 the Bar was fed by a belt magazine, not clip fed.

Not so sure about the "Belt fed" statement.

SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1918_Browning_Automatic_Rifle

Even the latest models manufactured in the 60's, made in Belgium in 7.62x51, still had the traditional 20 round box magazine.
There are no references to a belt fed BAR on Wikipedia.

For the record, I was issued a beat-up, sloppy, BAR for training in the late 60's, and it always functioned flawlessly with its 20 round box magazine.

 

[lazyluke]

In 1968 in bootcamp we were issued the M-14 in semi-auto only which is basically an M1 with a 20 round mag. They told us we were the last cycle to get these as they were transitioning to the M16, which is what we got in infantry training following boot camp.

 

[jeeper1]

I had the M16 in basic in 1967.
I have a Garand now.
I had a BM59 (Italian version of a the Garand using 20 round mags). 7.62x51
Also had a M14 and still have a bunch of US made mags from before the 94 AW ban.

 

[rodfair]

When I got some training on the BAR at a small arms course...it was box fed in 303 British. As far as I am aware, it was never belt fed.

 

[kschilk]

If you've ever fired an M-1 Garand you'd know why some of us feel it's the Rolls-Royce of battle rifles. It's one short coming was the 8 round enbloc clip. Since the BAR was also in .30-06 caliber and was fielded with 20 round magazines, one has to wonder why know one during WWII ever thought to modify the Garand to accept these high capacity quick to reload magazines. You thoughts on the issue?

Some of it may have to do with the timing of the acceptance of the M2 (select fire .30 M1 carbine) as the primary battle rifle. Even before WW2, the military knew the M1 wasn't well suited to most military occupations or applications and was looking for a lighter, more compact, select fire rifle as standard issue.

 

[MOONDAWG]

The Italian BM59 in 7.62X51mm is close to what I imagined my M-1 Garand "Grail" gun...

 

[ikes380]

Correction, when I was in the Army (1956-1960) the BAR was dropped from service and replaced with the M-60 Rifle. They were still calling it a BAR in my unit.

M60 machine gun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[glenwolde]

Maybe because the freaking thing was too heavy as it was.

 

[leftcoastrebel]

John C Garand constantly tinkered with his own design and came up with a number of variations from folding stocks to box magazines.

Prior to WWII the military had conducted test, that lead to the M-1, the Garand design and the Johnson design(picked up in limited numbers by the USMC) both being full-size battle rifles, but originally spec'ed for a.276 round before much was made about the large quantity of .30 cal ammo already in inventory. As a result the 30-06 saw another work war as the standard American rifle round . The designed .276 round was not a "sub-caliber" round but was a large case round similar to the .270 sporting round. Battle rifles were still thought of as the standard.

The M-1Carbine, was a sub-sized .30 cal based on a little used Winchester round redesigned slightly. The carbine was designed as a way to more efficiently give soldiers who's MOS was anything but "Rifleman". The method at he time had been to train everyone on the rifle in basic and later, if the rifle didn't fit for their MOS they would be retrained, or worse, not retrained, and issued a pistol. It was reasoned that a light carbine, with very similar handling an operation, would be Moe efficient to issue to those already trained on the rifle..

Oddly, when the US military was making noises about having a .22, Melvin Johnson, who's rifle lost to Garand' s design, quite successfully converted the carbine to a round that had all the ballistic qualities the military wanted "for specialized,limited, use in jungle warfare" as as planned at the time. It could have been done, relatively cheaply, by converting the huge number of Carbines in stock.

 

[aquajim]

I think they called it the M-14.

 

[Lmstncwby]

The M1 Garand is the Cadillac of battle rifles. Patton was right! It would have been something if it used the BAR magazines but the Nazis would have grabbed that and accelerated the development of their Sturmgewehr assault rifle, which would have changed the whole dynamic of the war, probably prolonging it.

 

[TrucksNCoffee]

I wonder if business and industrial lobbies had some part in staying with the 8 round clips instead of pursuing magazines? Those lobbies were quite powerful then, as they are today. If I may provide an example, without derailing the thread: When the British replaced the anemic Allison V-12 in the P-51 Apache with the Rolls Royce Merlin, they created the vastly superior P-51 Mustang. The Brits then took a P-38 Lightning, which had two of those despised Allison engines, and replaced them with Merlins. The reported improvement in aircraft performance exceeded even the Mustang's numbers. But by this point, the Allison lobby back stateside raised such a ruckus over the matter that it was quietly killed and never given approval. My point is that profit, even in wartime, supersedes just about everything else, whether it be aircraft engines or battle rifle improvements.

 

[GreenWolf70]

WWII was unique in that it has been the only time we have ever fully mobilized the nation for war. There were industrial boards run by the military with selected heads of industry appointed to serve on those boards. There was no corporate lobbying as such as everything was about resource allocation. Allison did not have a lobby, nor did any other corporation. The various industrial boards vied against each other for the prioritization and allocation of resources. All metals and rubber were strictly allocated to different industries base on priority need. If Allison engines were pushed over better performing Merlins, it more than likely had to do with stocks on hand to supply different airplane product lines. Remember the Merlins were also the engines used in the Spitfire, so the decision was probably made to support the new Mustang, but not the much older P-38. While there were profits during WWII under these industrial boards, it was dictated and controlled by the government. The IB decided who made what and how many and you only got the resources you needed to make what you were allocated. The Defense Industrial Complex that we think of today was not a corporate structure during WWII like it is today. It was a government dictated structure that we may never see again in the history of this nation. Production of things like aircraft carriers and tanks was accomplished at rates and in time frames that is unheard of today. I am not even sure if the numbers and types of industry leaders that were needed to pull off this task even exist today.

BTW, to my knowledge there has never been a clip fed, or belt fed, BAR.

 

[aquajim]

Greenwolf, Thank you for your explanation.

 

[brotherbrian]

Enjoying owning and shooting my .303 Enfield, how close is that to experiencing the "Cadillac/RR" of battle rifles?

 

[NativeTexan]

Well, if you like monsterously heavy battle rifles, the M1 was great. The M14 was better, though, IMHO. They got around to improving the M1 in the early 50s with the M14. Myself, I have an Egyptian Hakim battle rifle that feeds from a 10 round box magazine. It's removable, but it was also designed to feed from a stripper clip. I'm told that one can modify the 30 round mag from a German MG30 (I think) with a file to fit the Hakim, but I never bothered.