vii

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii

PART ONE: HISTORY

Chapter 1: Types of Semiautomatic Rifles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Chapter 2: Difficulties in Obtaining a Military

Semiautomatic Rifle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Chapter 3: Early Military Semiautomatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Chapter 4: Developments After World War I . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34Chapter 5: Caliber .30 Garand Finally Chosen . . . . . . . . . . . 110Chapter 6: M1 And M2 Ammunition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125Chapter 7: New Arrivals to the Garand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128Chapter 8: Marine Corps Test of Semiautomatics . . . . . . . . 141Chapter 9: General Description of the M1 Rifle . . . . . . . . . 154Chapter 10: The Sights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

PART TWO: OPERATION

Chapter 11: The Functioning of the M1 Rifle . . . . . . . . . . . 188Chapter 12: Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194Chapter 13: Care and Cleaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198Chapter 14: Malfunctions and Stoppages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209Chapter 15: Disassembly and Assembly of the Ml Rifle . . . . 221

PART THREE: THE GARAND IN ACTION

Chapter 16: The M1 Rifle in World War II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240Chapter 17: The Garand as a Match Rifle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

APPENDIX

Parts and Assemblies for the M1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279Bibliography of Semiautomatic Rifles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

viii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The thanks of the author and the publisher are due to the Editors of Ordnance and of The American Rifleman for their kind permission to use certain material which originally appeared in those publications. Likewise, thanks to Time for permission to quote from their report on the Johnson rifle controversy.

The author wishes to express deep appreciation for help received from Colonel James L. Hatcher; Colonel René R. Studler, Chief of the Small Arms Section, Research and Development Division, Ordnance, and his assistant Margaret L. Baranowski; Colonel Samuel G. Green; Captain Frank J. Jersey, U.S. Army, retired; Stanley F. Hood, Civilian Chief of Small Arms Maintenance, Ordnance; Harry F. Lynch, Ordnance Engineer; and last, but not least, John C. Garand, the talented designer of the M1 rifle.

PART ONE: HISTORY

1

Chapter 1

TYPES OF SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLES

The subject of this book is the U.S. Rifle, Caliber .30, M1, a semi-automatic shoulder rifle, invented and perfected at Springfield Armory by John C. Garand1, adopted as the service shoulder weapon of the Army on January 9, 1936, and later by the United States Navy and Marine Corps.

The term “semiautomatic rifle” can perhaps best be explained by first describing briefly the gun that was used before the Garand was ad-opted. The Army Springfield, M1903, is what is known as a magazine, or repeating rifle. It has a magazine in which five cartridges are placed. After a cartridge has been fired, the mechanism is operated by hand, to extract and eject the empty cartridge case, and to feed a live cartridge into the chamber, ready to fire.

The mechanical operations of opening the breech, extracting and ejecting the old cartridge case, shoving in a new cartridge, and closing and locking the gun again, cannot be performed without a considerable muscular effort on the part of the soldier, with resulting motion which is very likely to betray his position to the enemy. At the very best, the soldier is apt to lose his line of sight.

The self-loading or semiautomatic rifle utilizes part of the energy in the cartridge to perform these mechanical operations as soon as the trigger is pulled. Thus, when the soldier fires the gun it ejects the old cartridge case and reloads itself with a new cartridge. All this is done without any effort on the part of the soldier, and so quickly that the aim is not disturbed.

One of the greatest difficulties in training raw recruits is teaching them to use a bolt-operated weapon smoothly and rapidly. A semiauto-matic rifle simplifies the training problem.

Moreover, it is easier to use and more effective in combat. Once he has located his point of aim, all the user has to do is press the trigger, and see, if possible, where the shot goes with relation to the target. If he sees that the shot goes to the right or the left, he merely corrects his aim and fires again without entirely losing sight of his object as he would if he had to turn up the bolt of the Springfield rifle to eject the old cartridge case, and then shove the bolt forward and turn it down, to put in a new cartridge and lock the breech.

A distinction that should be borne in mind is the difference between an automatic rifle and a semiautomatic or self-loader. The automatic rifle, or as it is often termed, the “full automatic,” will continue to fire as

1Pronounced with the G hard as in go, and the stress on the first syllable, to rhyme with parent, (except that the final sound is d instead of t).

2 THE BOOK OF THE GARANDlong as the trigger is held down, until all cartridges are used up or a jam stops the mechanism. On the other hand, the semiautomatic, or self-loader, or as it is also sometimes called, the autoloader, will fire only one shot for each pull of the trigger. Many full-automatic guns, such as the Army’s Browning automatic rifle, or BAR, can be fired either full auto-matic, or semiautomatic at will, by adjusting a control or change lever.

It should be noted that the ordinary so-called automatic pistols are actually only semiautomatic. The self-loading principle was applied to machine guns many years before the first successful semiautomat-ic shoulder rifle was produced. The machine gun is a relatively large, bulky mechanism and there is plenty of space in which the inventor may put machinery; and as weight is less important than it is in a shoul-der weapon, he can do this without making the gun too heavy.

The first automatic machine gun was invented by Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1884, and is still in use in much the same form. Maxim had noticed the terrific recoil of the old .45 caliber army rifle, and he thought that some of this wasted energy could well be used in reloading the gun. The result was the famous machine gun that bears his name.

The ordinary service military cartridge develops a pressure in the gun barrel of around 50,000 pounds per square inch. Obviously the breech of the gun must be securely locked shut to prevent the cartridge from being blown back into the shooter’s face. It is precisely this necessity for locking and unlocking the breech that complicates the problem of designing a simple semiautomatic mechanism.

Blowback Operated WeaponsStraight Blowback Mechanisms. However, not all cartridges develop

such tremendous pressures as those mentioned above. If the pressure is low, and the cartridge is straight and not bottlenecked, it is possible to construct a semiautomatic mechanism in which the breech is not locked shut at all, but is merely prevented from opening too fast by the inertia of a heavy breechblock plus the resistance of the breech-closing spring. Such a gun is said to use the “blowback” system. Such a system is made possible only because the breechblock weighs many times more than the bullet. If both breechblock and bullet weighed the same, the breechblock would come back as fast as the bullet went forward; but with a heavy block, the bullet is gone before the breechblock has moved back very far.

The ordinary caliber .22 self-loading rifles are all made on the blow-back system, as are most so-called automatic or self-loading pistols.

There are also on the market some self-loading hunting rifles of

3TYPES OF SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLESmedium power made on the straight blowback principle. These are the Winchester Model 07 self-loaders formerly made in .32, .35, .351 and .401 calibers, but now made in only the .351 caliber.

Retarded Blowback Mechanisms. Straight blowback mechanisms are not suitable for high-powered guns, such as military rifles, because the high pressures require a breechblock so very heavy as to be entirely impracticable.

While it is out of the question to use a very heavy breechblock on the shoulder rifle, much the same effect can be obtained by making the thrust of the cartridge, which tends to open the breechblock, work against an unfavorable leverage, or what is often called working against a mechanical disadvantage. This slows the action enough to permit the bullet to leave the barrel before the breech opens. Such a system is called the “retarded blowback.” A number of military semiautomat-ics have been built using such actions, but they have all suffered from the necessity of lubricating the cartridge cases to make the mechanism operate.

Recoil-Operated WeaponsShort-Recoil Mechanisms. A high-powered rifle has a powerful

kick, and inventors have always wanted to utilize that kick to operate automatic or semiautomatic mechanisms. About the earliest success-ful mechanism was that of the Maxim machine gun, in which a short backward motion of the barrel of about half an inch first unlocked the breech, then kicked it wide open. This is what is called the “short recoil” system. Browning’s famous machine gun of World Wars I and II is also short-recoil operated. Many military semiautomatics have been made on this principle.

Long-Recoil Mechanisms. Another way to utilize the recoil is to allow the barrel and breech mechanism to recoil together for three or four inches, then have the breechblock caught and held back by a catch while the barrel is unlocked from it and allowed to go forward again, to a point where it strikes a tripping device which releases the catch holding the breechblock, which then follows the barrel home and locks to it. This is called the “long recoil” system. The Remington autoload-ing high-powered rifles and the Remington and Browning autoload-ing shotguns, all made on John M. Browning’s patents, are long-recoil guns.

4 THE BOOK OF THE GARAND

Diagram of Garand’s second Primer Actuated Breech closure as used in his models of 1921, 1922, and 1924

Gas-Operated MechanismsThe high gas pressure in the barrel of the gun gives the inventor an-

other source of power to operate the semiautomatic mechanism. John Moses Browning has generally been credited with being the inventor of the principle of conducting the powder gases into a cylinder containing a piston which actuates the mechanism, but Heinrich Wimmersperg, in Army Ordnance for July-August 1936, states that in 1863 Orbea in-vented a revolver, now in the Museo de Armeria at Eiber, which worked on this principle. In the same article he also mentions a revolver pat-ented by Richard Paulson in England in 1886, in which the hammer is cocked and the cylinder turned by powder gases acting on a piston.

Browning’s early Colt machine gun, famous Hotchkiss machine gun and the Browning automatic rifle, as well as most modern military semiautomatics, including the Garand, are gas-operated.

Primer-Operated MechanismsA variation of the gas-operated system is one in which the primer of

5TYPES OF SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLES

Diagram of the sliding muzzle-cap principle used in the Bang rifle tested at Springfield Armory in 1911. (A) is the muzzle cap that is pulled forward by the gas after the bullet leaves the barrel. (B) is the rod which transmits this motion to the lever (C) at the breech. In the original Bang the cap (A) was en-gaged with the rod (B) through two interrupted ribs so that by giving the cap a partial turn, it could be removed for cleaning. When the cap (A) is pulled forward, the top arm of the lever (C) is thrown backward to the position shown in the lower diagram, and transmits its motion to the slide (D). Slide (D) has on its under side a cam slot (shown in dotted lines), which acts on the stud (E) of the bolt, causing the bolt to turn counterclockwise, disengaging the locking lugs (F). As the slide goes to the rear, it takes with it the action return rod (H), the front end of which is attached to the return spring as shown, thus stretching this spring at the end of the rearward motion, the spring, acting through the rod (H), draws the slide forward again, closing and locking the bolt in the process.

the cartridge is permitted to move back a short distance, at the same time pushing a plunger which operates the unlocking mechanism. Early devices of this kind, such as the one patented by Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1883, used special cartridges. Such constructions were doomed because of the complicated ammunition required. However, John C. Garand, in 1918, produced a semiautomatic rifle using ordi-nary ammunition in which this principle was utilized. Garand’s models of 1920, 1921, 1922 and 1924 were all primer-operated, but Garand abandoned this system in favor of plain gas operation.

The Muzzle-Cap SystemAnother variation of the gas-operated system is the one in which the

gun has a sliding sleeve over the muzzle, which is pulled forward by the gas rushing out the muzzle after the bullet has left. This principle was patented by Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1885. It was experimented with by John M. Browning in 1889. It was used by Soren H. Bang, in a gun tested at Springfield Armory in 1911, and in a gun designed by my brother, Colonel James L. Hatcher, which passed an excellent test in 1920. It was also used in the Liu rifle, and in the Rheinmetall, invented by Karl Heinemann, as well as in several other experimental rifles.

6

Chapter 2

DIFFICULTIES IN OBTAINING A MILITARY SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLE

During the considerable number of years in which I was more or less in contact with the War Department search for a semiautomatic shoulder rifle I got to see a great deal of gun inventors, designers, and manufacturers and came to know quite a bit about just what could be expected.

Perhaps the largest in number were those individuals who knew nothing whatever about what had been done in this field and who sud-denly conceived a brilliant idea which they were willing to sell to the Government immediately for a stated sum. Very frequently this sum was named at $10,000. For example, some chap would read in the paper something about machine guns and finally would learn that these guns utilized part of the power of the cartridge to unlock the gun, throw out the cartridge and put in a new one. About that time a great light would dawn and he would sit down and write a letter to the War Department stating that he had a great idea. That was, just make a rifle that worked the same way as a machine gun. This idea he was sure would revolution-ize warfare and make us safe from any attack and he was willing to let the government have this idea for the usual $10,000. A little more ad-vanced version of this approach was used by the numerous chaps who, on seeing a self-loading or automatic pistol for the first time would im-mediately “invent” the idea of making a rifle that would work the same way and again would offer this brilliant idea to the Government for the same $10,000.

There were quite a few others who knew a great deal about guns but nothing about their manufacture and who would spend a considerable amount of time dreaming up some plan for a semiautomatic rifle which would then be placed on paper in the form of a drawing and submitted to the War Department with the idea of letting the War Department develop the idea and make the gun.

Much farther advanced was the man who made the drawings and got a patent on such of the mechanisms embodied therein as were new, and then tried to sell the patent to the Government.

There was another type of inventor who, after dreaming up a mecha-nism, would proceed to make a gun for submission to the Government test. Inventors of this type varied all the way from people with ideas which were obviously unworkable to those with ideas that looked very good indeed but needed a fortune spent in their development before they would be ready for actual tests.

7OBTAINING A SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLEThe man who happened to think up a good mechanism for a semi-

automatic rifle and decided to push it along was really in for a difficult, expensive and discouraging experience. It was relatively easy to make a semiautomatic shoulder rifle for a low-powered hunting cartridge, but it was a very different proposition indeed to make it for the extremely high intensity .30 ’06 service ammunition. In the first place, there was the very practical difficulty of getting gun barrels and ammunition and of doing the several thousand hours of high-grade machine work neces-sary to produce the first working model.

In order to smooth the path of these inventors as much as possible and to give them an opportunity to go ahead, the Ordnance Department had a law passed called the “American Inventors Act” which permitted the sale of applicable Ordnance material to American inventors engaged in working on a design for submission to the Department of the Army.

This provision made it unnecessary for these inventors to have rifling machinery, chamber reamers, and cartridge-making machinery as they were able to buy rifle barrels already bored, reamed, rifled and cham-bered for the Government cartridge and they were also able to buy any reasonable amount of ammunition needed for the tests.

While the Government was willing to help inventors as much as possible, there was one thing which literally dozens of inventors want-ed, which the Government usually was not willing to do. And that was to take the ideas over and develop them at Government arsenals and at Government expense.

At first thought, this might seem a very reasonable thing to do, and I have often heard the Government criticized for not doing it.

However, on second thought and especially with a little knowledge of the subject, the reason would be very apparent. It was because almost every system for making a semiautomatic rifle that was ever brought in and submitted by an inventor, was one that had already been invented, patented and experimented with at great length, by one of the early pio-neers such as Maxim, Browning, Mauser, Von Mannlicher and others. The difficulty in making a practical military semiautomatic shoulder rifle did not lie in inventing a system of operation; the difficulty was in taking such a system and then making from it a gun that was simple, rugged, durable within the weight limit, and which would function under all kinds of adverse conditions and would fire rapidly without heating up too much.

Such an accomplishment represented an engineering feat on which many talented minds had been working for years and which none of them had solved. The Government at an early date was trying to solve it with its own engineers at its own arsenals. The Government also had

8 THE BOOK OF THE GARANDbefore it, all the patents and all the military attaché reports on everything that had been done before, and in fact, knew far more about this subject than the average inventor who brought in an idea to be worked on.

It was routine, in the days when I was a young Ordnance officer, for every single patent referring in any way to arms or ammunition to be circulated to every Ordnance officer for his information. As soon as such a patent was issued, the Ordnance Department would get a num-ber of copies from the Patent Office and send them around.

When an inventor drew up a plan for a semiautomatic, it was almost invariably based on one of the operating principles that had already been the subject of years of unremitting labor by competent engineers either in Government arsenals or in private arms factories.

When a plan for a semiautomatic rifle was drawn up, the hard work all lay ahead. That was, making the first model and finding out why many parts failed to work and why they would not stand up; and then remaking them time after time. There was simply no sense at all in do-ing all the hard work on a job of this kind and then giving somebody the profits on it or a royalty on it simply because he once again called attention to the old ideas.

A more sensible approach would be to hire one or more skilled and talented engineers and designers and place them on the Ordnance Department’s development staff; and this was what was done with Mr. John C. Garand and Mr. John D. Pedersen, both of whom worked at Springfield for some time on the shoulder rifle project. Moreover, at the beginning of World War I, the Ordnance Department obtained the services of a well known arms designer working on the staff of one of the commercial arms companies, commissioned him a major in the Ordnance Department and assigned him the job of trying to perfect several designs of semiautomatic rifles that showed some promise. This was Major Elder, who made several of the models pictured and referred to in this book.

Occasionally an inventor would come in with an idea that looked more or less novel and did not seem to follow the pattern of the well known previous inventions. One of these was young David Marshall Williams of Godwin, North Carolina, who appeared in my office in the Small Arms Division of the Ordnance Department one day in the early ’30s. He had with him a semiautomatic shoulder rifle made by altering a Remington caliber .30 autoloading sporting rifle to shoot the caliber .30 service cartridge. The gun was changed to operate on the short-re-coil principle, but instead of having the whole barrel recoil, he had only the chamber in which the cartridge was seated move back when the gun

9OBTAINING A SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLEwas fired. The barrel, instead of being solid, had a separate chamber or cylinder in the back end of it, in which the cartridge fitted. When the cartridge was fired, some of the gas of the explosion got in between the front face of this cylinder or chamber and its abutment inside the barrel and pushed it back with considerable violence. This action was utilized to operate the mechanism.

We examined Mr. Williams’ modified Remington rifle with care and took it out to the local range at Washington and fired a few dem-onstration shots. It was quite evident that the gun itself would never stand up sufficiently under prolonged firing and was not strong enough to be considered for a military semiautomatic shoulder rifle; and Mr. Williams himself was quite aware of this. He had merely made the gun up as a demonstration of his principle.

At that time we were looking for a machine gun for training purposes which would operate with ordinary caliber .22 cartridges and we had approached one arms company and one arsenal with the idea of having them develop such a weapon. It looked to us as though Mr. Williams’ system might be applied to a Browning machine gun to make it shoot the caliber .22 cartridges and we asked him if he thought he could convert a Browning machine gun in this way and he agreed that he could. He was awarded a contract and given a Browning machine gun to convert.

We also thought his movable chamber system would be applicable to a .22 adaption of the .45 caliber service Colt automatic pistol and we put him in touch with the Colt Patent Firearms Company.

As a sequel, Mr. Williams promptly returned with the machine gun modified as desired, after which he got an additional contract to mod-ify five more; and an arrangement was made whereby the Government would make these caliber .22 training machine guns and pay him a royalty.

The Colt Company also made the well known Colt Service Model Ace pistol based on his idea and after that the Remington Arms Company made a caliber .22 rifle based on the same principle. Mr. Williams then went to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company as an engineer and was instrumental in developing the short-stroke pis-ton principle upon which the caliber .30 M1 carbine was afterward made. At this writing (January 1948) he is still an engineer with the Winchester Repeating Arms Company at New Haven, Connecticut.

The above instance is cited to show that the usual idea that the in-ventor who offers something to our government gets scant attention is erroneous. Mr. Williams was a young chap from a country town in

10 THE BOOK OF THE GARANDNorth Carolina and had never been heard of by anyone in the arms business, yet he obviously knew what he was talking about and had something worthwhile and it took him no time at all to get going with it. In fact, he left the Ordnance Department with a contract in his hand the same day he appeared.

In those days, the Ordnance Department had extremely limited ap-propriations for experimental and developmental work and part of these limited funds were spent hiring a few skilled small-arms Ordnance engineers. The time of these men was thoroughly occupied with ur-gent and pressing projects and the toolroom facilities at such places as Springfield Armory were also crowded to capacity with urgent projects.

Now the job of developing a semiautomatic shoulder rifle is a long and expensive one, and $100,000 can be sunk into such a project in no time. The result is that any private inventor wanting to develop a self-loading rifle has to finance the effort in one of several different ways. One of these is to persuade someone with money available for specula-tion, to back the inventor. Another is to have some promoter form a company and persuade investors to put their money into it in the hope that a big killing can be made if the Government adopts the gun. A third way is for some designer who works for a private firm to persuade the firm that there is a good chance of making money through the possible adoption of his gun, and to have the firm itself carry on the development. All three of these methods of financing were seen in the semiautomatic rifles that came before the various Army boards.

If a clever inventor with a good idea and sufficient financial back-ing really went at this thing in earnest, he usually came up before too long with a model that would go through an excellent demonstration. If funds were running low such a demonstration would infuse fresh enthusiasm into the financial backers of the project. However, almost without exception when one of these guns that could put on such a good private show (when the amount and kind of firing could be con-trolled by the inventor), came up against the official Army test the re-sults were very different indeed. Almost invariably the gun would begin to misbehave in a manner previously unsuspected by its producer. Such little things would occur as, for example, the repeated breakage of the extractor. Almost always these troubles were things that the inventor thought would be easy to remedy, and almost always he never was able to remedy them, even after repeated attempts. For instance, take the example of the gun mentioned above where the extractor repeatedly broke. The inventor would say that the design could be strengthened and the heat-treatment improved, but in spite of all the strengthening

11OBTAINING A SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLEof the design and the improving of the heat treatment, breakage would persist. The reason was, of course, that something in the action of the gun placed an impossible task on the extractor. Perhaps the gun opened too soon while there was still pressure inside the cartridge case and the extractor simply could not pull the case out. Perhaps the opening of the gun, especially in the case of a gas-operated weapon, was so violent that no extractor could stand it. The extractor is only one example, as there were dozens of things like this that occurred with many different models of guns.

Another thing that bothered the inventors a great deal was trying to get a gun that looked and handled something like the conventional shoulder rifle and still contained a semiautomatic mechanism. Many of the models were unbalanced, clumsy, and awkward to handle, and even if these had functioned perfectly it would have been very hard indeed to persuade anyone that such a contrivance was a desirable substitute for the Springfield rifle.

One of the most troublesome problems in a semiautomatic rifle is protecting the shooter from the necessarily sudden rearward motion of the bolt.

In the M1903 Springfield rifle, the knob of the cocking piece lies practically against the shooter’s cheek bone when he is aiming in the prone position. When he pulls the trigger, the knob moves forward with the firing pin six-tenths of an inch, before the primer is stuck and the recoil takes place. In spite of the fact that in falling the striker knob has moved away from the shooter’s face, it is not uncommon for him to get bumped by the cocking piece during the recoil, as all old-time Camp Perry shooters can testify.

After firing the hand-operated bolt-action rifle, the shooter auto-matically moves his head to one side, out of the way, lifts up the bolt handle, and draws the bolt to the rear.

In a self-loader, the bolt is slammed open with violence by the mechanism at the instant of firing. To avoid having it hit the shooter, the space into which the bolt moves when it flies open must be inclosed and protected so that the shooter cannot possibly get any part of his body in the way. When shooting a semiautomatic, the shooter’s eye must be placed, not just behind the end of the closed bolt, as it is in the hand-operated rifle, but beyond the rearmost position of the bolt when open.

As the shooter’s eye occupies a fixed position with relation to the butt of the gun, this means that the chamber, barrel and magazine must be moved forward a distance equal roughly to about the length of the

12 THE BOOK OF THE GARANDbreechbolt or bolt. That is one of the principal reasons why inventors have always found it so hard to design a neat, handy, lightweight semi-automatic rifle. Several of the early models were simply ’03 Springfields with an added gas cylinder plus a means for opening the bolt. In order to permit the bolt to be inclosed so as not to hit the shooter when it was slammed open by the gas action, these Springfields had to be length-ened from the usual 43.5 inches overall to about 50 inches, with a cor-responding increase in weight and clumsiness. Small wonder the using services took a dim view of these contraptions!

Even if the gun looked like a gun on the outside and came within the drastic weight limits, there was always a tendency on the part of inventors to make odd-shaped and fragile parts that would be difficult to manufacture; long curved hooks and levers and things of that kind. Many guns that would give a good demonstration were composed of parts that looked like they belonged in a typewriter or adding machine, rather than in a gun; and it was very difficult for any gun with these fragile, complicated parts to pass as good a test as one whose parts were simple and rugged and not subject to the constant danger of corrosion and breakage.

Another thing that these inventors had to cope with was the fact that the military rifle, unlike the hunting gun, had to fire a great many shots in rapid succession and consequently had to stand up and function under the severe heating that this caused. In addition means had to be provided for preventing the user of the gun from burning his hand. This meant a cover of some kind over the hot barrel, which of course further retarded the barrel cooling and made the heating even worse.

One constantly recurring situation arose in connection with the set-ting of a date for a test by an Army board and the notification of all inventors of a deadline beyond which no guns could be submitted. This deadline was usually a year or two in advance, but almost invariably when the time came for the board to make the test there would be one or more inventors with a gun that was almost ready; and the request would be made for an extension of the deadline for a few days or a few weeks.

Usually the board tried very hard to be fair in the matter and very frequently such extensions were granted; but almost always on the new date there would be someone else who would be “almost ready” and wanted just a few more days. After just so much of this, the board would have to decide to have the test on such-and-such a date anyway and stop granting further extensions. Usually inventors were then told that if anyone wanted to bring a gun in after the date set the board would at least look at it and if it were promising might decide to go ahead and

13OBTAINING A SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLEtest it. It simply became necessary, in self-defense, to cut off somewhere and go ahead and hold the tests. If all the requests for extensions had been listened to the first test would have not been held yet.

In any field of mechanical endeavor, there is likely to be continuous progress from year to year, and for that reason it soon became apparent that whenever a rifle was adopted for use by the Army, a new one with claims of being better would be presented before the first one could be gotten into manufacture. That again was a situation where some deci-sion finally had to be made, and it was obvious that if the board eventu-ally found one or more rifles which were suitable for adoption a time would have to come when the board would say, “Now we are going to take this rifle and tool up for it and put it in production and make it for several years regardless of whether some rifle claiming to be better than this is presented or not.” If this position had not been taken we still would not have a semiautomatic rifle because every time we got hold of something that was excellent we would defer its adoption in the hope of getting something perfect which was “ just around the corner.” There is an old saying that Best is the Enemy of Good. When the time finally came that the Army had a rifle which they thought was good enough to replace the Springfield, the decision was made to go ahead and arm with this gun anyhow on the theory that a gun 95 percent perfect in the hands of the soldier now is better than one 100 percent perfect at some indefinite time in the future.

In 1902, the Army had under test the rifle which was adopted the following year as the “U.S. Magazine Rifle, Model of 1903, Caliber .30” usually referred to in later years as the M1903 or ’03 Springfield.

In his report for the year 1902, the Chief of Ordnance said:

The only radical improvement in muskets which is now known to be under study is the application to these arms of the automatic principle, to the extent of causing the musket itself to effect its own reloading upon discharge. The principle has already been applied with some success to pistols, and its advocates claim that it is logically in the line of development of the magazine rifle in reducing to a minimum the interval between aimed shots. Both tactical and mechanical questions are involved in the consideration of the possible desirability of the substitution of a semiautomatic musket for the hand-operated magazine rifle. Up to the present time mechanical invention has not solved its part of the problem, and no rifle of the class has been presented to this Department for examination and test, although its willingness to take the subject up has been signified whenever the occasion has offered.

The project contemplated by the Chief of Ordnance in this statement

14 THE BOOK OF THE GARANDwas not brought to a successful conclusion until a third of a century later, when the Garand semiautomatic rifle was adopted early in 1936.

Early Sporting AutomaticsWhile it took thirty-four years for the military semiautomatic to ar-

rive, there was a good sporting semiautomatic rifle of reasonable high power on the market only four years after this report of the Chief of Ordnance. On June 3, 1902, John Moses Browning had received U.S. Patent No. 701,288 on a long-recoil mechanism which became the ba-sis of the Remington Model 8 Autoloader, introduced in 1906. It is still made but under the name of the Model 81. This rifle was, and still is, made in four calibers, .25, .30, .32, and .35 Remington. These Remington cartridges are rimless high-power sporting loads which are in effect rimless versions of the .25-35 Winchester, the .30-30, the .32 Winchester Special, and the .35 Winchester Center Fire.

In 1903 the Winchester Repeating Arms Company introduced a cal-iber .22 self-loading rifle and a special rim-fire cartridge for it. This gun was built on the blowback principle. This was followed two years later by the Self-loading Rifle Model 1905, made for two medium-power hunting cartridges especially designed for this gun, the .32 Winchester Self-loading, and the .35 Winchester Self-loading.

The Winchester Self-loading Rifle, Model 1907, was essentially the same as the Model 1905, except that it was made for the much more powerful .351 Winchester Self-loading cartridge. This gun and car-tridge are still made, while the 1905 and 1910 models have been dis-continued. The 1910 Model was for a more powerful .401 cartridge. The .32 and .35 SL were of decidedly low power, the .351 is of medium power, while the .401, with a 200-grain bullet at 2040 feet per sec-ond would qualify for the high-power class. These guns were all of the blowback type, which was made possible only by increasing the weight of the breechblock very greatly, attaching to it a heavy inertia weight which slid inside of the hollow forearm, resulting in a clumsy and un-balanced gun, though one with a very simple action.

About 1909, the Standard Arms Company of Wilmington, Delaware, put out a gas-operated, moderately high-power hunting rifle called the Standard Automatic Rifle, Model G. It was chambered for either the .25, the .30 or the .35 Remington cartridges, the same as those used in the Remington Model 8 Autoloaders. In 1911, I had one of the Remington .25s and one of the .35s, and also a Standard .25. The Standard jammed so often and so badly that I quickly got rid of it. This tendency of the gun to misbehave probably accounts for the fact that

15OBTAINING A SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLEthe company ceased operations. The Remington Autoloaders worked well.

In 1900 John Moses Browning had obtained a patent for an auto-loading shotgun. This was at first made in Belgium and marketed in America by the Browning Arms Company, of Ogden, Utah, but after a patent licensing arrangement the Remington Arms Company in 1905 brought out this gun as the Remington Autoloading Shotgun, Model 11. It had a long recoil action made on much the same principle as that of the Remington Model 8 Autoloading Rifle.

With all these semiautomatic hunting arms on the market there was still no military rifle of the same type in sight. One reason was to be found in the fact that our caliber .30 M1906 service cartridge was, for those days, one of the most powerful cartridges used by any shoulder rifle. It had a 150-grain bullet driven at a muzzle velocity of 2,700 feet per second by a charge of smokeless powder giving a maximum pres-sure of 50,000 pounds per square inch, while the average “high power” cartridge of those days, of either the military or the hunting type, had a normal chamber pressure of around 40,000 pounds per square inch, and a muzzle velocity of around 2,100 feet per second, more or less. Representative examples are the .30-40 Krag, the .30-30, the .25, .30, .32, and .35 Remington, and many others.

The rifle actions which could be made to handle such cartridges suc-cessfully simply were not anywhere nearly strong enough to handle the high-intensity service cartridge. Moreover, the heat generated by sus-tained fire with the high-pressure cartridge and its large powder charge was so severe that extraction became very difficult after only a few shots, and the stocks and hand guards were badly charred after a burst of a hundred shots rapid fire.

16 THE BOOK OF THE GARAND

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