Hatcher`s Book of the Garand

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
PART ONE: HISTORY
Chapter 1: Types of Semiautomatic Rifles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 2: D
ifficulties in Obtaining a Military
Semiautomatic Rifle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Chapter 3: Early Military Semiautomatics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Chapter 4: Developments After World War I. . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Chapter 5: Caliber .30 Garand Finally Chosen. . . . . . . . . . . 110
Chapter 6: M1 And M2 Ammunition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Chapter 7: New Arrivals to the Garand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Chapter 8: Marine Corps Test of Semiautomatics . . . . . . . . . 141
Chapter 9: General Description of the M1 Rifle. . . . . . . . . 154
Chapter 10: The Sights. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
PART TWO: OPERATION
Chapter 11: The Functioning of the M1 Rifle . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Chapter 12: Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Chapter 13: Care and Cleaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Chapter 14: Malfunctions and Stoppages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Chapter 15: Disassembly and Assembly of the Ml Rifle. . . . 221
PART THREE: THE GARAND IN ACTION
Chapter 16: The M1 Rifle in World War II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Chapter 17: The Garand as a Match Rifle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
APPENDIX
Parts and Assemblies for the M1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Bibliography of Semiautomatic Rifles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
vii
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.
viii
PART ONE: HISTORY
Chapter 1
TYPES OF SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLES
The subject of this book is the U.S. Rifle, Caliber .30, M1, a semiautomatic 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 adopted. 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 semiautomatic 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
1
Pronounced 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).
1
2
THE BOOK OF THE GARAND
long 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 selfloader, 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 automatic, 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 semiautomatic 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 shoulder 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 Weapons
Straight 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 blowback system, as are most so-called automatic or self-loading pistols.
There are also on the market some self-loading hunting rifles of
TYPES OF SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLES
3
medium 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 semiautomatics 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 Weapons
Short-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 successful 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 autoloading high-powered rifles and the Remington and Browning autoloading 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 Mechanisms
The high gas pressure in the barrel of the gun gives the inventor another 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 invented a revolver, now in the Museo de Armeria at Eiber, which worked
on this principle. In the same article he also mentions a revolver patented 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 Mechanisms
A variation of the gas-operated system is one in which the primer of
TYPES OF SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLES
5
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 engaged 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 ordinary 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 System
Another 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.
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 suddenly 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 revolutionize 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 advanced version of this approach was used by the numerous chaps who,
on seeing a self-loading or automatic pistol for the first time would immediately “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 mechanism, 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.
6
OBTAINING A SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLE
7
The man who happened to think up a good mechanism for a semiautomatic 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 necessary 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 chambered 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 wanted, 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 pioneers 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 GARAND
before 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 number 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 doing 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-recoil 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
OBTAINING A SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLE
9
was 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 demonstration 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 modify 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 piston 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 inventor 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 GARAND
North 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 appropriations 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 urgent 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 selfloading rifle has to finance the effort in one of several different ways.
One of these is to persuade someone with money available for speculation, 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 backing 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 controlled by the inventor), came up against the official Army test the results 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
OBTAINING A SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLE
11
of 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 automatically 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 GARAND
breechbolt or bolt. That is one of the principal reasons why inventors
have always found it so hard to design a neat, handy, lightweight semiautomatic 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 lengthened from the usual 43.5 inches overall to about 50 inches, with a corresponding 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 setting 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
OBTAINING A SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLE
13
test 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 decision finally had to be made, and it was obvious that if the board eventually 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 GARAND
was 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 Automatics
While it took thirty-four years for the military semiautomatic to arrive, 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 basis 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 caliber .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 cartridge are still made, while the 1905 and 1910 models have been discontinued. 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 second 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 unbalanced 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
OBTAINING A SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLE
15
the company ceased operations. The Remington Autoloaders worked
well.
In 1900 John Moses Browning had obtained a patent for an autoloading 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 pressure 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 successfully simply were not anywhere nearly strong enough to handle the
high-intensity service cartridge. Moreover, the heat generated by sustained 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.
Gas-operated semiautomatic rifle patented by Manuel Mondragon of Tacubaya, D.F., Mexico, May 1907. U.S. Patent No. 853,715.
16
THE BOOK OF THE GARAND