{"id":2610,"date":"2008-05-23T06:09:58","date_gmt":"2008-05-23T11:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2610"},"modified":"2008-05-23T06:09:58","modified_gmt":"2008-05-23T11:09:58","slug":"hot-gear-friday-the-m1-garand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2610","title":{"rendered":"Hot Gear Friday: The M1 Garand"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Memorial Day Weekend – so today, I’m highlighting the “hot gear” most familiar to “the greatest generation”.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s the M1 Garand, America’s standard infantry rifle from the mid-thirties until the late fifties.<\/p>\n

A rugged, solid, deceptively compact rifle in .30-06, with a simple gas action, it was the rifle the US military carried in World War II and Korea; indeed, the first men to use it in combat were the North Dakota National Guardsmen of the 164th Infantry Regiment on Guadalcanal about whom I wrote last year for Memorial Day<\/a>; fighting at the Matanikau River and Bloody Nose Ridge in 1942 (the Marines, being far down the supply chain as they were, still carried World War I-vintage M1903 Springfields, of which more in a later installment).<\/p>\n

I’ve shot a few Garands – indeed, I’ve come || <---this close <\/em>to buying Garands a couple of times.\u00a0 They’re sweet, accurate rifles; the only problems are the peep sights<\/a>, which I can’t stand,\u00a0 and the top-loading, eight-shot, “all-or-nothing” block clip magazine.<\/p>\n

The rifle was such a solid, reliable concept that when the world started changing to high-capacity magazines in the late ’50s, the Army simply rechambered it for the shorter .308 Winchester round, tacked on a 20-round box magazine, made a few mechanical changes (including “selective fire”, the ability to fire in full automatic, like a machine gun), and called it the M14 – which still serves today, and is reportedly especially favored in the desert for its long range, accuracy and hitting power compared to the relatively lightweight M16\/M4.<\/p>\n

And since it’s Memorial Day, I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight some more gear; the M1911A1 pistol…:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…which was designed almost 100 years ago during America’s last insurgency against a seemingly-intractable Moslem insurgency, in the Philippines.\u00a0 Designed to knock a charging, drug-crazed attacker down with no questions asked using a big, bulbous .45 round that was designed for relatively minimal <\/em>efficiency (so as to leave its kinetic energy in the first thing it hit), it’s mechanically simple but metaphorically rich; “everyone speaks Colt”, it’s said, since the sound of that big metal slide racking a round is reportedly usually enough to scare burglars into the next zip code.\u00a0 It’s on my agenda for one of these next tax refunds – along with a nice jacket.<\/p>\n

And no Hot Gear “Greatest Generation” edition would be complete without the red-headed stepchildred of the bunch – the Browning Automatic Rifle…:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…which was what they’d call a “squad automatic weapon” today – designed to put a hail of lead over your target so they’d keep their heads down so the guys with the Garands could close in and lob grenades at them.\u00a0I’ve never shot a BAR, although I met a guy at a re-enactor show who owned one, and took it apart for me.\u00a0 It was big, heavy, and used a sliding-block bolt that wasn’t at all unfamiliar to me, shooting my Ljungman <\/a>at the time.\u00a0 My overriding impression – having been on a brief jag of learning about machine-tooling metal at the time – was “this receiver is one big beautiful piece of metal”.\u00a0 Which was true, although in wartime not necessarily a good thing.<\/p>\n

Quite the opposite of today’s final Hot Gear submission, the M3 Grease Gun:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Designed in the middle of World War II to be cheap, simple and easy to manufacture, it was almost entirely built of stampings; only the barrel and bolt were actually machined.\u00a0 So bone-simple was it that it didn’t even have a cocking handle;\u00a0 you stuck your finger in the ejection port into a hole in the bolt and hauled it directly back yourself.\u00a0 I’d read about this for years, of course; but when I actually got a chance to shoot an M3 back in 2000, it actually wasn’t as weird as I’d thought it would be.\u00a0 And – for the record – there are few things as cool as firing something on full-automatic; (I fired ten shots.\u00a0 In three bursts.\u00a0 Booyah).<\/p>\n

So – thanks, veterans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s Memorial Day Weekend – so today, I’m highlighting the “hot gear” most familiar to “the greatest generation”. It’s the M1 Garand, America’s standard infantry rifle from the mid-thirties until the late fifties. A rugged, solid, deceptively compact rifle in .30-06, with a simple gas action, it was the rifle the US military carried in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hot-gear-friday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}