First off it is a fine, and proven, rifle.

However the BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) was developed in 1918 and continued service in WW2. It was a select fire, high capacity detachable magazine 30.06.

Granted it was probably too heavy for general issue, but wouldn't a lighter, semi only rifle version have been more practical and effective?

I can't see that it would have been very difficult to bring it in at a similar weight and length as the Garand while retaining the benefit of the Browning design.

[peep]

Waiting for the Hand of God to come down and smite thee.

(hopefully not before my group buy gets here )

There were several designes available, but I would wake the wife getting to the books. Not to mention the fact, I should be hitting the school books now!

You've got to remember what everyone else had at the time.  That's the only way to get in the mindset of the time.  Compared to just about every other country's 5 shot bolt actions, the 8rnd semi-auto was nothing short of revolutionary!

My m1A isn't really all that much faster than my Garand.  Put into platoon size formations and it's really overpowering against bolt gun equiped platoons.

The enfield is 10 shot.[:D]

And the mag was removeable.

M14 was the refined sytnehsis between the BAR and Garand.  But I dont see how it could has been realized before or during the BAR or Garand's time.  The 30-06 had a lot to do with it.

You whom have blasphemed the mighty Garand, Gods own intrument of freedom given to the rightous Americans on the shores of tragedy, shall be punished for thy heresy.

Thought shalt from this day forth only be allowed to play with firearm that are legal in the state of California.

Yes, but it was still a bolt action.  I have an Enfield and "removable magazine" is debateable....

My understanding is that Garand's initial designs had a removable box mag but the Army brass didn't like it because it protruded too much & made parade drill difficult.

Pls... anyone compared the weight of the BAR with the one of the M1?

Try to take a look... [;)]

I don't know about before the war, but orders for a million US Rifle Cal .30 M2 were cut in early August 1945, and then cancelled a month later.
It would have been a M1 with a 20rnd detachable box magazine. Maybe even select fire. God knows how that would have worked with .30/06. Its magazines had one way interchangeabliity with the BAR. They were made to fit either gun, but earlier BAR mags would not fit the M2. BARs had a mag well and dropped free like a AR15 does. The M2 mags rocked in/rocked out like M14's. It was kind of like the AR10 and M1A.

Another alternative would have been to take the Garand action and use the magazine design from its rival, the Johnson. That design, while not a detachable box, could be "topped off" at any time with either a single cartridge or 5rnd Springfield chargers. This was more complicated than the Garands en-bloc clip or a detachable box though, but the few that were used by the Marines and the Dutch seemed to work fine.

Its worth noting that the BAR was considered obsolete by many officers and inferior to either the Bren or MG42. A lot of the "new" kinds of infantry units created in the early days of WWII-armored infantry, parachute infantry, and originally Ranger infantry-were issued M1919s as squad automatics instead because the M1918 was considered to not have enough firepower since it only held 20 rounds and didn't have a quick change barrel.

The Rangers quickly switched back to BARs in practice (even though the type did not appear ofically in their TOE's till Jan. 45') and most of the other types of infantry "acquired" them in the course of campagning. The superior mobility of the BAR won out in practice.

While the Army was trying to get rid of the BAR in the early part of WWII the Marines on the other hand were wanting more and more of them as they invented and proved the fire-team concept we know of today. They showed that what was needed was not to get rid of the BAR-but to issue more of them and take advantage of the fact it really could be operated by only one man and all the "true" LMGs on the market really required at lest two.

Army officers were not receptive to the fire team concept till Korea. Army rifle squads did not officially have two BARs each untill 1953 right before the type was taken out of service.

What happened to the BM59? I know it didn't come around till the early 60's but it seemed like a pretty slick deal..light,full auto,detach.mag and folding stock....

It was a metric M14. The Italians kept it longer so they made more variatons than we did but the two are very similar.

I’ve got to think weight would be a problem - goodness knows the Garand is heavy enough!!

Given the BAR’s big old steel receiver, it’s hard to see how the weight could have been gotten down to that of the Garand while retaining the 30-06 cartridge.

Also, while just a wild guess, I suspect the BAR was quite a bit more expensive and time consuming to make, given all the milling that appears to have been required.

Also the BAR (to the best of my foggy recollection) fired from an open bolt position, which really isn’t very suitable for a traditional battle rifle.

Incidentally, FWIW, while integral magazines are pretty much obsolete by today’s military standards, it is sometimes argued that one of the reasons the Garand was so very reliable was it’s integral magazine!!

Steyr, there was thunder and lightning in my gun safe this morning. [:D]

[b]"Was The M1 Garand A Mistake...?  "[/b]

You're gonna smoke a turd in hell for that one !
[}:(]


Garand designed the M1 to take  10 rounds of smaller caliber ( .243 ? ) ammo.
The US Army had tons of 30-06 left over from WWI and made him re-design it for 30-06.

At the time most of the world had equipped it's armies with bolt action rifles.

A well trained rifleman could reload an M1 in the blink of an eye, no need to waste time saving a spent mag. The en-bloc clip was discarded.
I was talking to an old timer about rifles, we were shooting his garand, I stated the M14 was better because of the 20 rnd. mag. Bullshit, he said and proceeded to let loose with his M1. I was amazed at his speed.

At the time, the Garand was the best military rifle in the world.


The BAR is the predecessor to the SAW, it should have been designed as a belt fed, quick change barrel. The Germans were way ahead of the US with the MG-42.

Let me throw this bone in there...


What if the Army HAD adopted the .276 Pederson as the primary infantry cartridge?  The M1 would then have had a capacity of 10 rounds.  

Any comments?  


A bit more on it:  As far as being effective, in it's day and time, it was a great infantry rifle.  It could be well used for volume of fire from a squad (when compared to an enemy that used a 5 round bolt gun)

I have a buddy who's father in law was in the Army in the 50s, and I believe, was a match shooter.  When the M14 was being tested, he was part of a demo.  The M14 against the M1, 20 rounds.  He was firing the M1.  He said it didn't take him but a second or two more than the M14 shooter to accurately burn off 20 rounds, including 2 reloads.  

I'll give up my home-defense M1 Garand when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.

[peep]

wow the BAR is HEAVY and clunky IMHO. I think our troops would be pissed if all had to lug them around.
Don't think you can attach a bayonet to them either =D

A LOT of you simply aren't reading or understanding what I wrote. I never said make the BAR the general issue rifle. I said they should have refined the BAR to around the Garands weight and lenght, in effect ending up with something very similar to a M14 in 30.06.

And I know there were many contenders such as the Johnson rifle.

Imagine if we had evolved the BAR into something closer to the M14. We would have been one jump ahead. The Germans had a shoulder fired paratrooper version of the MG34. Is anyone really suggesting we would have been unsuccessfull in scaling down a BAR?

There is a table with all the features of the BAR:

[url]http://www.rt66.com/~korteng/SmallArms/browning.htm
[/url]


It weights more than 8 kg....

now here you are the features of the Garand:

[url]
http://www.rt66.com/~korteng/SmallArms/m1rifle.html
[/url]

It's just half of the weight.

There is the same difference than between a M16A2 and a M296 SAW...

M1 Garand is a GREAT battle rifle, no mistakes!

O.K. I guess this is where my true colors come through.

But is this really that bad of a deal?.

M-1 Garand is Good to go in Kalifornia.

M1a. That is good to go too.

Colt 1911a1 that is good to go.

I would throw my Ar-15's into the ocean before I would even think about selling my Garands.

If there were ever a SHTF situation, My Ar-15 would not even be in my top 5.

[size=3] SO COULD YOU PLEASE PICK A PUNISHMENT THAT FITS HIS CRIME![/size=3] [:D]

"was the garand a mistake"

"SOMEBODY GET A ROPE"

Look up the designes of Col. Isaac Lewis, he designed an assault rifle as early as 1918. I am on my way to school, otherwise I would post more on it.

If memory serves, the Garand WAS originally designed to use a detachable box magazine, along with a different, lighter caliber.

The Army, in it's infinite wisdom, decided against the detachable magazines, and instead insisted on the en bloc clip.

The Garand was absolutely NOT a mistake. It was the best service rifle used in any large quantity during the war.

WWII was won with logistics and mass manufacturing.  Think of how many little Garand clips you can stamp out in the time it takes to assemble one BAR-style magazine?  Which one is easier to clean if you dropped it in the sand?  Blow the sand off a clip, and it's ready to go.  Don't try that at home with a spring loaded ammo can.

A M14/M1 Garand BAR would still be open bolt though.  Plus the lighter weight would make it unusable in full auto .  A closed bolt semi scaled down/lightened BAR would be neat though.  

A .30-06 sized M14/Beretta BM59 semiauto using BAR mags & a quick change barrel BAR (FN-D ) SAW (possibly with a 30rnd mag)would kick ass.   Something like the German FG42 might work also.

SAFN could have done it to !!

A mistake?

No...

A larger detatchable mag would have been usefull, but I doubt full-auto would have been any good (too much kick from 30-06 for that light of a gun)... If they had invented .308 in 1942, then a full-auto Garand would have made sense...

But Dave, the recoil from M2 Ball and military 7.62 loadings would be almost identical.  Recall if you will, some M14s were made select fire.  The Army deemed them not controllable.  

Now, if the .276 Pederson was adopted, it might have been more controllable in fully automatic fire.  

Kinda the same thinking for the Russian Federov automatic rifle.  Full auto but chambered in 6.5x50 Japanese instead of 7.62x54R. [img]http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/ARavtomat.jpg[/img]

[url]http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0BQY/3_46/59281217/p1/article.jhtml?term=[/url]

The Germans did something like what you guys were talking about, IIRC...

StG-44... Very 'AK-ish' design, select-fire, detatchable mag, and IIRC it was a 7.92x57JS weapon (same cartridge as the K98)...

Actually the Germans also did the G43 which is more inline with what I originally suggested.

No, 7.92x33 Kurtz cartridge for the StG-44. The FG-42 was the one that was 7.92x57.

The G43 was actually a German refinement in 7.92x57 of the SVT-40 Tokarav 7.62x54R rifle.

What made the BAR controllable in full auto was it's mass.  Lighten that gun up and full auto becomes impractical.

Frankly, with a properly adjusted sling, you can rattle off rounds from an M1 in blistering fashion, and reloading with en blocs is simple and fast.

The M1 was and is an extraordinary design.

The IDF perfected the BAR.

FN-D "BAR" was the result.

Now just who would do something as foolish as that?

[peep]

Amen, brother!  

No sir, it was a modified, by the Italians, M1 Garand, not an M14.

And the M14 is a M1 modified by Americans. There is a long BM59 that looks like a Garand with a box magazine sticking out of it. But most of the BM59s built are the models with the shorter gas system like our M14, and which was a improved version of the system on the short "tanker" Garands built-but never issued-for use in the Pacific and CBI in WWII. The rare BM62 carbine looks JUST like a tanker Garand-except for the box mag sticking out of it.

They Italians were short on funds so Beretta used recycled Garand parts in early BM59s.

Mostly right, a BM59 was made from an M1 receiver, some had a proper Garand gas system, but later went to an M14 style, both worked well. They were select fire, though a "civvie"  model was made that was semi only.

The italians used spare M1 parts, not just because they were broke, but because the BM59 was a modded M1...

The Semi only models are fun if you can find one [:D]

I think the 30.06 decision was a good one. Our troops would have been in a lot more trouble if they BAR's & MG's had had different ammo in the heat of battle.

This is the truth.

You could not make many of the parade manuvers with a prottruding box magazine.  Besides it didn't "look" right.

Bureaucracy at it's best.

I love the Garand but the Johnson had two advatages:

The magazine could be topped off.  Loading an empty mag could be done with a stripper clip.

No sound as the empty clip ejects after the last round.

Dave

Its a tangled story.

Basically the Army wanted a Semi Automatic Rifle that would Replace the 1903 Springfield.
The BAR had several problems which did NOT allow it to be considered. (1.) it was fully automatic, (2.) it was too heavy, (3.) it had a protruding magazine which would interfere with the then current manual of arms.

John Garand has a Canadian born Machinest working at Springfield Armory. He only had a High School Education. The Ordinance Department hired a well known arms designer: Pederson to design the next service rifle.

Pederson found that he couldn't make his design function safely due to the higher pressures of the 30-06 service cartridge so he managed to get the Ordinance department to consider switching to a smaller and less powerful cartridge the .276 Pederson.

Meanwhile John Garand was very interested in creating the next service rifle, and on his own time with his own money, he created a series of prototypes. His wasn't sure whether or not the .276 Pederson cartridge would replace the 30-06 round so his prototypes included versions which were chambered for either cartridge.

Garand initially wanted the Garand to use BAR mags but since the Ordinance department was opposed to such a concept, Garand designed the En Bloc Clip.

Garand also tried out several different gas systems, before settling on the one that ended up on the M1 Rifle.

During Field Tests Garand's rifle outperformed Pederson's rifle, but Ordinance officials were still favoring the Pederson Rifle...Meanwhile MacArthur nixed the idea of dumping the 30-06 cartridge because it would have been too costly to switch, and would have created logistical problems since the machine guns were chambered in 30-06 instead of .276 Pederson.

By this single Act, the Pederson Rifle was eliminated from the trials..and Garand's rifle was the only one left.

Johnson (like Armalite did with the AR)submitted his rifle too late to be considered.
Johnson created something of a stink in congress with unfounded charges that the Ordinance Department were prejudicial in their treatment of his rifle.

Tests were conducted and the Garand still proved more robust than the Johnson M41 rifle.

(Johnson later was a consultant for Armalite and helped Eugene Stoner design the AR10)

Incidently the M1 Garand was initially designed and had its sights calibrated for the M1 Service Cartridge which fired a 175 grain FMJ bullet.

Since we were going to be building them from scratch-and werent short on cash- we reengineered just about everything in the Garand design to produce the M14. But it is still a modified Garand design. The BM59s may have more actual interchangablity with their predicessor but they are still both modified Garand design.