Quoted: Gosh, if we're debating the Mini14 vs. the M1 for the purposes of WW-II, then why not debate whether the M16 would have been better... The M1 was the best standard infantry rifle of its time.  By the same token, I don't think we should start issuing them to troops now.  Times have changed. But seriously, maybe I'm just not getting the whole point of this thread...

Well i think the idea behind the thread is that the mini-14's design is much more closely related to WWII era weaponry than the M16.  Its a cousin of Garand and Carbine's designs were as the M16 isn't even related.

Quoted: Quoted: I do not think the mini would hold up at all in a military enviorment. It would get beat to death. I do not believe any military in the world has ever used the mini as a standard service weapon. This should tell you something. In what area exactly do you think the Mini is not sturdy enough? What parts don't hold up? The Mini was never marketed as a military rifle; it was instead put on the market as a Police weapon, and in fact has sold quite well. There are Minis in Police service all over the world; I've seen the pics. My main point is, if half the GIs preferred to carry the Carbine, think of the impact the Mini would have made, considering the killing power of the .223. And, ever field stripped a Garand? All those flinking little pieces that have to fit back together just right. And can get lost.

Field stripping a Garand has very few pieces, detail stripping ont he other hand has ore than a few pieces that coudl get lost, which is why you don't detail strip in th efield.   The Mini 14 is not any better, though field stripping is similar.

I am not clear on what you mean by "overly powerful cartridge".  Overly powerful because you can penetrate unarmored vehicles, wood doors, and light walls with it?  The recoil on a Garand is really not that significant, and actually less than that of the FAL and many other .30 weapons.  I can acutally shoot more accurately with an M1 Garand than an M4 carbine due to the weight of the weapon reducing wobble and soaking up recoil, and the longer sight radius.  YMMV.

I am also pretty stumped on your assertion that the Garnd is difficult to field strip.  You can take the entire thing apart with a .30 bullet as your only tool.  Yes, you do need to be shown how to do it once or twice, but that is pretty much the case with any weapon.  In fact, John Garand pirded himself on the fact that the rifle was so easy to field strip, and that is actaully one of the reasons the rifle was adopted.

I would actually agree that the Mini 14 would be better than an M1 carbine, but that is kinda like arguing that a Buck Roger disintegrator ray would be a better sidearm than the Beretta M9.  

I would be curious to know if you have ever handled or fired a Garand, as I feel your knowledge on the M1 is a bit lacking.

Didn't you see the pic of my M-1 on the first page?

By calling the .30-06 "over powerful" look what I said about the ranges that typical firefights have occured at, and the distance at which a man size target can be seen...about 300m max, while the M-1 can shoot to 800 or better.

I think the most important point is that the Garand fit the tactics used for combat back then.  I think there was more emphasis put on engaging the enemy at distances that are futher than what is the norm in today's military.  Might be wrong, but just IIRC.

European theater, NO WAY.

Pacific?  I see where a smaller carbine with a more powerfull round would have been usefull.

Korea?  Nope.

I think that if there was to be any improvments of any kind it would have been for a more portable squad served weapon with a mag capacity larger than the BAR.

There seems to be a concensus with a larger mag that lends itself to"I've always got 20more"
Where as with the Garand, well, if ya miss a few, not too many more to go.

Given my limited experience with either weapon, today I'd pick the Garand.  

Quoted: Didn't you see the pic of my M-1 on the first page? By calling the .30-06 "over powerful" look what I said about the ranges that typical firefights have occured at, and the distance at which a man size target can be seen...about 300m max, while the M-1 can shoot to 800 or better.

Pic only shows up as a red 'X' for me, so no, actually I didn't.

I also have to laugh at the range comment- not specifically at you saying it, but in general.  Post World War II doctrine was that you didn't need longarm that was lethal at more than 300 meters because you caouldn't engage a target at more than that range.  Thisk, of course was based on the experience of fighting in Europe and the Pacific, where there were very few opportunities for a shot at greater than that dsitance due to cover and terrain. With this in mind we ended up with the M-16 series by the early 1960's

Here we are in 2005, with M16 rifles with an efftive terminal ballistics range of 300 meters and M4 carbines for the Army that have effective terminal ballistics at a range of 150 meters or so, and find ourselves in wide open spaces such as Afghanistan and Iraq where shots of 500-600 meters and becoming common and even 800 meters is unheard of.  So what do they do?  break out the M-14, basically the post war magazine fed M1 Garand!  

I guess things have come full circle...

I Korea I think it would do much better than the Carbine (M1 and M2).  There was a problem of Carbines not penetrating heavy clothing of the Chinese at range.  I don't know how true it is, but it is pretty wide spread among "accounts" in books and such.  This is one of the reasons the Tompson was hardly used.  A Mini-14 with a 223 bullet should penitrate fairly easily.

Of couse the M1 Carbine was known to freeze shut in the cold winter months and/or not recyle so in essence they were fighting with a bolt action.  Something to do with firing the weapon created condisation on the action and barrel (reaction heat cold) but it was so cold out side it would freeze the water created from the condisation in a matter of seconds.  I don't know if this was a problem for the garand or not.

Shooting Carbines for many years I cannot beleive the tales of under penetration, I think it has more to do with some guy firing the gun on full auto & not hitting his target.
The .30 Carbine penetrates nicely, Ill bet it would give most modern soft body armor a run for its money.
I hope someone out ther gives us a .30 Carbine box of truth!!

Quoted: I Korea I think it would do much better than the Carbine (M1 and M2).  There was a problem of Carbines not penetrating heavy clothing of the Chinese at range.  I don't know how true it is, but it is pretty wide spread among "accounts" in books and such.  This is one of the reasons the Tompson was hardly used.  A Mini-14 with a 223 bullet should penitrate fairly easily. Of couse the M1 Carbine was known to freeze shut in the cold winter months and/or not recyle so in essence they were fighting with a bolt action.  Something to do with firing the weapon created condisation on the action and barrel (reaction heat cold) but it was so cold out side it would freeze the water created from the condisation in a matter of seconds.  I don't know if this was a problem for the garand or not.

Europe = Sten

Europe = MP-38

Europe = PPSh-41

Quoted: Quoted: Didn't you see the pic of my M-1 on the first page? By calling the .30-06 "over powerful" look what I said about the ranges that typical firefights have occured at, and the distance at which a man size target can be seen...about 300m max, while the M-1 can shoot to 800 or better. Pic only shows up as a red 'X' for me, so no, actually I didn't. I also have to laugh at the range comment- not specifically at you saying it, but in general.  Post World War II doctrine was that you didn't need longarm that was lethal at more than 300 meters because you caouldn't engage a target at more than that range.  Thisk, of course was based on the experience of fighting in Europe and the Pacific, where there were very few opportunities for a shot at greater than that dsitance due to cover and terrain. With this in mind we ended up with the M-16 series by the early 1960's Here we are in 2005, with M16 rifles with an efftive terminal ballistics range of 300 meters and M4 carbines for the Army that have effective terminal ballistics at a range of 150 meters or so, and find ourselves in wide open spaces such as Afghanistan and Iraq where shots of 500-600 meters and becoming common and even 800 meters is unheard of.  So what do they do?  break out the M-14, basically the post war magazine fed M1 Garand!   I guess things have come full circle...

Full circle? Not hardly.

AIN"T NO WAY your average infantryman is gonna hit a man-sized tarcet at 800m, no matter what rifle he has.

AIN'T NO WAY

And, the avearge combat engagement in Iraq RIGHT NOW is about...10 meters!

I don't really undestand the first part of your response, but I gather above you are somehow trying to make the argument that the European power's SMG's were somehow equivalent to the Mini 14 and I guess you are just ignoring that those European powers all issued bolt-action rifles as their primary arm?  I am not clear how the M1 carbine and the Thompson and Greasegun fit into your view here either.

I think a better argument might be "would the M1 Carbine have been issued more extensively if the cartridge had been more potent" as that is what you really seem to be driving at.  It is also an argument that has been done to death over the years.

But that misses the whole point that the M1 carbine was not meant to be used as a primary arm, it was meant as a sidearm which was easier to use than a pistol as it takes a lot less training to use a longarm effectively.

In the end I really have no idea what you are trying to prove here, except to suggest that the Mini 14 is really cool.  You might as well use AR-15's in your argument as the net result is the same- of course they would have been better off with a more modern technology and a weapon that fit the requirements of the theater, but that simply isn't the way it works.  They took a guess at what would be the "ideal" weapon and maybe the cartridge is a bit overpowered, but on the upside it meant common ammunition between the obsolete rifle, the current rifle, the squad automatic rifle, and the standard light and medium machine gun.  I would also point out that the Mini 14 does not use some fast production stamped steel receiver, but actually is a cast one which is then machined- hardly the technolgical jump in production from the Garand you seem to be suggesting. Really the only true techonolgoical leap the Mini-14 had (save for the cartridge issue, which I have already covered and can be argued as usefulness versus commonlatiy) is the use of magazines, and IIRC early protoypes fo the Garand did indeed have a box magazine, but there were concerns taht a man would expend ammuntiion too fast, so the enbloc clip system was adopted.

Also remember only 4 million garands were produced vs 6 million carbines.  SMGs were way below that something like a million for both M3 and M1 smgs.

Quoted: Do you think the Mini-14 would have made a better combat weapon than the M-1 Garand?

Are you sure you are not trying to reach status?

If we are going to go back in time and give WWII GIs a weapon other than the Garand and Carbine based on what we learned during and after WWII, why not give them M16s or M4s?  We can chamber them in 6.8 SPC or 6.5 Grendel while we're at it.

We can give the Brits EM2s in .280 British (7x43) while we're at it...

Quoted: Also remember only 4 million garands were produced vs 6 million carbines.  SMGs were way below that something like a million for both M3 and M1 smgs.

Where are those numbers from? I know that the Springfield Armory made garands into the 5 million and beyond range both during and after the war.

Are those Carbine numbers including post war production?

Im not sure I can quite follow those numbers.

Quoted: The mini 14 would have made an excellent combat weapon, provided that the enemy was standing anywhere other than where the shooter was aiming.

IIRC Project SALVO suggested that a weapon firing four rounds into a 20" area would have double the hit probability of existing semi-automatic weapons (the carbine and Garand).  Mini 14s can do that

Not trolling here.

I asked exactly the question I meant to ask. It was the type of thought question I like to ponder myself; I don't care how many times it has been adressed, as I never participated in such a discussion.

The reason I put the Mini-14 into this scenario is that it is mechanically similar to the Carbine, it fit the contemporary view of what a rifle looked like (as opposed to say the AK-47), and could have been manufactured by the indusrty of the time, while the M-16 could not have been.

I don't think the mini is particulary "cool". I am capable of rational thought where guns are concerned; some people here, however, read into any discussion the idea that if someone posts about a certain gun or piece of equipment, he is automatically a non-critical advocate of said gear. Perhaps that is the way they are, and so project their behavior on other people's words.

I own a Garand. I like it for the part it played in history, and for its careful engineering. I do not however think it was the best that could have been made at the time; IMHO it was hampered by the "rifleman" mythos. As proven by an exhaustive statistical analysis of battle casualties suffered by US troops in the early 1950's (done as part of Project ALCLAD, an effort to improve body armor) it was determined that AIMED RIFLE FIRE was INSIGNIFICANT when it came to the chance of becoming a casualty. What mattered was Time and Degree of Exposure. Random shots got the job done, not the "one shot, one kill" philosophy that dictated WWII US Army tactics, traing and equipment.

The Garand was a product of that mistaken view of infantry combat. The "spray and pray" M-16 was a correct answer to the problem. Proof? In WWII, small arms accounted for 15% of enemy casualties. In Vietnam small arms caused nearly 50%. Spray and pray indeed.

But I digress. Perhaps I should have added to the above two paragraphs to the original post, but I assumed you guys were all up on SALVO and the whole assault rifle concept.

People, especially in large, tradition bound organizations are slow to change even when confronted with data.  That said, and assuming the results of project ALCLAD and SLA Marshall's studies had been available, accepted and understood before the war, then maybe we would have had something more like the Winchester Lightweight Military Rifle or Mini-14 during the war.  From what I've read, the troops sure liked the M1 Carbine.

AR15 owners may look down our noses at the Mini-14's accuracy, but I'm sure it's more accurate than the MP44 and PPSH used by early (WWII) converts to the firepower paradigm.

I read Bill Ruger came up with preliminary designs for what evolved into a light machine gun for the Army and he spent WWII as a military gun designer, so maybe the idea's not that far out.

Don't forget that the WW2 5.56 wouldn't have been like today's 5.56 due to powder formulations.  For example, today's 7.62 has all the attributes of WW2 30-06.

Quoted: Don't forget that the WW2 5.56 wouldn't have been like today's 5.56 due to powder formulations.  For example, today's 7.62 has all the attributes of WW2 30-06.

The 7.62 is loaded to 55,000 PSI whereas the .30-06 is restricted to 51,000 PSI. We can do that because of better metallurgy.

But everyone seems fond of saying that the Mini is made of inferior steels, so mebbe a .223 Mini could have been viable in the 1940's...