Was the M1 Carbine a more advanced weapon than the Garand?

Considering the military ended up with a plastic rifle firing the 5.56, an M1 carbine with better magazines and something with a little more range than the .30 carbine could have succeeded as a bridge between Garand and M16. But we must remember that it was never ever viewed as a primary infantry rifle, so whether it was technologically more advanced than the Garand is rather immaterial. Given the thinking and decision that gave us the ill-conceived M14/7.62x51, what is truly amazing is that the military ever got to the M16/5.56!

My father was in one of the earliest Army Air groups sent to North Africa. He started as waist and tail gunner in B-24's and transitioned to aircraft armorer ground crew in a P-38 group. He told me his options for a personal weapon were the Thompson or M1911. He told me that although he was by no means a marksman with a hand gun he chose the 1911 because it was much easier to keep clean for snap inspection and much lower weight and bulk.

He had plenty long gun experience before being drafted as a child of The Great Depression hunting food from squirrels on up in rural Kansas along the border with Oklahoma. He had zero handgun experience before being drafted.

If the M1 Carbine had been an available option when he was drafted it's likely that would have been his choice as a personal firearm. He was never engaged in ground combat during his service.

The carbine is a handgun. Supposed to be issued as a handgun. A sub 40k psi loaded handgun.
It is effective as a shorter ranged combat arm.

I would say the M1 rifle is more technically advanced.
It comes from the middle 20s and early 30s.

The carbine was a product of the late 30s by that point a box fed auto was common enough. And just slapped together (in a very real sense) in a few weeks from off the shelf parts.
Svt36,38,40; proper submachine guns, true box fed lmg

They both come from almost completely different worlds in a small arms sense.
Hell the FN 49 is a late 30s prewar design but was disrupted by the war and is as the M1.

1KPerDay said:

Why is it meaningless? You think getting hit by a 147 grain spitzer at 2700 FPS is the same as getting hit by a 110 grain RN at 1900? Do you think vehicles respond the same way? Do you think they defeat barriers the same way?

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The Carbine was intended for use against a human adversary, not armor. It was intended to be issued to troops who didn't normally use a rifle. You think being hit amidships with a .30 Carbine round is insignificant? You are thinking in terms of some extended argument based on exaggerations and what ifs.

My dad was part of a mortar crew in Korea. He was issued a carbine in addition to all the other mortar-related stuff he carried. He was only in combat for about six weeks before he was hit and permanently disabled. Even in that short time he developed an intense dislike of the Carbine that he carried with him forever. He never wanted to talk about his combat experiences much, but my impression was that he had at least one personal experience with it not doing the job as effectively as he would have liked.

So whatever points the Carbine gains in modernity of design it loses because of the underpowered cartridge it was chambered for.

WestKentucky said:

30 carbine was way too weak to be a barrel rifle. Technologically I would agree that the carbine was preferable to the Garand due to the magazine, but the puny cartridge and relatively heavy weight for such a wimpy gun were not a recipe for success.

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Relatively heavy weight? An M1 Carbine with magazine and sling weighs 5 1/2 pounds, about as much as a Ruger 10/22. I know I'd much rather carry one than a 10 lb Garand. Of course if it came time to shoot anyone I'd much rather have the Garand, especially if the distance were over 50 yards.

Archie said:

The Carbine was intended for use against a human adversary, not armor. It was intended to be issued to troops who didn't normally use a rifle. You think being hit amidships with a .30 Carbine round is insignificant? You are thinking in terms of some extended argument based on exaggerations and what ifs.

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What a weapon is intended to be used for and what it actually gets used for are two different things. As noted, it was intended for rear/support troops, for example. It got used by much more and in different roles than intended.

What I was going to say. The boffins thought it was a pistol substitute but there were plenty of warfighters who liked it. There were lots who didn't, too. How democratic can an army be?

I'll state my opinion that the average draftee of the 1940s with minimal basic training and little civilian marksmanship experience could do a better job defending himself and his fellow soldiers with an M1 Carbine than he could with the other issue US small arms at the time the M1 Carbine was developed (1941):
.45 1911A1 Pistol,
.45 M1928A1 Thompson Submachine Gun,
.30-06 M1 Garand semi-auto rifle,
.30-06 M1903A3 Springfield bolt action rifle,
.30-06 M1918A2 BAR machine rifle, and
a hodge podge of 12ga Riot and Trench Guns pump and semi-autos from half-a-dozen shotgun makers.
There were reasons six million M1 Carbines were made in WWII by twelve manufacturers: one was demand from the field.

My dad was a six foot 200 pound family farm boy and sawmill worker who helped vary the family diet by hunting before WWII.
In WWII as an infantryman in the Pacific he preferred the BAR and if none working were available he would grudgingly accept a Garand but none of the lesser small arms.
Years after he passed away I acquired an M1 Carbine as a WWII/Korean War collectible and I shoot it participating in local military rifle matches.
Given his stated opinion of the carbine, I am gonna catch it when I pass away and we meet up again.

But 110 grain bullet at 1950 feet per second yields 929 foot-pounds muzzle energy which is impressive compared to handgun rounds, like 9mm Luger (115 gr at 1180 fps for 355 ft-lbs).
Looking at the muzzle energy ballistics of the .30 Carbine versus common rifles, it is one-third the power of the .30-06 and one-half the power of the .30-30.
Honestly .30 Carbine does not compare well to real rifle calibers either military or deer hunting. It does compare well with varmint rifle cartridges like the .32-20

I recall an old American Rifleman article by Jac Weller that reported the Italian rifle squad of the time (1960s) had two Garands and the rest Beretta SMGs.
Roy Dunlap said that in his time in North Africa, that everybody on both sides liked the Beretta.

I have long figured that all those German Mausers and Schmeissers were mostly to keep Americans and Russians from annoying the MG 38 or MG 42 gunner.

On just technicals alone, mag. vs clip., range, terninal ballistics can all be juggled for performance. What was more advanced? M1 gas system or carbine "button"? Could the "button" work with a full sized cartridge? Remembering Garand experimented with primer operated ejection systems.

MikeInOr said:

On a side note, when were black tips (Armor piercing 30-06 rounds) issued, to what troupes and how were they used? Just curious? Was it mostly just used in machine guns?

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Ap ammo was routinely issued to the infantry when available. The logic was simple; It is just as effective as ball ammo as an anti-personnel round and considerably more effective when you had to shoot through something your enemy was hiding behind.

I love the Carbine, I have owned several over the years and every GI one I had from about 1968 on has been great...we won't talk about a green tefloned Universal with mounting holes in the left side of the receiver and a plastic plate to fill the holes.... I would like to have had one on the patrols I ran in Europe around Pershing sights instead of an M16A1 at that time.

BUT,

For General war fighting in Europe in 1944 I can not see arming the majority of the troops with Carbines despite the weight and handiness.

Combat is not folks standing in the open like a pop up kneeling man target at a known distance.

Yes the sights of the Carbine are adjustable for range to 300 yards. The Army said 275 was the maxilmum effective range and the early manuals showed qualifying to 275 yards.

BUT

The trajectory of the .30 Carbine round IS NOT as flat as the .30-06 M2 Ball and AP round from a Garand. Remember that kneeling man target? with the Garand properly Battle sight Zeroed at 250 yards (even using the 25 yard zero target) if one aims center of mass at the kneeling man target with a properly battle sight zeroed rifle a hit on target between the hips and forhead will occur.

This is not true for the Carbine. The sights need to be adjusted for each range. But wait it gets worse. Elevation is set at the factory or Depot and is not adjustable by the user. Just because the sight setting says 100 is no promise that you will hit point of aim at 100 yards! One must actually sort of do Kentucky Windage (but with elevation) with the carbine unless one is lucky.

NEXT

If you have ever been an Infantryman you understand the difference between cover and concealment. Cover means something which enemy fire does not penitrate. Concealment means the enemy can not see you but nothing stops his bullets if he is say shooting at that bush you mistakenly thought to get behind.

A single sand bag (cross wise, flat) is cover for someone being shot at with carbine frequently. For some one being shot at with a Garand it is only concealment. A telephone sized log is cover for someone being shot at with a Carbine but only Concealment for someone being shot at with a Garand. Same same with typical house walls in 1944 Europe. Same same with being inside a typical half track of the time.

Makes a difference.

So if I were arming just kBob, YAY Carbine!! But an Infantry Squad, YAY GARAND!!!!!!

All that commonality of ammo stuff in WWII infantry Companies. The Rifleman's ammo is in Enbloc Garand clips and issued in bandliers of the same. BAR gunners typically got 20 round boxed ammo. 1919 gunners got metal linked ammo....and occasionally cloth belts but mainly steel links....for a fun time try delinking ammo from a 1919 steel link sometime. Those of you that do not own M1s can not imagine what loading a Garand clip with loose ammo while someone shoots at you would be like!!!! And before someone reminds me of the 1903A4 rifles, the stripper clips did not work with the scope in place and they were loaded with individual loose rounds, though in my personal experience match ammo for them was packed on stripper clips in storage through at least 1973. You just had to pull each round out and stick it in separately.

The commonality of ammo is mainly a national level thing as in we only have to make one kind of ammo.....then package it the way the troops need it.

Carbine ammo was issued both in 50 round cardboard boxes and in Stripper clips that each had a spoon attached. In the Korean ware era stripper clips with out an attached spoon were made and a single spoon was supplied with each bandolier. During part of WWII Carbine ammo(like .45 ACP ammo) was made with steel cases and packed in a sort of SPAM can rather than reuseable pop top ammo cans.

Also early M1 carbines lacked the ability to mount a bayonet with most finishing WWII without a bayonet mount. Call a bayonet an Infantry Pacifier if you want, but they do make you feel better when you are down to that last magazine or when you look over the edge of your Fireteam sized Combat Out Post /Listening Post and see the entire 43rd Mongolian Horde coming at you at a jog with their bayonets mounted.

-kBob

...and one more thing....

the WWII Carbine was typically equipped with only a L type rear sight supposedly set of 100 OR 300 yards and nothing in between. It was not windage adjustable. What you were issued was what you got.

One nice thing was its weight and ammo weight. Consider it was over a pound lighter with its empty magazine, sling, and oiler weighted over a pound less than a naked (no sling or mag) Sten Mark II SMG. Everyone else's SMG weighed more than the Mark II Stench Gun (oops sorry )

The First Rangers Recon section used M1 Carbines in North Africa, before they left for Sicily...and liked them. They are mentioned in a couple of the books and photos appear of their use. Oddly Darby himself is generally pictured with an M1903 bolt action.... guess that is what he was comfortable with.

-kBob

Someone asked about a Carbine based rifle in a heavier caliber....how about .30-06?

The Carbine was based on Winchester's G30 series experimental rifle. Winchester in 1938 thought the M1 had some difficult to make parts and was expensive to make. The took a design by Johnathan E. Browning (One of John Moses' Browning Brothers via Jonathan's the Pioneer's third wife, and one of the Browning Brothers of Ogdon Utah) played with it, gave it a "carbine Williams " (before he was called such) gas tappet system and a removeable magazine of 5, 10, or 20 rounds.

(by the ways members of the church do not use the term Step-Brother or Step Sister for the children of Plural marraiges as the father was married to all the wives when the children were born Johnathan of the harmonica rifle was married t three wives as he was told to be by President Young and no wife one and her kids did not seem pleased by it so John Moses and Johnathan E. grew up in a different household than his father's first wife.....and we do not do the multiple wives things any more)

The G30 was tested by the Army in 1940.

The army was not that interested as they had adopted the M1 they also felt that in the test ( same test they were basically being forced to compare the Johnson and M1 in) they found the G30 to be serviceable but not as good as the Garand (in house design) or Johnson (What the press was trying to force on them) and so third in a field of three.

Winchester was not competing for the carbine competition when one of the testers suggested they reduce the size and weight of the G30 to fit the cartridge that would become .30 Carbine. The barrowed from their work on tooling up for Garand production and combined features of the M1 and G30 and the proto type and retest guns were hand built without blueprints. They did this in record time and against some real issues and actually ticked off Williams so bad he left the project....but somehow still got credit for a gun he actually had little to do with.

Near the end of the War Winchester was encouraged to produce the G30 as a replacement for the BAR and supposedly did well against the BAR and got renamed project T10....quite a ways from Project T44 ( eventually M-14) but you can see some resemblances.

-kBob

i know for a fact that a 110-125 lbs vc carrying a shachle charge did manage to throw that charge after being hit with several m-16 rounds and i think would have be able to do the same if hit with a m1 carbine rounds. the best was to stop the shachle throwers we found out was to use a m-60 on them, it took the starch out of them right now. admitting they were fired upon untill they were damn near in pieces.

eastbank said:

i know for a fact that a 110-125 lbs vc carrying a shachle charge did manage to throw that charge after being hit with several m-16 rounds and i think would have be able to do the same if hit with a m1 carbine rounds. the best was to stop the shachle throwers we found out was to use a m-60 on them, it took the starch out of them right now. admitting they were fired upon untill they were damn near in pieces.

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Makes one wonder how much opium the guy had in his system.

For a rifle (carbine) that was developed in 13 days, refined for 1 month, produced for only 38 months by 10 different contractors, and is still being used and talked about today ... 79 years later ... the M1 Carbine must have been pretty good. Imagine what it could have been if it had the development time/refinement time of the M16/AR15.

13 days? Are you sure about that?

briansmithwins said:

Considering the US Army deliberately rejected the British ~.280 intermediate cartridges and the rifles that shot them in favor of a product improved, magazine fed, M1 Garand firing a shorter .30-06 (M14) I’d say they would have denied that the carbine was more advanced than the rifle they already had.

Army Ordnance's head was so far in the sand (or up somewhere else but this is a family friendly site) that they rejected and sabotaged a chance to get the FAL in .280 in the early 50s. They also had a fatal case of NIH syndrome.

All this came back to bite them and resulted in the M16’s rushed deployment before it was developed, which got US troops killed.

BSW

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Yep.

An FAL in .280 would be awesome.

Militarily, M1 Carbine remains an adequately powerful and accurate PDW by present day standards. The Garand is a full-power battle rifle, which is now considered a more obsolescent role. The Garand's firepower was also limited by its magazine capacity and loading system, and the dimensions of the 30-06 cartridge greatly reduced the soldier's combat load.

Both weapons served well in their place and time. However, if I was a combat soldier during WWII/Korea, I would have chosen the Garand, hands down. The M1 Carbine lacks range and punch, more so than modern intermediate caliber cartridges, while the 30-06 remains on par with contemporary battle rifles in 7.62x51.

Texas10mm said:

13 days? Are you sure about that?

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But most of the R&D had been done on the Winchester G30, G30M, and G30R chambered in 30-06. The 13 day design was basically spent scaling down the G30R to the Winchester Cal 30 Light Rifle per the specs put forth in the War Departments request for a light rifle; and the following month was spent tweaking the design for the second round of trials.

As has been pointed out, trying to compare the two is like comparing apples to oranges. They are different weapons for different applications. But:

1. As I recall, the M1 Carbine was Audey Murphy's weapon of choice.
2. In wargaming (ref.the book "How to Make War") the point is made that it is more cost effective to wound the enemy than to kill the enemy since wounding takes multiple people (the wounded and the caretakers) out of the available manpower and killing the enemy takes only one person out. By that measure, mines, bombs, and artillery are more cost effective than rifles.
3. All bets are off when you find yourself as the target.

Dr T said:

As has been pointed out, trying to compare the two is like comparing apples to oranges. They are different weapons for different applications. But:

1. As I recall, the M1 Carbine was Audey Murphy's weapon of choice.
2. In wargaming (ref.the book "How to Make War") the point is made that it is more cost effective to wound the enemy than to kill the enemy since wounding takes multiple people (the wounded and the caretakers) out of the available manpower and killing the enemy takes only one person out. By that measure, mines, bombs, and artillery are more cost effective than rifles.
3. All bets are off when you find yourself as the target.

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With point #2, would that depend on your enemy's culture? His comrades might leave him to be taken care of by US... As always check your assumptions as they are not likely to even be true...

All truth has to be weighed by the quality of your assumptions. And, Wars [and by extension wargames] tend to get fought using the weapons, tactics, and strategies needed for the last war.

That said, I would have a spot in my safe for a good, vintage carbine. A Garand would be more appreciated by some one else. The Garand is a fine weapon, but I like to shoot my toys. After the second shoulder rebuild a carbine would be a lot more fun...