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

Because of the detachable magazine, the gas system, and the ability to easily make them select fire(M2)... I'd say yes.

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.

The .30 carbine and cartridge was very, very forward thinking. 300 yards (or a bit more) effective range, both for accuracy and terminal ballistics, plus more shots on tap (larger and changeable mags vs strippers) is where everyone ended up with the intermediate cartridge carbines anyway.

So let's take an infantry squad in 1944 notionally equipped with Carbines instead of Rifles:

Squad leader, assistant squad leader, and all the riflemen get carbines. No problem, can hit from zero to 3 with no problem, and carry a lot more ammo for the guns as well.

Automatic rifle team gets a BAR, and the assistant and ammo bearer get Garands, for ammo compatibility, and shared ballistics (used to the trajectory, can all bring fire to bear if they need to) so now there's a solid chance to hit individual targets to say 700 yds. (I think point target effective accuracy was 500 yds per the army, but you can stretch that, and the BAR was effective to over 1000 IF you consider area targets, so split the difference).

Since 90% of infantry engagements in WW2 were (depending on how you count it, several studies) under 300 yds, we're fine all around and very likely better off with either more bullets for the weight out to the likely engagement ranges, or lighter loads for scouts etc so soldiers can go further, faster.

(AT rifle grenades are an issue. Might need to provide one more Garand, OR give the grenades to the AR team).

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

shoobe01 said:

Automatic rifle team gets a BAR, and the assistant and ammo bearer get Garands, for ammo compatibility,

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Not really. Garand ammo is in disposable clips, BAR ammo is in box magazines that the gunner would presumably save to reload if possible. Pulling out loose cartridges to swap around in action seems ineffective.

The Swedes tried it; they had an 8x63 machine gun, so they provided rifles rechambered for the round to the MG squad for common ammo. The program seemed to not work very well, the rifles were hard kickers and the muzzle brakes added were loud. I would not have wanted to be reloading my rifle off the end of a machine gun belt, assuming the gunner let me.

shoobe01 said:

The .30 carbine and cartridge was very, very forward thinking. 300 yards (or a bit more) effective range, both for accuracy and terminal ballistics, plus more shots on tap (larger and changeable mags vs strippers) is where everyone ended up with the intermediate cartridge carbines anyway.

So let's take an infantry squad in 1944 notionally equipped with Carbines instead of Rifles:

Squad leader, assistant squad leader, and all the riflemen get carbines. No problem, can hit from zero to 3 with no problem, and carry a lot more ammo for the guns as well.

Automatic rifle team gets a BAR, and the assistant and ammo bearer get Garands, for ammo compatibility, and shared ballistics (used to the trajectory, can all bring fire to bear if they need to) so now there's a solid chance to hit individual targets to say 700 yds. (I think point target effective accuracy was 500 yds per the army, but you can stretch that, and the BAR was effective to over 1000 IF you consider area targets, so split the difference).

Since 90% of infantry engagements in WW2 were (depending on how you count it, several studies) under 300 yds, we're fine all around and very likely better off with either more bullets for the weight out to the likely engagement ranges, or lighter loads for scouts etc so soldiers can go further, faster.

(AT rifle grenades are an issue. Might need to provide one more Garand, OR give the grenades to the AR team).

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Never shot a person, dont ever want to be put in the position to HAVE to....
I have shot a half dozen axis (100-200lbs) deer with carbines, and even with jsps, and shooting them at night I wouldnt trust it out side of 50yds.
Given my personal results, and looking at the ballistic tables, Id want a true intermediate round for anything beyond 100yds, even if they are relatively squishy humans.
Failing that, id prefer a battle rifle and round.

From a purely practical/functional standpoint I vote the Garand to be the more advanced/superior weapon. Much more robust and reliable in bad conditions in my experience. The mags of the carbine were weak but if you get fresh ones after every fight maybe that's not a big concern. Today it is.

As far as humping one, yeah, I'll take the Carbine every time.

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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The M1 Carbine is only 5.2 lb unloaded, what are you calling relatively heavy? And it's cartridge isn't all that weak either...

The role envisaged for the Carbine was as a more effective pistol, for troops that would otherwise be armed with pistols. It was never thought of as a battle rifle. My late father-in-law, who served in the North African theater and was initially armed with a Thompson, told me how he swapped the Thompson for a Garand the first chance he got. The troops (the actual combat troops) had a lot more confidence in Garands than they had in any pistol-caliber weapons.

The question being, "advanced"; I think so. The gas system and detachable magazine argue the case.

The Garand has longer range and superior accuracy at any range. Since the target is an enemy of the republic, this is a rather meaningless distinction at ranges less than 125 yards (average). The Garand has more power, but up to about 150 yards, that is meaningless.

Archie said:

T The Garand has more power, but up to about 150 yards, that is meaningless.

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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?

When:
1. It comes to power and range the M1 round was obviously superior to the Carbine. So for power and range the M1 was better.
2. It comes to accuracy because of #1 the M1 was better.
3. It comes to ammo quantity vs. weight the Carbine was better.
4. It comes to a platform for a bayonet fight the M1 was better.

The Carbine was never intended to replace the M1. The historical fact that many do not know is that the Carbine was intended for use only by offices, staff NCOs who generally carried M1911s because the M1911 was only good at close range. Additionally the officers and NCOs were not engaged in firing until necessary. Their job was to keep the grunts doing what had to be done. By adding the Carbine to their armament it made those officers more capable without overloading them and affecting mobility.

The Garand was supposed to be in 276 Pedersen and be fed from a box magazine. However the Army wanted it to use the billions of rounds of .30 M1 ball ammo. We can thank Dugout Doug for that one. The 276 Pedersen rifle was the clear winner in the trials.

If the Army and DD had not stuck their noses in it the Garand would have been a totally different rifle. In fact I doubt the M-14 would have ever been built.

Not that I’m a McArthur fan, but his read of what Congress would approve for purchasing was probably right.

Better to have the M1 ready to be mass produced in .30-06 in time for WWII than a better rifle in .276 that has no tooling or production ready past hand built troop trials guns.

If the Americans had been saddled with Springfields throughout the war even more soldiers would have been killed.

BSW

I was never in the military, so don't have a dog in this fight, but there's a lot of combined knowledge here and I'm wondering how today's ARs would fit in this discussion, regarding battlefield sufficiency. Seems that it would be compared more to the M-1 Carbine than any of the others, but what do you folks think?

1942bull said:

The historical fact that many do not know is that the Carbine was intended for use only by offices, staff NCOs who generally carried M1911s

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Don't forget that the Carbine was also intended to arm the logistical "tail" of the army -- the truck drivers, cooks, technicians, etc. -- that otherwise would have been armed with a haphazard mix of weapons such as pistols and bolt action rifles. Plus artillerymen and crews of crew-served weapons. This is why the Carbine was produced in the millions. That many would not have been necessary if issue was limited to officers and senior NCOs.

Had the .222 Remington been around just a few years earlier, the M1 Carbine could have been developed into a fairly formidable PDW with a lot more range.

30 carbine great a close distances Garand good at close and far away. Garand gets my vote.

Getting a high power semi-auto rifle that would run in field conditions was quite a challenge in the late 1930s, so the Garand accomplishing that was a real feat. By that time, you had several quality automatic pistols, submachine guns, and heavier machine guns in common issue, but getting a 10lb rifle to run was still a trick. The Garand's closest contemporaries were the Walther Gewehrs and the SVT-40, and neither one ran half as well.

(on a side note, why didn't anyone try using the Remington Model 8? )

The M1 Carbine was more innovative for its size than anything else IMO.The stick magazine was a step forward for future US Army designs, but getting a pistol-sized round in a semi-auto wasn't anything too crazy.

As far as keeping the 30-06 for WWII, I can understand that, as every other power went to war with a similar sized cartridge too. I think everyone drastically underestimated the impact mechanization would have on the battlefield and its ability to shorten distances. By the 1950s though, there was no longer an excuse. The Red Army and UK both started serious work on intermediate cartridges before the war even ended and both were ready to gear their soldiers up with assault rifles by the early 50s. It would have taken some real foresight for the Army to see the need for an intermediate cartridge before the war. But ten years later, they couldn't see it even when it was staring them in the face.

Well, the question is not well constructed. It's a bit like asking whether asparagus or avocados are a better vegetable.

Did they take advantage of the near-decade of experience gained between one and the other, certainly. They wanted a lot of "commonality" for those "used to" a pistol who were to be moved to the Carbine. Which was menat to be artillery, admin, bakers, cooks, truck drivers and messengers. (Officers and NCOs were not meant to be given new arms, that was War Department meddling later in the war--a lot of things not "meant" to happen did; was only supposed to be one BAR per Rifle Squad, yet some had as many as three.)

Texas10mm said:

However the Army wanted it to use the billions of rounds of .30 M1 ball ammo. We can thank Dugout Doug for that one. The 276 Pedersen rifle was the clear winner in the trials.

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This is tricky going. The 7x53 had a lot to recommend it as an infantry round, weight, LOA, etc. What it was not (and had never intended to be, was a Machine Gun round. US MGs were, in the mid 30s still intended as base-of-fire weapons designed to interdict the enemy from ranges o 900m to 2500m (and operate over the heads of US troops in the in-between). That was going to require M2 ball (or related specialty ammo). And the War Department had plenty. Congress, in the mid 30s was more concerned about keeping themselves rich than spending any more money on an Army that was never going to be needed again (pay no attention to the dictators in both the East and West). So, Congres was likely going to force the War Department into only one caliber. And Armored Corps was really committed to cal..30 MGs in their new tanks that wanted to build thousands of.

Then, there's the "range fan" issue. War Department had managed to get CCC and National Recovery Act commitments to build new rifle ranges for a bunch of Army Camps. Those ranges were based on M2 ball. The 7x53 had a higher arc from the BC and lighter weight of the projectile. That meant the range fan safety zones wer about a third under-sized for the new round.

So there's a pretty big gap to get the 276 across, for acceptance.

If the Army and DD had not stuck their noses in it the Garand would have been a totally different rifle. In fact I doubt the M-14 would have ever been built.

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Well, yes--no "bend" needed in the op rod, for one (it's needed to clear the larger chamber bulge). Getting a smaller, lighter Garand would have been much easier, too. A box magazine would have been easier to gin up. Or using a shorter gas system, and/or a shorter barrel. Peterson's first submitted rifle was a toggle-lock, basically a lever-delayed blowback--so the Garand could have been lightened considerably.

The other interesting part about such speculation is in that the BAR might have been looked at again, with perhaps a pistol grip, almost certainly better magazines, and with charger loading (remember that most of the M2 ball is on 5 round chargers in bandoliers in 1933).

The carbine runs into problems when barriers such as sandbags, timbers, light masonry and vehicles come into the mix. As eluded to above, it's also ineffective as a grenade launching platform. The main drawback is the cartridge chambered, and the lack of suitability for higher powered rounds with heavier spitzer bullets. The STG44 and post-war assault rifles overcame these drawbacks to a point, while still giving some ground to the full power rounds but maintaining reasonable effectiveness, and IMHO we took a step backwards with the 5.56 and the Soviets with the 5.45x39 in this regard.

In terms of rifles, the M1 carbine was not an extremely novel design concept. Light, self loading carbines in anemic straight walled cartridges were made by Winchester since 1907. The Garand was very novel, borrowing very few features from existing designs, and innovating features that are still seen on front line rifles and MGs today. NOW...had somebody scaled down the M1 Garand and allowed for magazine loading in say a shortened .300 Savage round or a .30 caliber (No way was ordnance going other than .30) based on one of the Remington self loading rounds, we really would have had something.

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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I think what was meant was close in the enemy was just as dead when hit fatally with either round so the superior energy of the Garand round was not really making a lot of difference. The Garand of course did much better in terms of power and accuracy at greater distances.

The carbine round at realistic battle distances in towns would actually penetrate non armored vehicles pretty well, as well as German soldiers' helmets.

The M-1 carbine was intended as a rear echelon weapon, not a frontline one like the Garand. That it found its way to the front line and served as well as it did is a testament to its effectiveness ..... yet when power and distance is required then of course the Garand out showNed it, as it also out performed the Thompson and of course the Colt 1911 pistol.

I will propose that the 30-06 was a much more effective round during WWI than it was during WWII and ANY military leader will tell you that your supposed to prepare to fight the last war and not be foolish by squandering resources resources preparing to fight the next war!

Will a 30-06 FMJ go through a sand bag? I have plenty of 30-06 rifles and ammo but I have never actually filled a potato sack full of dirt and shot it with a 30-06 to find out? Anyone know? I always assumed that properly piled sand bags would stop a 30-06 pretty effectively... but really don't have a clue if this is true. Will a black tip go further through a sand bag than a ball round?

During WWI a 30-06 would whiz right through pretty much anything armor wise. I don't think there was much in the way of vehicles during WWI that would stop a 30-60... the side of any WWI tank certainly would not. Most transportation during WWI was horse drawn, you really could not put much armor on something pulled by a horse and expect the horse to last very long. By WWII metallurgy had advanced significantly with much stronger steels, sloped armor and much thicker armor could be used because you could get a lot more HP out of the same sized engine... and you actually had engine powered vehicles. I would guess that you would be much less likely to be able to do any damage to any armored WWII vehicle with a 30-06 than a WWI vehicle. I don't think there is much argument on the effectiveness of .30 carbine rounds as an anti-personal round... but this is the internet so I certainly would never make such a bold statement.

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?

WWI was a static war. My understanding is you dug a hole and then sat in it! If you had a big heavy bolt action who really cared... it was not like you were going to carry it any where. All that weapon weight definitely helped tame the recoil of the 06. WWII was a much more dynamic war where the weapons and troupes traveled MUCH further and I propose they were a MUCH bigger burden than WWI.

I love my M1 Garand and the 30-06 in general... but I think I would have preferred to tote around an M2 carbine rather than a M1 Garand during WWII. I know that after 20 rounds of 30-06 at the range I am ready to go home and have a beer... I can shoot my M1 carbine all day long though. When I bought my M1 carbine 30 years ago I kind of looked at it as a "big boys" 10/22... back when .30 carbine ammo was cheap!

I don't think I would call a M1 carbine a more advanced weapon than a M1 Garand... to me it does seem to be a more practical weapon for most uses though.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-06_Springfield
Wikipedia extract:

• Armor-piercing, M1917: The M1917 was the first service-issue armor-piercing rifle ammunition used by the US Army. It had a steel core in a lead envelope with a partial cupro-nickel jacket which had an exposed soft tip. The exposed tip was designed to aid in the envelope peeling away on impact to allow the core to strike the target. It had the unintended effect of making the thin lead envelope an expanding bullet. Since expanding bullets were seen as violating the Hague Convention it did not see service in World War I.
• Armor-piercing, M1918: The M1918 was similar to the armor-piercing M1917 round except it had a smooth cannelure near the case-mouth and had a full-metal-jacketed bullet. It replaced the AP M1917 round in service.
• Armor-piercing, M1922 (1922–1934): This was a redesigned armor-piercing round with a heavier steel core. It was the first armor-piercing round to have a black-painted bullet tip.
• Armor-piercing, M1 (1934–1939): This was a higher-velocity (3,180 fps) AP round that was under development throughout its service. It was replaced in 1939 by the AP M2, a redesign of the AP M1922.
• Armor piercing, M2 (1939–1954): This cartridge is used against lightly armored vehicles, protective shelters, and personnel, and can be identified by its black bullet tip. Bullet is flat base, weight 163–168 grains. Defense against the M2 projectile by name is one of the performance standards for Type IV body armor.[37]