M1 Garand inaccuracy

[marine71]

OK- I have a question. I was watching something the other night, called SHOOTOUT, which is some history show that reenacts battles and whatnot. It seems like a great production and all, obviously financed, but this one guy was using an M1 Garand to take out 8-12 guys. (WWII battle.) No problem there. But he was firing this babe single shot and every time he pulled the trigger he would then 'rack another round' by using his left hand to slide under the gun and rack the bolt from the underside. Now,.... I own an M1 and I have shot it quite a bit. The action is mean and you can't use your fingertips to pull that bolt back. NOT TO MENTION that no one in their right mind in combat would pass up semi-auto if it was available!

Can you even cycle the M1 from semi-auto to single shot? I am embarrassed to say that I don't know. I haven't played with my Garand in a few months. Was the show totally inaccurate or what? Thanks.

 

[Exposure]

I saw the same show. I assumed that for the sake of safety they were firing blanks which didn't have the power to cycle the Garands actions. Therefore the actor had to manually clear the spent case and chamber a new round every time.

And to answer your question. No, the Garand is semi or nothing at all.

 

[Slamfire]

A Garand can be made into a single shot

I have a number of match Garands, fully tricked out with Douglas barrels, glassbeded, forend glued and screwed, match sights, and ever other mode that I cannot think of right now.

Being of an experimental nature, and firing at a range where the firing line was at the top of a 40 foot mound, which meant you lost most of your cases, I tried shooting a Garand single shot. The way to do that is to disable the gas system. In my case I punched out the gas tappet on the gas cylinder lock. I installed this vented gas cylinder lock when I got back to 500/600 yards.

I was not as good then as I am now, but I can say accuracy was not inferior to the accuracy when the gas system was not disabled. I have tried McCabe vented gas cylinder locks and can tell you the point of impact radically changes with different size gas vents. But group size seems to be about the same.

Extraction of the round was not difficult, but if the rounds had been overpressure I might have had problems extracting as you lose a lot of primary extraction power on what becomes essentially a straight pull single shot rifle.

Base on readings from Roy Dunlop, M1’s did become single shot rifles in combat: the gas systems would wear or the gas cylinder would slide and cover up some of the gas port. Then if the solider survived, the rifle was turned in to the unit armorer.

 

[Onmilo]

Dunlop mentions that rust from corrosively primed ammunition would build up in the gas cylinders and on the operating rods, the gas ports would errode oversize, and the rifles would begin to malfunction.
Some could be used as manual feed repeaters but many would seize up completely and have to be kicked or beaten open.

This was more prevelant in the tropical regions where humidity, high temperatures and a general lack of time to properly clean or maintain anything due to the fact people were cheerfully trying to kill each other 24 hours a day.

Just to put things in perspective though, nothing is reliable in tropical conditions and the GIs generally loved and respected the M1 warts and all.

 

[Quintin Likely]

At the Battle of the Bulge, it was so cold that soldiers had to pee on their weapons to defrost them. Maybe too, it was so cold that the actions wouldn't cycle reliably.

 

[MechAg94]

If this is the episode I am thinking of, the guy went through about 3 rifles and all the ammo of him and his two buddies who were killed. I don't remember seeing single shot so it might be a different show.

 

[Sniper X]

I'll bet it was the blanks, remember they did the same thing (kinda) in Jaws when Quint was shooting at the big ass shark with his Garand. He had to cycle the bolt after each shot because they were shooting blanks and without a blank adaptor to restrict the expellation of gasses out of the bore, the saction won;t cycle on most semiautos with blanks unless they are specailly packed to make that possible. Then the blanks are deadly out to about 10 meters.

 

[Dr. Dickie]

I mentioned this about a week ago. I am pretty sure it was because he was firing blanks.
Not was he cycling it by hand, but he was doing it very easily; therefore, I suspect that they also put some lighter springs in them.

 

[Sleeping Dog]

Can't lighten the spring too much, it still has to chamber the next round from the clip, and completely close the bolt.

A lot of honor guards use un-altered rifles with no blank-firing-adapter, because they look best. Manually cycling the action between shots is just a practiced part of the routing.

 

[cracked butt]

Dunlop mentions that rust from corrosively primed ammunition would build up in the gas cylinders and on the operating rods, the gas ports would errode oversize, and the rifles would begin to malfunction

That intuitively doesn't make sense.

The gas cylinder and piston on the M1 are made of stainless steel, they'll rust, but very slowly and shouldn't get 'fuzzy' with rust like carbon steel. The Oprod is parkerized and shouldn't rust unless immersed in salt water and not rinsed sometime afterwards, but there isn't any place on it that's going to hang up if it gets a little rust on it. The gas port is a legitimate concern, but again a larger port would allow more gas into the cylinder which I guess could spring the oprod if too much of a good thing comes its way. Carbon buildup in the gas cylider is a legitimate concern however, the pistol has a fairly tight fit to the cylinder and carbon will grind away at both eventually putting one or the other out of spec enough that the rifle malfs.

 

[Slamfire]

I would not discount Dunlops' experience till you have been out in the South Pacific. You have got to live on a South Sea island to experience real corrosion. Even the worst corrosive environment in the US, which would be the warm hot of Florida, is mild compared to some of those Pacific Islands.

You will not find Granite rocks on those islands, they all rusted away. (Ha, ha.)

 

[Onmilo]

Stainless steel rusts, believe you me.
Stainless steel is a blend of chromium, nickle, 1085 steel, and a few blending agents.
The majority of the mixture is carbon steel.

Parkarizing was determined to be the best rust preventing finish.

It did not stop the rusting of the finished steel, it simply prolonged the inevitable.