M-1 Garand

A rifle designed in the 1920s by John C. Garand, a Canadian. Once accepted by the U.S. Army, it was the world's first semi-automatic rifle to be in military service. It had a significant advantage over bolt-action rifles because of its semi-automatic mechanism. The shooter can shoot as fast as he can pull the trigger. In the late years of the World War II, Semi-automatic rifles were adopted by other nations, such as the Gewehr 43 of the German Army, and the Tokarev SVT-40 of the Russian Army. Both of these rifles were inferior compared to the M1 Garand. The M-1 Garand was deadly accurate to ranges of about 600-700 meters, and its maximum range was about 1000 meters. This did not prove to be a disadvantage because infantry rarely engaged the enemy at ranges of over 400 meters. The only drawback of the M1 Garand rifle is the 8-round en bloc clip. With this clip, the rifle could not be reloaded in the middle of shots; the soldier had to shoot off all his rounds before reloading. Also to add to this drawback was the loud "bing" sound the clip made when ejecting. Despite these disadvantages, the M1 Garand rifle was the greatest battle implement ever devised. The M1 Garand rifle shot the .30-06 round, slightly larger than the German 7.92x57mm rifle round, the Soviet 7.62x54mm R rifle round, and roughly equivalent to the British .303 round. The M1 Garand was the base design for later rifles such as the M14A and M14A1, chambered around the 7.62x51 NATO (.308 Winchester) round. A carbine version was also produced for the M1 Garand in World War II, the M1A1 Carbine. It came in both wooden stock and folding stock versions for paratroops. It was a rather weak carbine, due to its shorter barrel. It was also a bit inaccurate, but its compact size and light weight provided mobility. It was usually issued to soldiers who are not in the infantry (truck drivers, supply and logistics), officers, NCOs, and tank crews. In the meanwhile, the M1 Garand rifle was issued to the infantry rifleman. With this rifle, the American infantryman always had the advantage over their enemy.