In 1932, the Army ran another trials program to select and adopt a self-loading infantry rifle to replace the Springfield. Changes to the way military ammunition was manufactured rendered the basic operating mechanism unworkable, but by the early 1930s, John Garand had again produced a design worthy of proper military trials. Garand’s experimentation in arms design began in the early 1920s, culminating in his submission of a self-loading rifle to the unsuccessful 1924 Army trials. Much of his career had been spent designing industrial machinery for factories, a skillset which would later come to serve him well. Hailing from Canada, he was a mechanical engineer by training and trade. Garand was a relative unknown in the firearms world. When the Army started looking for one, he saw this as the perfect opportunity to have his design adopted.Ĭompared to heavyweights like Pedersen, John C. Throughout the 1920s, Pedersen had been working on prototype designs for a reliable, accurate self-loading infantry rifle. John Moses Browning once called John Pedersen “the greatest gun designer in the world ” high praise from anyone, let alone Browning. military and saw limited use by war’s end. During WW I, Pedersen designed a conversion device which allowed the M1903 Springfield to be quickly adapted into a semi-automatic pistol-caliber carbine it was adopted by the U.S. Pedersen was a seasoned, experienced firearm designer who had developed several commercially successful firearms while working for Remington. 30 M1906 cartridge was much too powerful and the military’s requirements too stringent for an existing design to simply be adapted for soldiers and Marines to use in combat.Įnter two men named John-John Pedersen and John Garand. It quickly became clear that the standard. Engineers had tried to scale up civilian designs like the Remington Model 8 and Winchester Model 1907 rifles, but they encountered serious problems: the rifles were usually some combination of heavy, inaccurate, fragile, unreliable, or expensive to produce. The ability to fire multiple shots in rapid succession without having to manually cycle the action was highly valuable in the field, but the designs weren’t nearly adequate for military use. Self-loading, or semi-automatic, rifles had been modestly popular among hunters and sport shooters for decades. A round of trials in 1924 had failed to find a rifle that was entirely suitable, but those trials set the stage for what was soon to come. Furthermore, the workable designs that already existed had significant problems-after all, self-loading infantry rifles had been produced in small numbers since before the First World War, but no design had been good enough for a major military to adopt it as standard. Although there were no shortage of talented designers looking to sign a contract, Hatcher had no way to tell who was serious about building a suitable rifle and who was just a hobbyist looking for an easy cash grant. The Army had already decided that it wanted to replace the venerable bolt-action M1903 Springfield with a self-loading rifle to provide its riflemen with rapid-fire capability. The year was 1932, and then-Major (later Major General) Julian S. From the jungles of the South Pacific to the infamous “Frozen Chosin,” Marines carried this revolutionary arm for nearly two decades, using it to deadly effect in some of the Corps’ most famous battles. Perhaps more than any other military rifle, John Garand’s iconic M1 holds a special place in the hearts of military riflemen and civilian enthusiasts alike.
0 kommentar(er)
