Armorer for Zion

In the Middle East, the British held the Palestinian Mandate and had done so since before World War I, but during 1948 the United Nations was in the process of debating and voting on the creation of two states from the old Palestine. One was to be for the Palestinian Arabs, and one for the Jews of Europe, who had made it through the horrors of the Nazi holocaust. Brenner had an uncle who was an ardent Zionist. He called young Burton on the phone one day to ask if what he had heard through family gossip was true, that he was interested in firearms. Brenner answered yes, and the uncle said he had something he thought he would be very interested in seeing.

Brenner made plans to meet with his uncle, and together they traveled from New York by train into New Jersey. They were picked up at the train station by a mysterious unknown man and delivered to what turned out to be an enormous chicken farm. One of the barns was built into a hillside, creating a substantial space underneath the floorboards. As they entered the barn Brenner saw thousands of rifles and boxes of pistols. Brenner was told that the guns had been brought back one at a time from Europe and Asia. They were a mixture of everything: Japanese Arisakas, German Mausers, Polish Mausers, Belgian Mausers, all the contract Mausers of World War II. There were boxes filled with Lugers and P-38s in the 9mm chambering, and lots of various .380s of all types: the list went on and on. It seemed that this material had been donated through Jewish war veterans and similar groups for the Israeli cause. Brenner was asked whether he would contribute some time checking each weapon as to headspace, bore condition, and general safety, with concentration on all those that were of universal Mauser 98 design firing the 7.92x57mm cartridge. All other rifles and calibers were to be put aside for the moment.

Intrigued, Brenner volunteered, and spent the next four months working on the project, traveling from New York to spend one or two nights at a time at the farm. After checking each rifle it was dipped in cosmoline to protect the metal surfaces from rusting while in storage or en route to Israel. After the sealed crates were taken away he would start on a new batch. Although the supply of guns diminished in a steady trickle, occasionally a fellow would show up to drop off eight or ten guns from the trunk of a car and then drive away without discussion.

To complete the inspection procedure on each rifle, Brenner decided it would be a good idea to stamp each one with a sort of proof, and obtained an inspector’s stamp with a sunburst mark. He would stamp each gun alongside the rear sight. After a few months the supply of suitable guns dwindled down to nothing thus ending his work at the clandestine New Jersey “armory.”

Some months after Brenner finished his work at the chicken farm, his uncle called and asked if he was interested in the guns that remained. Brenner, then barely 17 years old, was being told that what looked like the biggest pile of guns he had ever seen in his life was being handed to him gratis. It turned out that there were around 1,200 military rifles and 350 pistols. Brenner, along with a couple of friends, rented a truck and over a period of 3 months of shuttling back and forth between New York and New Jersey, got all of the guns out of the barn and into a friend’s basement in Brooklyn. Brenner then proceeded to wholesale the arms to various stores in the New York and Philadelphia areas.

Years later in 1955, Brenner made his first trip to Israel to buy surplus material. The Israelis had just finished their 1954 war with the Egyptians and had captured considerable quantities of weapons. He bought a great deal of interesting material on that trip, and while inspecting some of the lots for sale, found some of his chicken farm rifles, recognizing them by the sunburst stamp he had applied a few years before alongside of the rear sight.

Trade Wars

With over 50 years in the surplus business, Brenner met many people, and were mentioned in his memoirs for their efforts in making available to collectors and shooters many guns of considerable interest.

He had competed with most of them, along with just about everybody in the surplus side of the gun business. Some of these encounters ended up being pleasant run-ins and associations, and even collaborations from time to time. Others were totally awful and potentially dangerous, and if one were not a trusting person, some of the things he experienced would lead one to believe that there was little honor amongst surplus gun dealers.

In first place among these would be Sam Cummings. Sam, by his own words, was the greatest gun dealer of the 20th century. If size counts, the statement has some meaning. But one would have to look at all the aspects of the man’s personality, his character, his relationships with people, and the conclusion one would come away with might be very different from that of his self-described label. Brenner spent the better part of a year with Cummings in Europe. They shared digs in London, spent some time socializing together, and looked at an awful lot of guns in each other’s company. Brenner was always left with the feeling that he absolutely had to watch his back, that there were no limits to Cumming’s business duplicity, that he had no sense of honor. If not careful, Sam could leave another person humiliated, embarrassed, and even affected adversely in finances and reputation. Brenner opined that if measured by the milk of human kindness, Sam Cummings was one very dry individual.

During the 1950s, a whole new group of young guys popped up, all dealing in various aspects of the surplus game. Some specialized in parts, some in ammunition, some in the weapons themselves, and their paths continued to cross. Fellows like Val Forgett, who went on to create Navy Arms, was particularly well known for his inventiveness in basically creating the black powder sporting and shooting business in the United States.

Charlie Steen kept doggedly grinding away with the parts business, creating an absolute empire of his own. Known as “Service Armament Corporation” and “Steen Armament Corporation” (later shortened to SARCO) and operating out of New Jersey, Charlie’s operation continues as a supplier for a great diversity of surplus arms parts.

Century Arms and the Souter family, father and sons, are deserving of considerable words. Brenner came up against them on deals time and time again. They went on to become probably the single largest importer of surplus weapons in the game, as far as raw numbers and quantity go.

Hy Hunter of Burbank, California was a real character that in many ways was a step ahead of the game, both in the surplus importation business and in the manufacturing side. A whole book could probably be written about his colorful ways. His store was famous for having the ceiling decorated with thousands of handguns – real ones – that hung suspended there like an expansive constellation.

Numrich Arms Corporation (now called Gun Parts Corporation) is another purveyor of parts for surplus and other weapons. Located in West Hurley, New York, the company really got started when it purchased Martin Retting’s spread and excess inventory, which he left behind in New York when he moved to California.

There were dozens more who have been successful and who undoubtedly have had great adventures as Brenner, handling the most complex of deals in the midst of the incredibly intricate ropes of government licensing, shipping, and all aspects of getting a product from an overseas depot into the hands of an American collector.

Invading South America

During the late 1950s, the surplus dealers understood that with Brazil being the largest country in South America and having the biggest army, there had to be surplus material there. It was just a matter of finding a way to tap into what would surely be a very large supply of guns that the Brazilians no longer needed.

Golden State Arms employed a young Spaniard named Daniel Medilla. He had come over from Spain to learn the gun business. He spoke English, and taught himself some Portuguese, making him fluent enough to ably represent the company. As usual, it took at least six months of correspondence to affect a relationship with a commercial agent who seemed to know his way around, and understand what they were trying to do.

Dan took a tour all around South America, spending a good bit of the time in Brazil, and came back to report the availability of 10,000 M1 Garand rifles. At that time, a few small lots had come in from England, but for the most part there was a clamoring market for Garands and no way to fill it. This particular lot of rifles had been handed over to a Brazilian expeditionary force that had gone to Italy in late 1943 after Brazil had declared war on the Axis. This was their contribution to the war effort.

When Brazil finally sent out troops, it dispatched a light division, which arrived in Italy, marching off their boats with Mauser bolt-action rifles that were quickly taken away and replaced with U.S. M1 Garands. At the conclusion of their involvement a year and a half later, the Brazilians cagily marched back aboard ship, taking the Garands with them. Upon their return to Brazil, however, the Garands were piled into the armory because the caliber and type of gun was not standard in the Brazilian army. Aside from the M1s, Dan Medilla found quantities of miscellaneous rifles representing pretty much what the Brazilian army had utilized over the past hundred years. There were Winchester 1873s and 1892s. There were early American bolt-action rifles such as the Remington Lees. There were early Model 1888 German Commission guns in various configurations of rifle and carbine. Golden State was offered 20,000 guns, which they imported.

The barrels on the Garands were ruined from firing corrosive ammunition, and required replacement by Golden State, but it wasn’t long before they ran out of spare barrels. Brenner soon figured out a way to replace Garand barrels by using reconfigured 1903 Springfield barrels. The Garands were sold to Sears were they sold out almost overnight. An urgent request was received from Sears for thousands more which, sadly, there were no means of obtaining.

Sam Cummings of Interarmco opened the first Argentine deal during a period when Sam and his organization were still in close relationship with Golden State Arms and were to join forces in the Argentine deal. The first transaction consisted of a vast quantity of Model 1891 Mauser rifles, essentially the old Belgian pattern, in 7.65x53mm caliber. Their most prominent feature was a projecting magazine well descending below the stock in front of the trigger guard.

The Argentines had tens of thousands of the Mausers in absolutely beautiful condition. Unlike other Latin American countries, they had kept their older guns in top shape. Argentine troops being European trained (and largely of European background) were of advanced quality as compared to their neighbors, so the standards for maintaining equipment were kept very high. Golden State purchased all of these many thousands of Model 91 Mauser rifles, complete with bayonets and scabbards.

Argentina represented an enormous potential marketplace from which to secure surplus goods to fill the American demand. They had set up a factory, which was fully licensed by Colt, and over the years turned out a very large volume of the Argentine 1927 Systema pistols, which were eventually brought into the United States in big numbers. Another deal was the .45 caliber Ballester-Molina pistol, an Argentine modification of the basic 1911 design.

Everything the Argentines had was marked with their national coat of arms, which was a liberty cap on a sword with embellishments. Unfortunately all of these national insignias had to be removed. Nothing was to leave the country with the insignia intact. There was nothing to be done except set up the grinding machines and start belt-sanding off every insignia from all of these Argentine weapons. To take essentially new condition weapons and grind them to remove an artistically rendered crest was just a crime against collecting, but that is the way it was. Golden State took the problem as far as some of the Argentine congressmen in the country’s parliament. Eventually the law was turned around and subsequent lots of guns that came out of Argentina had the insignia left in place.

Agency Business

It should not come as a surprise that no one could be in the surplus arms business on a substantial basis and fail to eventually cross paths with the Central Intelligence Agency. It seems that back in the early days of the cold war, the Agency’s policy was to accumulate and hold large quantities of various weapons in order to place them in a given country at the right time, naturally in a surreptitious manner so as to keep the good name of the United States out of Agency games. To execute this policy, the CIA in its own wisdom deemed that, rather than deal directly with a highly visible purchase of this material from foreign government surplus sources or new production, it would utilize legitimate surplus arms dealers as cooperating suppliers for its weapons business.

Within only a year or two after the Agency started up in or around 1949, it became busy purchasing considerable numbers of different kinds of weapons. One of the first fronting firms that were used to import the material into the States for shipment to various CIA warehouses was Golden State Arms. A man named Leo Lippi managed these dealings from the Agency side. Leo was a strange character, a cameraman who was the product of the Hollywood motion picture scene. He was an unlikely looking fellow but he had authority to spend big money. Apparently, shopping lists were given to him on a regular basis, which he filled, mostly, from Golden State Arms.

Brenner originally had no idea that some of the material he was buying was intended for the CIA. An example of such a transaction concerned a lot of 40,000 MAT French 9x19mm submachine guns found in Vietnam. At the time, the U.S. was pouring in huge amounts of American military material, and wanted all of the non-U.S. items out of the warehouses and supply channels. Arms left behind by the French were clogging up the program. The MAT 49 submachine guns were purchased for $1.50 each. Upon conclusion of the sale, the MAT weapons were shipped to Puerto Rico. Shortly after the guns landed in Puerto Rico, they suddenly disappeared, all 40,000 of them.

Another instance of assisting the CIA involved the purchase of heavy Madsen machine guns from the factory in Copenhagen. There again, the goods were bought, shipped to the U.S., and then simply disappeared. Golden State Arms was actively, if quietly, participating in the effort to assist the CIA’s program of obtaining surplus weapons. The business organization was big enough that the left hand did not necessarily know what the right hand was doing and as the buyer, Brenner had no official understanding of the fact that he was procuring equipment destined for the CIA, although he presumed there was some involvement with governmental agencies.

Fidel Castro was always a focus of the CIA’s attention. At the time Castro came down from the Sierra Nuestra into Havana, he was armed for the most part with Springfield Model 1903 service rifles. That was pretty much the rifle of choice for the rebel Cuban army. Many of them were lifted from the legitimate Cuban army, but a great portion of them came into the hands of Castro from the CIA. It may surprise the reader to learn that in the beginning of this phase of history (and even then the fact was not widely known), it was generally felt in U.S. government circles that Castro could turn into a democratic fellow who would run Cuba righteously and do well by the people.

Thus the attempt was made by the CIA to give the Cubans military aid in the form of Springfield rifles. The weapons themselves had come out of Italy through an earlier Golden State purchase. An unknown buyer purchased a pretty sizable fraction of this batch from Golden State domestically. The guns were in California, fresh from Italy, and suddenly there was an order for 3,000 of them. They were promptly boxed up, put on a truck, and were gone, later showing up in Cuba. In addition, the CIA was well under way in buying up and maintaining lots of French, British, German, and particularly Russian arms so that these weapons could be dropped into trouble spots without “made in USA” tags on them. The connection between Leo Lippi and Golden State Arms lasted six years and was then abruptly cut off. Brenner believed that it was CIA policy to periodically change their suppliers so as to be able to restrict the flow of information about their activities. The next guy called upon by the Agency was Sam Cummings, who lasted as a CIA supplier for some time. Since he was as heavily involved in the surplus business as Golden State, he was able to supply their needs in good order. Eventually, his relationship with the Agency soured and he got into serious tax problems with the Internal Revenue Service. In an attempt to salvage his business and personal fortune, he left the United States.

After Sam Cummings eventually retired from cloak and dagger operations, there were two or three other chaps standing by to assume his mantle with the CIA’s clandestine gun business. Russia had attacked and invaded Afghanistan, and the Afghan locals had to be armed in a manner superior to what their hillside cottage industries could make available for resistance.

With the end of the cold war, the need for maintaining a supply of covert weapons was not as important an item as it once was. As a result, enormous quantities of U.S. arms, all having been bought with taxpayers’ money, were scrapped at depots in New Jersey and other places along the eastern seaboard under the Clinton administration.

(Look for the final chapter of the story of Burton “Bob” Brenner in an upcoming issue of Small Arms Review.)

By Dan Szatkowski

The War in the Pacific

More than half a century after the momentous events of the war in the Pacific, it is difficult to come to terms with the sheer size of the war and its overwhelming geography. It was more than just a war between Imperial Japan and the United States, it was a vast war in which Japan continued the European struggle to dominate China. It was a war to displace European colonialism and condescension, a war to allocate the wreckage of French, Dutch, German and British imperialism. It was a war of little wars within the global struggle. While the European powers were locked in battle with Japan’s Nazi allies, Thailand went to war against a weakened France. The Australians saw their manpower and equipment drawn off by a desperate England. The Filipinos saw the opportunity to displace a decadent foreign army of occupation, as did the Indonesians, Malaysians, Indo-Chinese, and other subject peoples. Between 1941 and 1945, the years of American involvement, enormous political as well as technical changes altered the world forever.

More than anything else, the Pacific war was a war of logistics. The focus of Western powers on the war in Europe led to an amazing variety of weapons in the Pacific theater. The sheer number of governments involved, and the level of desperation late in 1941, assured a remarkable variety of armaments for the modern researcher to discover. As the war progressed, the impact of logistics was overpowering; Garrisoned stores throughout the theater were swept away by the early Japanese advances. Only the US Navy and Japanese Imperial Navy could move arms and men into battle; all other players were pushed to the sidelines. There was near-total change after 1942. Old World War I weapons inventories swept away by Japanese success were replaced by newly manufactured tools of war, and the overwhelming effectiveness and massive availability of new American equipment after Guadalcanal ensured the decline of British and European influence.

Searching for Reliable History

At this distance in time, the interested student of Pacific war weapons has limited options for truly understanding the war. The region is so vast that a lifetime could be spent exploring the battlefields, and many are accessible only by submarine and helicopter. New governments have arisen, and the ardent researcher is apt to find himself in the middle of a shooting war, if he is not careful. Most of us are limited to researching literature, museum and private collections, and talking to old soldiers. Inexorable demography is reducing the number of veterans able to tell the tale first-hand, and, as one Okinawa veteran put it, you have to decide whether you prefer the “good” story or the “true” one. Private collectors tend to follow a theme to the exclusion of competing points of view, and it’s up to you to sort out the bias, omission, and fact. Museums are little better for reliability, infected as they can be by revisionist, politically active “interpreters.” Equally distressing is the incredible volume of printed material claiming to describe the war in the Pacific, since the paper refuses no ink…

Artifacts can speak for themselves, but they are often not allowed to. Recognizing and dealing with revisionist historians is a major problem for the student of Pacific war arms. We must realize that the wonderful Smithsonian collection is lost to us for now, and revisionism, as seen in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry might lead you to think that the war never happened at all!

Three East Coast museums stand out from the politically correct crowd, the Marine Air-Ground Museum at Quantico, Virginia; the NRA National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia; and the US Army Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen, Maryland. In these repositories of history, you can see and examine unmolested artifacts without the drumbeat of Clinton-era distortion.

The Participants, a Thumbnail Sketch

Whole books have been written about each of the weapons, battles and politics of the combatants in the Pacific theater. For perspective, I will only touch upon the equipment of the major participants. All began the war with doctrines and equipment largely left over from the Great War. By late 1942, new American technology began to appear in the field, and new tactics arose to match the “island-hopping” allied strategy for victory. Nearly all of the weapons of late 1941 were passé by the end of the war in 1945. These facts may seem trivial to many readers, but there are now whole generations of Americans, victims of America’s cultural wars, who have not the faintest grasp of who and what were involved in World War II.

Great Britain lost much of her military hardware on the beaches of Dunkirk in the summer of 1940, and she was loathe to share much of what remained with the Far East. With an Army doctrine based on World War I SMLE rifles and Vickers water-cooled machine guns, the British were ill prepared to face the onslaught of their former Japanese allies. A few Brens and Stens went east before December 8, 1941, but most garrisons fought with whatever leftovers they had.. While “British” troops manned twenty-year-old Lewis guns, Indian troops were saddled with inferior weapons like the Vickers-Berthier, and a remarkable quantity of Boys anti-tank rifles found their way to Australia after finding no friends in North Africa. No heavy machine guns and precious little artillery were available

Australia felt abandoned, for good reason, and rushed to produce the inferior Austen and the remarkable Owen submachine guns. “Gangster Guns” had gained acceptance, if not respectability. America, home of the “Chicago Piano,” used the giant island as a huge ammo dump, and American largesse captured the Australian heart. British hardware returned after the crisis passed, but the Australians were never again quite so sure of the British. ’03 Springfields and M1917 Lee Enfields weren’t the cat’s pajamas, but they were very welcome in the dark days of 1942, even if they didn’t share the Empire’s standard .303 ammunition

The Netherlands East Indies met the Japanese invasion with turn-bolt Mannlicher rifles and Schwarzlose machine guns, but too few of either. Sauer pistols and cheap Imperial German surplus items were joined by motley “desperation buys” of United Defense, S&W, Thompson, Mauser, and various sporting guns. It was all too little and too late.

France fought Thailand in 1940 with many of her latest weapons, and modern pieces like the MAS 38 submachine gun would later reappear in the hand of the Viet Cong. Hotchkiss, Chatellerault, and Lebel joined the MAS 36 against the Japanese, but with no more success than against the Germans. Oddly enough, the Chauchat, pressed upon the Americans in 1918 in return for our Marines’ Lewis guns, had disappeared from the French order of battle.

China, dogged by corruption and collapse under foreign intrigue, could field only uncoordinated purchases by independent warlords. A few of everything have been encountered by researchers over the years, but the infatuation with the Mauser broomhandle endured and seemed to be transferred to the Japanese. Several Chinese Mausers appeared on Okinawa late in the war.

The major combatants, Japan and the United States, entered the war with remarkably parallel doctrines based on massed rifle-armed infantry. The Japanese approach was deeply enmeshed with cultural values, and the tactics and Mauser technology were well proved against the Russians and Chinese. Supported by organic mortar and light artillery, the Japanese soldiers applied an unprecedented confidence that was publicized in the West as the Bushido code and Banzai-fanatic mentality. However, the Japanese war machine was ground slowly under heel by American logistic might and new technology. America’s allies in the Pacific at first received largely obsolete World War I equipment via Lend-Lease. The Japanese army and navy went to war in 1941 with similar 1918 technology. When American 1942 technology arrived en masse, the outcome of the war was only a matter of time and blood.

Obsolete Murata 11mm rifles were replaced by 1941 for the most part by Mauser-style Arisaka 6.5mm and 7.7mm rifles and carbines. Hotchkiss-derived portatives also in 6.5mm and 7.7mm accompanied the troops. Small mortars, common in the Japanese army, amazed the Americans, as did the Japanese cultural dislike of pistols. Similarly, subguns like the SIG-made Bergmann MP18 and the home-grown Type 100 were rarely encountered. The impact of the M-1 Garand rifle cannot be overstated, and the Japanese attempt to copy it has left a few amazing examples for examination.

The American army, after 40 years in garrison as foreign occupiers, was slow to rise from its lethargy. Massive underestimation of Japanese resolve and ability led to enormous losses in the Philippines. Generally equipped with World War I vintage Springfield 1903s and water-cooled Browning M1917 machine guns, the American army had poorly integrated light artillery, and the Browning .50 caliber machine gun remained scarce. The Winchester trench shotgun and Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR M1918) were to become firm favorites of the American infantry, too many of whom would be sacrificed on Bataan. A remarkable collection of miscellaneous weapons had been passed down to the Filipino National Guard units, including trap-door Springfields, .30-40 Krags, Navy Lee rifles, and various Spanish leftovers and hunting guns. All would prove inadequate in 1942.

Like the heavy M2 Brownings, the M1 Garands were late in arriving. Once the Army got over its distaste for “ammunition-eaters,” the M1 would join the formerly despised Thompson to transform infantry tactics. Moving ever closer to modern assault-rifle doctrine, the relatively puny M1 carbine and air-cooled Brownings would gain lasting popularity with the troops. Oddly enough, the M3 submachine gun would never engender the affection soldiers and sailors developed for the Tommygun. Like the MAS 38, Thompsons would be found much later in Viet Cong hands, but the M3 was hard even to give away, despite its effectiveness.

In contrast to the polo club-style army preferred by the MacArthurs, father and son, the US Marines had a peculiar make-do culture developed by years at the end of the budget food-chain. Their innovative use of the BAR and Boys rifle revolutionized amphibious assault, when used in combined arms with amphibious armored vehicles, organic artillery, and novel applications of existing weapons. When supplies of the M1, arguably the best battle rifle in the world in 1941, lagged, the Marines made do with the less desirable Johnson. In addition to Boys rifles “obtained” in Australia, the Marines recreated French .75s and Army pack howitzers for the unique conditions on Guadalcanal. Stung by the failure of the Reising as an assault rifle, the Marines embraced the M1, M1A and the soon-to-be universal squad support air-cooled Browning .30s and .50s as they became available. Both the Marines and the Army rapidly recognized the new need for mortars in terrain and jungles that frequently defeated armor.

Finding History for Yourself

The accompanying photographs show a few of the many surviving publicly accessible artifacts of the Pacific war. Their variety and massive scope are far too great for a mere magazine article, but these collections make for rewarding research opportunities, both formal and casual.
The museums I visited display the guns in glass cases and in the open, allowing close examination. All have curators willing to assist the genuine researcher. All are under relentless cultural attack, and welcome honest students of history and support.

I alternated visits to the museums with discussions with local veterans. In the Washington, DC area old warriors are a dime a dozen, but the student of the Pacific War must search for Pacific War survivors. Time is rapidly claiming these heroes, so don’t wait to pursue an interest. There were more participants than most Americans realize, and the inexorable loss of first-hand knowledge reinforces the importance of the non-interpreted, genuine artifacts found in these three museums. The veterans can provide true depth to your understanding and illuminate the greatness of the country’s achievement, but don’t delay. I have yet to find a man without a story to tell.

Even the casual student of military weaponry should be greatly impressed by the sheer magnitude of documentary evidence to the unsurpassed combat efficiency of the Garand rifle in WWII. Alone among combatants on both sides of history’s most monumental war, America’s infantrymen carried as standard issue a most extraordinary semiautomatic rifle. Its accuracy, reliability, and high volume of effective fire often gave our soldiers and marines the decisive edge against Hirohito’s forces from the frozen misery of the Aleutians through steaming South Pacific jungles, and into Japan herself. On the other side of the world, from blowing sands of North Africa through Hitler’s “Fortress Europe,” the M1 steadily and unfailingly gained the respect and admiration of friend and foe alike.

Between the World Wars

Although miserly appropriations stifled American small arms development in the years of peace following the Great War, a quiet and modest mechanical genius named John C. Garand was steadily working on a semiautomatic rifle at the Army’s historic Springfield Armory. When the smoke of testing finally cleared, Garand’s gas operated, clip fed rifle was judged superior to all comers and officially adopted in 1936 as the “US Semiautomatic Rifle, Caliber .30 M1.”

A glowing account of the superiority of the new M1 rifle over the old M1903 was published in the Sep-Oct 1938 issue of the influential magazine INFANTRY JOURNAL. The following excerpt captures the flavor of the feature:

“The new weapon has received a thorough workout. Results indicate that men armed with it not only fire much more rapidly than with the 1903 rifle, but more accurately and with less fatigue, and that they can maintain accuracy during a far longer period. The tests have shown, too, that the new weapon is staunch mechanically, and that malfunctions can be expected to be few.

The M1’s semiautomatic action deserves the credit for the significantly higher rate of accurate fire with less fatigue than that of the bolt-action Springfield. With a bolt-action rifle, each aimed shot must be followed by a brief period where the infantryman pulls and pushes the bolt by hand to extract the empty then feed and lock a fresh cartridge. He must also resume a steady shooting position and reacquire the target in his sights. Finally, all of the recoil forces of the powerful .30 caliber service cartridge are pounded directly into his shoulder.

This isn’t such a big deal when the shooting is being done on the range and the soldiers aren’t overly tired. However, in combat, when the exhausted infantryman is likely to be presented with multiple targets, a semiautomatic rifle offers distinct advantages.

First, the gas operating system of the M1 absorbs about twenty percent of the recoil forces. Less “kick” means less flinching and greater accuracy. Then, automatic cycling of the bolt with each shot allows the rifleman to keep his target in sight at all times. This gives him the tremendous advantage of being able to squeeze off an immediate second or third shot if the first one doesn’t do the job. All of this contributes not only to higher volume of firepower, but also higher volume with higher accuracy. In a timed combat style test recounted in the previously cited article, troops armed with the M1903 were able to fire fewer rounds and scored less than half the hits that a comparable group got with the new M1.”

World War Two

When America entered the war against the Axis Powers in December, 1941, there were less than 100,000 M1 rifles in service — all with the US Army. But production accelerated steadily and by January 1944, some 4,400 were leaving Springfield and Winchester each day! The Marines, stubbornly hanging on to their beloved M1903 rifles, finally got the message during the battle for Guadalcanal in late 1942. Fighting side-by-side with soldiers, Leathernecks clearly saw how the firepower, accuracy and reliability of the Garand put their old bolt-action rifles to shame. This was soon corrected and the M1 distinguished itself in Corps service throughout the rest of the Pacific war.

Hip Pocket Artillery

One of the best aspects of the Garand rifle is its adaptability to a variety of tactical situations. Along with its predecessor, it could fire a full range of specialized ammunition including standard ball, tracer, armor piercing and incendiary cartridges. It was also well suited to bayonet fighting and sturdy and strong enough for launching heavy grenades.

It was this capability for firing grenades that really gave the American infantry squad a power punch. The M7 launcher, a spigot style device that fitted the end of the muzzle and secured to the bayonet lug, was standardized in March 1943. This allowed the M1 to fire all of the existing signal and offensive grenades previously used only by the M1903. Now, any riflemen in the squad could be immediately pressed into duty in the nasty job of blasting the Japanese out of their bunkers and caves with high explosive and fragmentation grenades.

Sniper Rifle

The Emperor’s army extensively employed snipers to harass and impede American forces both in the assault and in the relative safety of camps and bases during the consolidation phase of island-hopping. Most of these weren’t the type of highly trained marksmen with specially accurized rifles that we usually associate with the term “sniper.” Rather, they were most often ordinary soldiers with standard bolt-action Arisaka rifles, hiding in trees in the thick jungle foliage or in well-camouflaged one-man dugouts nicknamed “spider holes.”

But on the GI side, another handy use for the M1 was as a precision sniper rifle, fitted with an optical sight, flash hider and leather cheek pad. The first model fielded was designated M1C, with a special offset mount for the scope fabricated so that clips of cartridges could still be loaded through the top.

A semiauto sniper rifle offers a couple of theoretical advantages over its bolt action counterpart. First, the bolt does not need to by cycled by hand so there is less movement that may give away the sniper’s position. Then, if the first shot doesn’t do the job, a second is immediately available. Although the M1C and subsequent M1D sniper versions were said to be acceptably accurate, it is generally conceded that they never were able to equal the precision of the M1903 in its own sniper configuration.

Gimmicks

The urge to tinker with their weapons in order to “improve” them is a universal trait of soldiers. Despite the near-perfection of the M1, there were calls during WWII for a shorter and lighter version (the M1 Carbine had proven woefully inadequate in penetration and stopping power).

This resulted in the M1E5 with its 18 in. barrel and folding pantograph style buttstock. Despite blinding muzzle flash and much heavier recoil, it was intended for issue to paratroopers operating in the pacific. The war ended before it could be put into production. It is the inspiration for the so-called “Tanker Garand.” Several thousand of these postwar counterfeits were manufactured from surplus parts in the 1960’s.

Copies

In Japan near the end of the war, some captured Garands were modified to fire the 7.7mm rifle cartridge and issued to naval infantry troops. The Type 5, a last-ditch copy of the M1, also used the Type 99 7.7mm cartridge. Instead of the characteristic 8 round “en bloc” clip, this rifle loaded from two 5 round stripper clips through the top.

Despite being relatively heavy and a bit long and awkward for moving through jungle growth, the M1 made up for all this with legendary reliability and undeniable effectiveness. In the rain and mud of Guadalcanal, the volcanic ash of Iwo Jima, and the caves and bunkers of Okinawa, John Garand’s “clip-fed, gas-operated, air-cooled, semiautomatic shoulder weapon” arguably proved the most valuable tool carried by any infantryman in WWII.

Its powerful .30-06 cartridge would plow right through thick vegetation with impressive terminal effects against enemy soldiers, and its capability to launch grenades greatly extended the range and punch of the Army and Marine rifle squad.

Primary Reference Sources: Hatcher’s Book of the Garand, MG Julian Hatcher, NRA Books, 1948 (Reprinted by Gun Room Press) and US Army Field Manual 23-5.