[The National Interest] Key point: Plastic and metal are in, but this wooden rifle was the Greatest Generation's greatest weapon.
A variety of outstanding weapons and pieces of equipment affected the course of World War II for both the Allies and the Axis powers.
There was the British workhorse 25-pounder field gun, the deadly Supermarine Spitfire fighter, the Avro Lancaster bomber, the universal carrier, and the dependable Bren light machine gun; the rugged Soviet T-34, regarded as the best tank of the war; the devastating German 88mm antiaircraft and artillery gun, and the formidable Tiger tank series; the feared Japanese Mitsubishi Zero carrier fighter; and, from the American "arsenal of democracy" came the ubiquitous jeep, the Sherman medium tank, the half-track, the bazooka rocket launcher, the universally used C-47 transport plane‐and the Garand M-1 infantry rifle.
Designed long before the war by John C. Garand, a French Canadian engineer, the semiautomatic, gas-operated, air-cooled, clip-fed M-1 was the main infantry weapon of the U.S. Army in 1941-1945. Firing a .30-caliber cartridge in eight-round clips, it was the world’s first semiautomatic rifle in military service and was used wherever American soldiers saw action, in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, the Pacific Theater, France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany.
The M-1 had a significant advantage over the bolt-action rifles used by the other Allied and enemy armies because of its semiautomatic mechanism. Its shooter could fire as fast as he could squeeze the trigger. A trained soldier was able to fire eight rounds within 20 seconds and then quickly insert a full clip without taking his sights off the target. He could also load with regular ball, tracer, armor-piercing, or incendiary ammunition, and with relative ease he could turn the weapon into a grenade launcher. |