US MILITARY WEAPONS
of
WWI and WWII
Military weapons have long been a hobby of mine.  I have been collecting them since I was quite young. There are a few to go over so I'll start out with the Springfield Armory M1903. 

The M1903 was best known for its accuracy and reliability.  The action is based on the Mauser bolt action. The M1903 was chambered in the M1903 (30-03) 220 grain round nose round originally and in 1906 was changed to the ever so popular 30-06.  The M1903 served through four major conflicts; World War I, World War II as primary battle and sniper rifles and in Korea and early Viet Nam and sniper rifles.  The sniper knows this fine rifle as silent death.  In fact in the early days of WWII the United States Marine Corps preferred the M1903 because of it superior accuracy.  The need for a reliable and accurate semi-auto battle rifle saw an interesting development in the Pedersen devise.  The Pedersen devise, designed by J. D. Pedersen was an attachment fitted to the M1903 that turned it into a semi-auto using an under powered .30 caliber pistol cartridge.  That brings us to the next in line, the M1 Garand.








John C. Garand started his attempt at a semi-auto battle rifle in 1919.  Problems seemed to plague him at every turn.  His research and development started to pay off in 1929 when during formal testing his design beat out that of rival gun designer J. D. Pedersen.  The first Garands were chambered in .276 caliber.  The .276 was a flat shooting low preasure cartridge.  The Army wanting to keep things standardized wanted the use of the 30-06.  The problem with the 30-06 round was too high of chamber preasure.  The problems with chamber preasure and mechanics were worked out and in March 1932 an order was placed for 77 "US Semi-automatic Rifle, Caliber .30 TIE2" rifles.  In August 1933 the rifles designation was changed to "US Rifle, Caliber .30 M1" the M1 Garand.  The M1 was officially adopted as the US military rifle on 9 January, 1936.  The M1 saw service during World War II and Korea.  It was also given out to nearly every United States allis so that there were millions M1 Garands in servive for a great many years.  The WWII M1 Garand was made by Springfield Armory and Winchester Repeating Arms.  After WWII while Springfield continued to produce the rifle two other companies joined in production, Harrington and Richardson and International Harvester, a tractor company.  A total of nearly 5.5 million M1 Garands were produced.  Italy's Beretta and Breda companies also made a number of M1s.  The Danish used the M1 Garand up until the 1990s.  The M1 Garand was a heavy rifle and a smaller rifle was developed that was almost half the weight, the M1 carbine.




  Started 11 October, 2007
    last edited 14 May, 2008
Standard Products
Springfield Armory M1903
Saginaw Division S.G.
Underwood Elliott Fisher.
Springfield Armory 10-41  Springfield Armory 12-43   Springfield Armory 2-45
The basic gas system and action of the M1 carbine was designed by a man named David Williams in the late 1930s.  In October of 1940 the Ordnance Department handed out the specifications for a light weight carbine design.  25 companies got those specifications.  Of the 25 companies only seven were able to come through with a prototype design.  The company that acquired the gas system and action design, Winchester, was unable to produce a working model in time for testing.  This proved to be golden for Winchester because none of the other designs proved worthy to the Ordnance Department.  More testing was conducted in September of 1941.  Winchester had a working model by then and their design won the hearts of the Ordnance Departments staff. 

Unheard of in today's world, the inventor of the M1 carbine was a convicted murderer while he was serving his sentence in prison.  Yes, David Williams was a convicted murderer.  Can you see such a thing happening today?

The US CARBINE .30 CAL. M1 was designed to take the place of the venerable M1911A1 .45 pistol for noncommissioned officers.  That idea sounded great on paper but the officers had other ideas.  They refused to give up the old .45 and were issued the M1 in addition to the .45. 

The M1 was produced by ten companies for the war effort: Winchester Repeating Arms, Inland Division (a division of General Motors, Underwood Elliott Fisher (a typewriter company), Rockola (a jukebox company), National Postal Meter (a postal machine company), Quality Hardware, Standard Products, Saginaw Division (S.G. again, General Motors), International Business Machine (IBM), Irwin Pedersen (Grand Rapids).  Irwin Pedersen was unable to meet production and all the parts and the remainder of the contract was turned over to Saginaw Steering Gear (S'G') at the Grand Rapids plant.  These ten companies produced some 6,200,000 carbines by the time production ended in August of 1945.   
Inland Division GM
Rock-Ola
Winchester  Arms
Quality Hardware Mfg. Corp.
National Postal Meter
International Business Mach.