Shooters will find a chuckle in that he wanted to chamber it in what would be today probably a 6.5 or 7 mm to “take advantage of superior ballistics”. His request was denied by no other than Gen. MacArthur himself as head of Logistics and in so doing used what is probably the first use of the phrase “politically incorrect” as the US had warehouses full of .30-06 ammo.
Great background on the whole 7mm vs. .30 caliber issue can be found in American Rifle - A Biography.
Well worth reading.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Rifle-Biography-Alexander-Rose/dp/0553384384
(Now don’t everyone get their panties in a bunch...I get no gain from this...only trying to make it easier for anyone interested to find)
The same debate came about again during the 1950’s when the 7.62NATO was being adopted.
A fundamental virtue of the Garand was its ease of use by even minimally trained American teens of its era. As a birthday present when my youngest brother turned 17, my father arranged a session with a trainer and my father’s Garand on a local SWAT range. From his first clip, my brother was putting rapid, highly accurate shots into targets at middle distance. His readiness to use the Garand came from avid boyhood use of a BB gun, the sort of experience that was once a common feature of American boyhood.
I’ve always wanted an M1 Garand, even though the 30-06 would kill my already destroyed shoulder every time I fired it. Just the history of it would be worth it.
I bought two from the CMP with the intention of giving them to my sons someday. While my wife was in the recovery room with our third son, I logged into the CMP’s site to buy one more!
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