More than that; better than a pickup truck load. Most, but not all, were the later WWII M1 and M1A1 guns with the bolt cocking handle on the side rather than on top as on the early Navy and Marine guns.
Posted on 04/12/2017 2:07:34 PM PDT by Mechanicos
Cape May Coast Guard boot camp 1971 my Echo 83 drilled with the Garand but shot for score and ribbies with an M16 and 1911. Good times.
re: General George S. Patton:
“In my opinion, the M1 rifle is the greatest battle implement ever devised.”
Nowadays, everyone wants to go all macho full auto gazillion rounds per minute.
“Hold ‘em & Squeeze ‘em” well aimed fire (unless you are clearing a room or get ambushed) is the way to go. “Reach OUT and touch someone...” like 200, 300, 600 yards away.
Plus, someone has to carry all that ammo (like YOU!) that you are blowing through on Full Auto. In ‘Nam I once ran low after starting out with 500 rounds and I NEVER fired Full Auto.
More than that; better than a pickup truck load. Most, but not all, were the later WWII M1 and M1A1 guns with the bolt cocking handle on the side rather than on top as on the early Navy and Marine guns.
While that’s nice I can get 7.62x39 for $ 0.26 a round for my russkie guns. Somewhat less accurate, but much more affordable. I would love to own a Garand, but as things stand I’ll have to wait until things get better financially. In the meantime I can still shoot my russkie rifles for practice.
CC
Good Lord! A picture like that is almost enough to drive me to drink!
Not me. my right thumbnail is twice as thick as the left due to an unfortunate Garand incident.
CC
Nothing wrong with the Russki rifles. I have a Tula SKS that’s a ton o’ fun to shoot, and cheap ammo (as you note) is still available. Back in the day (’91 or so) you could go to just about any gun show in America and walk out with a ChiCom commercial SKS and 1000rds ChiCom 7.62x39 for $100.
Back then, DCM was selling Garands for the princely sum of $310. The price has increased somewhat since then ... The big steal was $55 No.4 Mk1 Enfields. Cheap .303 Brit has completely dried up
THE HORROR!
tHE HORROR!
Not generally. the M1 ball load was a heavier bullet better suited to long-range machinegun work, particularly with the tripod-mounted water-cooled M1917 Browning gun and tank machineguns. Some Springfield shooters liked it, but recoil was severe. Now, more than you want to know:
The better choice was M2 ball, with a bullet weight around 150 grains at about 2700 FPS, available preloaded in Garand clips and six-clip bandoleers, 20-rouned boxes [BARs and Springfields] and MG belts. This was the primary Garand load for most of the war, but by the end armor piercing was being loaded in Garand clips and was found to be very accurate.
Nowadays there's still a good bit of Greek military HXP headstamped .30 M2 around; the Greeks still maintain reserve stocks of Garands for civil emergency issue. The Serbs load M2 ball in both Prvi Partizan commercial loadings, [headstamp ppu] and Yugoslav military [nny] packaging. Korean [PMC} Garand ammo is good, as is Taiwan's [Wolf *gold* brass cases] and the Phillipine's Armscor still loads decent.30 M2, and Hornady has a Garand-specific match load with the supurb A-max 168-grain match bullet. The Russians offer an inexpensive steel-cased, brass-washed 145 grain .30-06 loading in both soft point hunting ammo and FMJ ball.
Funny you should mention that. The next gun on my wish list is a mark IV no.1 Lee Enfield. Just picked up a factory 636 Chinese SKS a few months ago. Absolutely pristine for $300. The metal is like new. The stock shows signs of repairs, but the work is well done and all numbers match, no grind offs. Also, NO import markings whatsoever. Might have been a Canadian border “walkover”.
CC
You refer to the ones in Korea. The ROK wants to sell them to US Distributors. See:
https://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/m1-rifle-antique-south-korea-import/
Back in the day it was drummed into every Boot's head:
"Make Every Round Count"
I can tell you, a full load out of 30-06 or .308 can really weigh you down.
Here is an interesting forum post for some different caliber ammo showing how many rounds per pound and how much 100 rounds weigh.
http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=159381
Just looked on ammoseek ... Wolf steel-cased .303 Brit is running ~$0.40/rd. I have never used it. The 174gr PPU is excellent, but brass and more expensive. Enfields are also very hard on your brass. I don’t think the ROF were very concerned about reloading ...
That’s the same website that was offering the tulammo 7.62 modern production, Berdan primed in a spam can for 26 cents a round. 40 cents? Not bad. The SMLE does tend to be rough on brass. Isn’t that because it headspaces on the case rim and not the shoulder?
CC
It might be some of them could have been saved, restored even. But I've just got too many projects, and I'm running out of room in the shop.
Headspacing on the rim let them make the chambers a bit loose. That’s convenient when you’re crawling around in the mud ... not so convenient when you want to re-use the brass. The original Brit load (and the Pakistani loads sometimes still avaliable) are Berdan primed and corrosive, which makes the whole business moot.
It just gets worse ...
After the relatively nice Garands from the Philippines come in, we MAY see the Korean M1 carbines follow. But some of them are pretty rough condition, though at least three manufacturers are still turning out carbines and their parts. The other nice thing about the Korean batch: there are 600,000 of them.
What’s the joke?
I have a Garand and a beautiful Springfield M1A
It was probably on FR, with discussion of cartridge size. I think the 5.56 was deemed most popular in Afghanistan for the more rounds they could carry. The main part I remember was that the vets always said they stashed as many magazines as they could - wherever. Cutting out panels in the Humvees to stash more mags, etc.
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