The U.S. M1 Carbine Story
BY Herschel Smith
1 year, 10 months ago
The M1 Carbine is a fine weapon for its intended purpose. However, the classic legacy models are very expensive. They’re treated as collectibles regardless of how many are in circulation. If you don’t mind having a new production model … well, they’re not any cheaper than the collectibles are. Those guns have maintained their value for many decades.
On February 12, 2023 at 11:31 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
Former U.S. Army infantry officer and former U.S. Marshal Tim Mullin, the author of “Testing the War Weapons: Rifles and Machine Guns Around the World,” (1997), offered the analysis that one could view the M-1 Carbine (especially in its select-fire M-2 variant) as the world’s first actual assault rifle, since it predated the German StG44/MP43 into action by about a year (1942).
The design criteria for an assault rifle or battle carbine (as some term these weapons) is generally agreed-upon to be the following:
1. A compact light-weight rifle with a short-barrel, i.e., a carbine 2. A weapon capable of select-fire operation 3. A weapon designed and optimized for use at close to near-medium range, typically the 0-300 yard range envelope in which most infantry combat takes place 4. Fires a so-called “intermediate cartridge,” optimized for such use and lying between a pistol/SMG cartridge on one hand and a full-power rifle cartridge on the other, in size, weight, kinetic energy and effective range 5. Unlike a submachine gun, an assault rifle fires from a closed bolt.
Whether this interpretation makes sense to a large extent hinges upon how one views the .30 Carbine cartridge, whether it is a true intermediate or not. But if one grants that the .30 Carbine’s 110-grain FMJ/Ball round was an intermediate, then Mullin’s analysis makes sense.
Obviously, the prototype of modern assault rifles was the famed German MP43/StG44, as it was clearly the predecessor to weapons like the Soviet AK47.
Many firearms historians designate the M-1/M-2 Carbine, however, as the first in a new class of weapons, what are today termed “personal defense weapons” or PDW’s for short.
A late uncle on my wife’s side of the family who died a few years back was a combat veteran of the Korean War when he was in the U.S. Army. Sitting around the dining room table one Sunday afternoon some years ago, we spoke about his experiences during the war. I happened to ask him about the various small arms he used and the ones used by his fellow soldiers.
He had been issued an M-1 Garand, which was his primary weapon all during his time in Korea 1950-1951, but when we got around to talking about the carbine, he remembered how popular they were with the men, and how very few ever remained for long on the ground as “battlefield pickups” so to speak, after engagements. Small arms and infantry weapons of all kinds were plentiful and to be had, M-1s, Com-Bloc weapons, submachine guns…. but very few M-1/M_2 Carbines.
And it wasn’t only the GIs snapping them up; the communists took them, too. And many of those carbines later faced American and allied forces in Vietnam a decade or so in the future, in the hands of Vietcong irregulars or the like.
The carbine was also liberally supplied to U.S. allies during the Cold War, so you are as likely to see one today in the Philippines, for example, as in the U.S.