Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Garand vs. M16/M4: battlefield stoppages

I love a good M16/M4 bash as much as the next guy, but while thinking about how many US soldiers were or were not killed by the AR, I started wondering about this:

M1 Garand: total rounds fired in battle / total rifle failures in battle (not due to enemy fire)

M16/M4: total rounds fired in battle / total rifle failures in battle (not due to enemy fire)

Wouldn't it be interesting if the Pentagon actually had the raw data to support a study about that?

Only thing that might be compared would be number of kills/wounded per rounds fired! The M1 wasn't a spray and pray weapon. Marksmanship was dismal at best during WWII but probably slightly better than these last three decades....excluding the USMC! That's why Eisenhower instituted the United States Army Advanced Marksmanship Units....which were abandoned years ago!!

I suspect there was a bit of spray and pray on Guadalcanal and a few other places in the Pacific.

Anyway, the reason why I'm saying rounds fired (not enemy killed) is because I'm curious as to whether the Garand action - on average - could stand up to the same number of cycles under battlefield conditions as - on average - the M16/M4 rifles.

You can see where I'm going with this, right? Pick a number. So many rifles, each. So many rounds fired, each. Dirt, mud, snow, negligence. Is the much revered Garand going to function longer, better, more reliably?

To hear some people talk, you would expect them to believe the Garand would win hands down. I'm not ready to assume that.

I mentioned this in some other post a while ago but there is a small book called "Battlefield Analysis of Infantry Weapons" based on numerous after action interviews of soldiers in the Korean War. Interesting reading and very objective as to the strengths, weaknesses and best uses of the main infantry weapons of the time. For instance, the M1 Carbine was mostly liked and useful while the full auto M2 jammed a lot.

Anyway, regarding the M1. Good, overall reliable weapon but the troops did not use it effectively much past 200 yards. Part of the reason being the sloping terrain of Korea not allowing them to see the enemy beyond the crest of a hill but also because the soldiers didn't think they could hit a ducking, dodging target much beyond 200 yards so wouldn't engage until the enemy was close enough that they were reasonably sure of good hits.

And the BAR was the Queen of the battlefield - i.e. Firepower! Outgoing fire would often start with the BAR man and then spread outward to individual riflemen as they joined the volume of fire.

Aimed fire is a wonderful idea and I admire it myself but apparently lots of bullets going downrange is what the GI wants.

I've read some old stuff where the guys brought up on the 1903 hated the Garand.

And so it goes.

I've read that, too.

There is a passage in "Guadalcanal Diary" where a single Japanese soldier gets up and starts running down the beach, I think this was the morning after the battle of the Tenaru River. The Marines opened up on him with their Springfields and dozens of bullets were fired but no one hit him as he took to the ground. One lone "old, grizzled Marine with the three fingered glove of a marksman" if I recall correctly, got into a good, sling supported kneeling position waiting for the soldier to get up and run again. As he did the Marine fired one round and killed him.

What this has to do with battlefield stoppages I don't know, but your post just reminded me of it.

I think it was at Tarawa where the volcanic sand really gummed up the Garands. The Higgins boats each had a '03 in them, but by the end of the day, there were all gone, swapped for the Garands.

Of course I will probably be accused of Heresy for suggesting the Garand was not the perfect battle rifle.

I once knew a guy who was an Army motorcycle dispatch rider in the European theater. He was regular Army and had been issued a 1903 before Pearl Harbor. (Not an A3.)

He loved his '03, but the Army snatched it right out of his hands on his way to the dock when he shipped out for Europe. When he got to England, they offered him a choice of a Garand or a Thompson.

When he got to France, he located a pristine Mauser K98 and a supply of clean ammo, and he carried that Mauser throughout the rest of the war, knowing that he'd be executed out of hand if he was ever captured with it. He grew to love that Mauser and eventually came to believe it was nearly the equal of his old '03.

He thought the Garand was a POS and was still saying so well into the 1990s.

I forget which other account of the Korean War this was in, but the author told of how the Garand could freeze up in the bitter cold of the Korean winter. The men took to keeping four or five fully loaded captured Mosin-Nagants in their foxholes in that eventuality, those rifles working under any and all conditions.

Aimed fire is a great goal. However it is firepower that will allow movement or help to stop movement. The M16/M4 weapons give firepower and accuracy. If they could fire a 308, and be controlled, they would be almost perfect. Have often wondered how many would have been used in WWII if the soldiers could have chosen them. With the ability to do some of the job of a BAR with a bigger mag and lighter ammo, size and weight of a carbine and decent accuracy, it would have had appeal. Imagine a banzai charge when most of the GI's had several 30 round mags and the ability to go full auto when it got real close.

Was he ever aware his 1903 Springfield was a copy of the 98?

My Dad was a 28 year old Gunny on Guadalcanal and they used the '03 and Thompson almost exclusively. He said he threw his Reising into the sea since it was not reliable. He never saw a Garand until the Army relieved the 1st Marine Division later in the campaign. As one poster stated, marksmanship was everything. He was in G-2-1.

Interesting video all the way through but go to 8:58 for the BAR and continue through the machine guns.

Yes.

While attending Camp Hale during WWII my stepfather made sure he failed BAR training so he didn't have to carry the thing. He did like the Garand though, was fairly pleased with it's accuracy, having grown up jump shooting whitetails in New England as a teen and young man.

I read somewhere that marines were allotted 25 rnds a day at Guadalcanal. Would tend to jibe with "marksmanship was everything" if for no other reason than pure necessity.

Probably due to the Navy having to skedaddle with all of their supplies, including ammunition.

In "With the Old Breed", E.B. Sledge wrote about an amtrac bringing up ammunition and mentioned a "unit of fire". One unit of fire was the amount of ammunition one Marine was expected to expend in one day of heavy fighting. A unit of fire for the Garand was 100 rounds. When I read that I thought it seemed pretty low.

I can guarantee that an M1 is going to catch on fire in a lot fewer rounds than an M16.

The M1 was great for it's day, but the M16 is incomparable in suppressive fire. The M16 could always claim fire superiority even over AK47s.

One of the reasons for M-1 stoppage in the cold of Korea was that fact the M-1s were oiled to the max and the oil is what froze. There were no synthetics in those days or any synthetic dry lubricants. However, I never heard any of the sour doughs who fought in the Battle of the Bulge or the Winter of 44-45 talk about the M-1 freezing up. By the time I joined in 66 the military had developed synthetics for cold weather use and I never had any freeze ups with M-1 carbine, M-1 or M-14. We were also told that if synthetics were not available to use no lubricant at all to avoid freeze ups.

The best battle rifle is a good controlled feed bolt action rifle and fire discipline. However, if one has to choose a semi-auto than I'll take the M-14 over a M-4/M-16 any day.

I spoke with my Dad extensively about this. He joined up ten days after Pearl Harbor. He liked the accuracy of the 1903A3, which is what he started out with in Basic in southern California. I think they were issued Garands at Fort Lewis, Washington. He felt the firepower of the Garand trumped the accuracy advantage of the Springfield.

Since Dad was in WWII, I knew a lot of veterans of that conflict. Several of my Uncles were too. Some of the stuff said in gun magazines doesn't true up with the stuff I heard. The 1911 wasn't well liked at all. It was seen as "junky" and inaccurate. The Thompson was seen as uncontrollable and the Grease Gun was another gun viewed as junk. The BAR seemed very well liked. Carbines were seen as handy, neat little guns that didn't have good stopping power.

Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert, a veteran of Korea and later Vietnam, was a huge fan of the BAR. Herbert went into the army a private and came out a light Colonel. He was THE most decorated veteran of the Korean conflict. He shot all the WWII era weapons and the BAR was his favorite.