M1 CARBINE MIRACLE

DOWN RANGE

- Mike Venturino

In the early 1940s, there hap-pened to be a firearms miracle the likes of which will probably never occur again: A military firearm was manufactured to the tune of 6.25 million in less than four years, and that included time spent at drawing boards before the first steel and wood were cut. Ancillary points to the miracle were that the M1 Carbine’s basic design was accomplished in 13 days by Winchester Repeating Arms, and nine of the 10 companies that produced them from 1941 to 1945 had never manufactured a firearm previously. Of course, Winchester was the exception.

In 1940, higher-ups in the U.S. Army decided that a combat weapon was needed to replace U.S. Model 1911A1 .45 pistols – they never did. In essence, their reasoning was that a hit from a light caliber rifle was better than a miss with a heavy caliber pistol. The first move in the “Light Rifle” project, as it was originally termed by the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Department, was developing a suitable cartridge. Winchester was already producing a round called the .32 Winchester Self Loading (WSL). Therefore, the government requested Winchester develop a .30-caliber round based loosely on it. After considerable testing, Winchester’s result was a cartridge with a 1.29-inch long case of rimless design with a 110-grain (some say 108-grain) roundnose FMJ bullet. The government hoped for 2,000 fps muzzle velocity, but with the powders then available Winchester came up with 1,980 fps, and that was deemed acceptable.