The M1 Garand Rifle, greatest battle implement ever made. Right?
For the time, pretty damn much. The M1 could lay down a volume of fire unmatched by any other general infantry rifle of the day. It had every meter of effective range of the other rifles too. It was even logically similar with the en bloc clips feeding the 30-06 (and later some .308s) the 8 rounds effectively into the system.
Magazine fed weapons of WWII were limited mostly by the number of available magazines. It was one of the reasons the early M16 magazines were considered, and to a certain degree are modernly still considered, a disposable part. Weapons hadn’t been designed with the magazine change as well thought out part of feeding the weapons nearly as much as we have them today. But the Garand used a variant on decades old stripper clip design with the en bloc.
While by today’s standard the M1 is obsolete, for the time it was the battle implement of choice. That didn’t stop myths from making it into our modern “common knowledge” index however. Bloke on the Range takes on several things people ‘know’ about the M1, most of which were considered negatives and don’t actually exist. I took on the other end of the spectrum about the ‘legend’ of the Garands infallibility in the article linked above.
The M1 was a damn good rifle for its era, but it was what it was, and it was not several things people thought it was.
Enjoy. Also, welcome to the BotR rabbit hole. You’re stuck in here with me now.
