Sangamon County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois


The M1 Carbine
Phil Davis

Technical Presentation
 at the SCRA meeting 7/7/08
August 2008 GunNews



The M1 Carbine, one of the most loved and despised military weapons of the 20th Century from the US military.  The carbine fits into two categories, you either love it or you hate it.  I happen to think it's pretty cool.

One interesting fact from kind of the pop culture side, it was voted the most effective weapon for killing the undead in the Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks because it's light, powerful enough to do the job, accurate, holds multiple shots, easy to reload and it doesn't kick a whole lot.  If you're worried about a rising of the undead the M1 Carbine is your weapon.

The M1 Carbine came about about in the early days of World War II.  Some of the legends say it was invented by the famous Carbine Williams.  Well yes and no.  Did he invent what later became this?  Part of it.  He didn't actually invent the rifle.  He invented the way the gas system works.  If I were to take off this stock, there's a little gas tappet that comes down off the bottom of the barrel, it's a spigot that sticks out and the operating rod slides up around it.  What Carbine Williams invented was that little gas spigot that blows the operating rod back.  Everything else was designed by two bored engineers in the Winchester machine shop on their own time.  Literally they were just people who were good with machinery and a creative sense of humor and they were just farting around.  They decided they were going to make a light caliber rifle that was magazine fed.  They saw this gas operation system that Carbine Williams came up with and they were making it.  It wasn't in this caliber, I forget what the original caliber was, but it was a light hand carbine.  They were going to try to market it to police department, ranchers, etc.  If you remember the Thompson submachine gun was also marketed to ranchers and housewives.  It was marketed to housewives for defense of your farm while your husband was away.

When 1940 came around the US was starting to spool up for World War II ever so slightly.  We couldn't admit that we were going to get into it even though the British, French and the Russians had been slugging it out for over a year and we'd been sending them weapons and stuff like that.  FDR was slowly trying to rearm our military.  Keep in mind that at that time we were still using for the most part World War I surplus.  We were using Springfield's, 1917 Infields, water cooled .30 caliber machine guns, and a few air cooled machine guns.

Troops that were training for armored services were training with Model A trucks with TANK written on the sides of them.  Guys who were training for machine gun duties were using shoe boxes with broomsticks stuck out the front of them and going "tacka, tacka, tacka."  This was high tech training for 1940.

However, a need arose for a weapon that would supplement the 1911 .45, again one of my favorite weapons.  I love the 1911 .45.  They wanted to get officers, cooks, rear echelon troops, artillery and mortar crews a weapon that gave them more fire power and a little longer range without having to carry around a 9 1/2 pound Springfield or a 9 1/2 pound M1 Garand in a situation where they were probably not going to take a shot more than a hundred yards.  Keep those very specific parameters in mind when I talk about the M1 Carbine.  It was never meant to be a main battle rifle.  Was it used for one, yes.  Was it designed for it, no.  It was designed to be a supplement or replacement for a handgun.

If weighs a little over five pounds, I believe it is five pounds and six ounces.  It has a 15 shot magazine, a vast improvement over seven rounds.  Is it as good a one shot stopper from here to the door as a .45?  Probably not but I still would not want to get shot by it.

The original World War II Carbine looked a little different than this one.  The rear sight was not a windage adjustable elevation adjustable sight.  It had a two aperture sight much like the back side of a M16 rifle.  It was a flip sight.  I believe it was 300-600 yards, flip, flip.  That was all the adjustment it had.

During World War II there were two types of front bands.  The type one band is just the metal ring that you can see here.  The type two band has a slight sleeve around the barrel but it stops at the fore end.  This is a type three band.  It has a bayonet lug.  This is post War.

Other features, if you'll notice it's got a little nub here on the side of the magazine catch to hold a thirty round magazine.  Thirty round magazine, not World War II issue.  That came out with the advent of another rifle.

Also the safety on the original one was not the ever popular and ever present swing type safety.  It was a push button much like most of your hunting shotguns.  It was a very good lightweight carbine.

When 1940 came around the US Army put  out this contract that said we'd like to have a light rifle issued to this group of people.  The president of the Winchester factory remembered walking through the shop one day and seeing two of his guys farting around with this design.  He went to them and asked them if  they still had that design they'd been working on.  They said it's right over there in the rack.  It was for the most part this with those other features.

He took it to the ordinance board and it beat out guns by Smith & Wesson, Marlin and I believe the Thompson Submachine Gun Company.  All three of them had been trying to come up on three months notice and these guys had been farting around with this one in their spare time since 1936.  So they had been working on it for four years and they pretty much had it ready to go.  As soon as it passed the prototype stage it went directly into production.  There were no Mark 1, modification 2's, it was like, yep good gun, bang bang, it works, it doesn't jam that much, make me.  They did that.  Very few US military rifles can say that.  The M1 Garand went through two or three different incarnations before it actually came out.

I've talked to a lot of World War II veterans and I've found that most European theatre veterans dislike the carbine.  Most Pacific theatre veterans love the carbine.  The reason is the type of battlefield.  Look at the type of battlefield you're looking at.  Europe, hedgerow country, one-hundred to two-hundred meters between the hedgerows, open field fights with town fighting.  Town fighting, great.  Open field fighting, not so much  If I had to take a shot at two or three-hundred yards with this I'd probably hose out the first 15-round magazine and I might score a hit.  It would poke a hole in anybody but it wouldn't transfer a whole lot of energy because these little round nose bullets tend to bleed off energy pretty quick.  The M1 Garand is much better for an open field fight.

The M1 Carbine was designed, however, to be a secondary weapon because of the shortage of weapons after December 7, 1941 and got pressed in as a mainline infantry weapon.

There were millions of these made and not just by Winchester.  Winchester was the founder, however Winchester sold the design to the US Government and it was made by a multitude of factories, Winchester, IBM, Rock-ola Jukebox Company, Saginaw Machine and Tool, Inland, and US Postal Meter Company.  A few of them were made by the Guide-lamp Division of General Motors.  A couple of them only made the receivers.  The purists out there are looking around at these M1 carbines and they say this one here, its got  a Rock-ola receiver but its got an Underwood barrel on it, that can't be right.  So they go around looking for a Rock-ola barrel.  Guess what, Rock-ola made about 300 barrels and they made about 200,000 carbines.  No you're going to find them with Underwood barrels because Underwood was about twenty miles from Rock-ola.  They just set up there.

This particular one is a Underwood carbine with an Underwood barrel.  When I got it, it even had an Underwood magazine in it which is an anomaly.

The fifteen round magazines were issued to the troops.  Ammunition was issued in a stripper clip which would look very familiar to anybody who is used to an M16.  However the M16 the charger clip guide is separate.  On the M1 Carbine it is part of the stripper clip.  It's very easy to do.  You just slide it down on the back of the magazine.

The M1 Carbine during World War II had a couple different variations.  Just because it had a windage sight does not mean it was not put on there during World War II.  From 1944 on the windage adjustable sight was beginning to be retrofitted on guns coming out of the factories.  That was one of the main gripes.  Yeah, it's a nice aperture rear sight, we'd like to be able to adjust it or we'd like to be able to have a little more fine elevation adjustment.  Originally, because of what it was designed for, it was designed for close combat, they figured a 300-yard battle sight, that's all you need.  If you're shooting more than 300 yards, shut up and call artillery, you're an officer for God's sake.

They beat the stock up a little bit.  They made the stock a little thicker.  They had another variant that was used during World War II that was made strictly by the Inland Company for the 82nd, 101st, and the 17th Airborne Infantry Division.  It was called the M1A1 or Modification one, an M1A1 as an M1 Carbine with a side folding stock, a wire stock,  It is not the sturdiest folding stock in the world.

Ammunition for an M1 carbine.  If its American ammunition and someone's selling it cheap because they think it might be corrosive and it is 1940s and 1950s dated, buy all you can get, there never was any corrosive M1 carbine ammo made.  During World War II there was shortage on the chemicals used to make primers.  They came up with lead stippling priming compound.  This was the first cartridge they ever used it on so they didn't make corrosive ammunition because they didn't want to but because it was more expensive to make the corrosive stuff.  So they made noncorrosive.  So all of the M1 Carbine ammo, as long as its American, is noncorrosive.

Those of you who were here for the good old days of the 1950's and 60's will remember that the DCM and the surplus stores were selling these things for about $17.50.  $17.50 got you an M1 Carbine and two magazines.  $27.50 got you an M1 Garand.  CMP still has a few of these from time to time and they go for between four and five-hundred dollars with a standard grip.  If you're going to buy them on the collectors market or trade for them on the collectors market and gun shows, a beat to death carbine with import marks stamped on the bottom of the barrel will run you about $650 - $700 now.  I never thought that I would see the day when an M1 Carbine was worth more than $300.  I thought that I had just ripped somebody off when I sold them a nice Winchester for $300 about six years ago.  Thank you Tom Hanks.  Thank you Band of Brothers.  All the World War II stuff went right through the stinking ceiling.  Within the next year that carbine, that Winchester that I sold, a beautiful one in as nice shape as this one, was worth about $900.  Now a good World War II Winchester is worth about $1200.  Guess what ladies and gentlemen, they just got done filming the World War II Pacific Theatre version of Band of Brothers.  Buy your carbines now. They'll be $1800.  I've already turned down $850 for this one.



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