Loved by millions of American WWII troops for its extreme light weight, fast handling, and excellent firepower, the M1 carbine developed a bad reputation for lacking stopping power, range and accuracy. Yet, Audie Murphy, our highest decorated soldier in the war who probably killed more Germans than anyone, heralded it as his favorite weapon. Was it a lemon or a god send?

In warfare troops called upon to serve in the artillery, to man tanks and other vehicles, in the engineers, as mechanics servicing aircraft, trucks and other machines, or in charge of supplying front line troops, often wind up unexpectedly in close quarter combat. By 1940, with Europe once again at war and the U.S. on the brink of the coming bloodbath, the Ordinance Department decided that the M1 rifle was too long and heavy for such troops and the pistol they carried to be only effective at point blank range. Pistols are very difficult to shoot well, particularly under stress and especially so for the non expert. Weighing over ten pounds, the Thompson submachine gun was considered to be a handful to lug around and wasteful of ammunition, a factor making it potentially fatal to troops temporarily cut off from fresh supplies of ammunition. Moreover, its .45 caliber slugs plummeted like a rock after a hundred yards. The U.S. Ordinance Department called for a "light rifle project", specifying a five pound semi automatic rifle firing a thirty caliber 110 to 125 grain bullet at 2,000 feet per second out of an 18 inch barrel. In a few short months, the Winchester Arms Company developed both the cartridge and a debugged ready for production rifle from original concept to finish. So impressed was Ordinance after witnessing tests of the new weapon that it a initiated a production program to replace all .45 pistols and submachine guns with the M1 carbine.

 

By war's end over six million were produced, with the M1 rifle being the next most prolific small arm at four million copies. The M1 carbine soon became a much favored weapon by airborne troops, many Marines, and by combatants and non-combatants alike in every branch of the service. But it did not manage to replace the Thompson submachine gun or the .45 pistol simply because even the huge industrial capacity of the U.S. could not satisfy the insatiable demand for weapons. Our troops found themselves fighting side by side with a whole gamut of small arms running from the World War I designed bolt action Springfield to M1 rifles, forty-five pistols, Thompsons, BARS (Browning automatic rifles) and belt fed machine guns. Perhaps the M1 carbine got a bad name in some quarters because it became compared to nearly every small arm in our arsenal instead of being measured only against the two weapons it was intended to replace, the forty-five pistol and the submachine gun.

Many thanks for Marley (entertainer at Roxies for PT's in Brooklyn, Illinois) for posing for these pictures.

 

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