I have been told...

C

Clancy

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Gentlemen,
..by many of the old timers that worked at SA in Ordnance on the M1 Garand that as many came back early after WW2 many of the early M1 Garand's below the 1 million mark were not repaired but destroyed. Could this be because of the changes in Receiver Steel done in June/July 1942 to the 8620 ? Could it have been because of the back of the receivers being changed i.e, stronger? Could it be because many of the lead-dip ones are hard to find? It's just some bits of data I have talked about with Ordnance people. I wonder what you guys think.
Thanks again
Clancy
 
ok, well here are my thoughts.

Springfield, during the war, manufactured by itself enough M1 garands to equip every American soldier then alive. So why then did the US ever build more?

Well, there's a thing called equipment loss. How many early M1's lie off New England, victims of the U-boats' "happy time"?

How many were battlefield damaged beyond economical repair in both theaters of operation?

This accounds for some of the relative scarcity of the earliest guns.

Now fast forward ahead to the massive rebuild programs of the late 1940's and beyond...

The earliest M1 receivers required the 7th round stoppage fix, were the least up to date receivers available, and were made of an older steel formulation. During rebuild, the guns were stripped down and serviceable parts were sorted out. Once this was done, there would have been more receivers than serviceable parts because receivers almost never wore out, while many other parts did.

Now you have to re-assemble the guns. Guess which receivers would have been used first? Why, the best, newest, most up to date and least worn receivers, of course.

I'm sure the older ones were set aside for possible repair and we know that a good number were given welded 7th round stoppage upgrades, were reparked, and re-used in rebuilds, but it's conceivable that thsi was only done in so much as parts were available to support this activity.

It's not inconceivable to imagine the rest got scrapped somewhere along the line as not economically viable to rebuild and upgrade. After all, there were more than enough M1's to go around once the GI's started demobilizing ;)
 
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