The M1 Carbine is the standard by which all PDWs are measured.

[stanc]

Much of the brilliance I see in the M1 Carbine is it was made on a 1938 Army request.

:confused: I'm not seeing how there is any brilliance in the leadership reaching the logical conclusion that the M1 Garand was a poor choice to equip many Army personnel.

It's easy from a 21st century perspective to know what do design. It's just Monday morning quarterbacking though.

Hindsight is what what enables us to judge whether a past decision was brilliant, dumb, or just so-so. And I'm not seeing anything especially brilliant about the M1 rifle or M1 carbine.

The M1 rifle was a continuation of the same design philosophy as its predecessor, the M1903. The only significant difference is that gas operation was subsituted for manual operation.

The M1 rifle broke no new ground. It was just more of the same, an improved version of the rifle used to fight the First World War. Which is sad in retrospect, because it could have been the game changer that the German Sturmgewehr was a decade later.

The M1 carbine and its cartridge are a mix of somewhat advanced thinking (compact, lightweight, low recoil, large magazine capacity) and outmoded designs (conventional "drop comb" stock, round nose bullets). As if they wanted to make an assault rifle, but couldn't break free from old mindsets.

But go back to a post WW1 and pre WW2 design that served well for us and our allies into 1970's. Maybe the design was an engineering dead end and improvement would have been too difficult. But today the rifle/cartridge still do what they were intended to do though certainly outdated.

There are some improvements that could easily have been made. Giving the M2 carbine a "straight-line" stock would've improved full-auto controllability, and giving the cartridge a spitzer bullet designed for early yaw in soft tissue would've increased terminal effects. But, after WWII there was no interest in improving the M1/M2 carbine, because the decision had already been made that it was to be replaced along with the M1 rifle.

I hear you guys on the Garand. John Garand had first built it for the 276 but the Army wanted it in 30-06. Despite it's flaws (everything has them) it served very well. Just not very long. Not ideal but it worked very very well. It too was brilliant in its day.

Yes, the M1 rifle served well. But, it could have been so much better.

And BTW, John Garand never wanted to go with .276 caliber. All of his early development efforts had been on trying to make a .30 caliber rifle. John Pedersen convinced the Army that a .30 caliber semi-auto was not feasible, so Garand was directed to design a rifle chambered for the .276 Pedersen cartridge.