The Firearm Blog

For the last fifty years 100,000's of M1 Garands and M1 Carbines have been sitting in Korean warehouses, many of which will now be sold to US collectors. AFP reports:

Washington has approved South Korea's plan to sell about 86,000 M1 and 22,000 carbines together valued at 130 billion won (108 million dollars), the ministry said.

The rifles used during the Korean and Vietnam wars have been kept at military warehouses, it said.

"The US government recently approved our plan to sell old M1 and carbine rifles, which were given to our soldiers as part of a US aid programme," a ministry spokesman told AFP.

The rifles are occasionally used by reserve forces for drills, he said without giving details.

The military will dispose of all its M1s but will keep about 640,000 carbines for reserve forces, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper said.

That means 640,000 more are patiently waiting in cosmoline to be shipped over stateside

Many thanks to REMOV for the link.

The T26, otherwise known as the “Tanker” Garand, was an experiential 18″ barreled carbine version of the M1 Garand. It was designed late in WWII for use in the Pacific jungles. Tom emailed me photos of his new T26-style M1.

Tanker (top) fitted with Smith Enterprises muzzle brake.

Note barrel length and the upper handguard difference

Note the odd bend in the T26 short op-rod and the major
difference in length of the follower arm/spring guide.

Tom had this to say about his new Garand:

I did get the chance to shoot the shorty a week or so ago before the rain started up. It functions flawlessly, despite the somewhat seedy reputation of gunsmith custom T26 Garands like this one. Many of the first shorty rifles to hit the market many years ago were rewelded receivers, which are much weaker and downright dangerous in many cases. On many of these reweld guns (this is true of full sized Garands and T26 style ones both) the op-rod may dismount while firing, which as you can imagine causes quite a few problems.

That muzzle break is a real shoulder-saver, and surprisingly the shorty Garand has considerably less recoil than the FAL I recently built. I don’t have a huge range, but from about a hundred yards I was on the paper on the first shot (after a full strip and thorough cleaning) and managed to tune my way to a fairly respectable group around three inches with Lake City ammo. It may not be a match gun, but it’s definitely more accurate than I was expecting. Really a blast to shoot and more than acceptable accuracy in my opinion!

The T26 is a very interesting rifle. In a sense it is much more modern than the full size M1. As I mentioned yesterday in the post about the new Italian service rifle which even in the designated marksmen version has a 16″ barrel, the modern trend is to compromise maximum ballistic performance with maneuverability.

A big thanks to Tom for emailing me the photos and information. More can be read about the T26 at the Wikipedia M1 Garand page.

The Italian army adopted the Beretta BM59, basically an M1 Garand chambered for 7.62×51mm NATO capable of select fire. It was about as successful as all the other select fire battle rifles adopted around the world (not very). From Wikipedia:

After World War II, Italy adopted the US-designed M1 Garand rifle in .30-06 (7.62×63mm) and also manufactured it under license. This semi-automatic rifle proved itself well during WWII, but in the late 1950s it was considered outdated and obsolete. The Italian military wanted a new rifle chambered for the NATO-standard 7.62×51mm.

Beretta designed the BM59, which was essentially a rechambered M1 fitted with a removable 20-round magazine, folding bipod and flash suppressor/grenade launcher. The BM59 is capable of selective fire.

I came across this Class III, full auto, Beretta BM59 on Gunbroker (The auction has since close). Click to expand the photos: