Garand clip 'ping' - cost many soldiers their lives in WWII

Status
Not open for further replies.
This is something that could be answered by experimentation.
Get a hold of an 8mm Mauser and a Garand. Go to a firing range and shoot 20+ rounds out of the Mauser without ear protection. At the same time have a friend shoot the Garand about 40yds from you. I'm guessing you don't hear the ping.
 
DFarishwheel said:
2. NOISE.
Battle fields are so noisy with explosions and gun fire, you'd never hear the "ping" over the racket.
Click to expand...

Exactly. This is really the only reason that defeats this urban legend. Forget about how well trained some soldiers were, or how fast a Garand clip (clip is right this time !) can be reloaded.

This is something that common sense can tell you without having been in combat, much less WWII combat.

Buzzcook said:
Get a hold of an 8mm Mauser and a Garand. Go to a firing range and shoot 20+ rounds out of the Mauser without ear protection. At the same time have a friend shoot the Garand about 40yds from you. I'm guessing you don't hear the ping.
Click to expand...

Throw in some grenades, mortars, arty, possibly aircraft bombing/strafing, yelling orders from team leaders and NCOs, screaming from wounded, your adrenaline...I could only imagine that hearing the ping would be the same as hearing a pin drop.
 
I can't comment on this directly and my dad served in the USAAF flying B-17's out of Italy. And most of my other relatives who served have since passed. But my father did say that he asked a few ground-pounders in Italy about it when they had come off the line to the rear. Universally, their response is "Nah, the [Germans] can't hear it over the constant firing. In fact, sometimes it's easier to hear the *ping* from the guy next to you than your own."

If anyone wants to see how fast a Garand can be fired and reloaded, rent a few episodes of the old Combat TV show and watch Pierre Jalbert ("Caje"). While these were modified blank-firing Garands, he can reload in about 1~1.3 seconds. I caught him talking about the show on a late channel one night. He actually bought his own M1 and practiced with it until he could empty 8 rounds in 5 seconds an reload in under 2 seconds. (yes, he said he had a callous on his shoulder from all the practice too!:D)
 
I went through Basic with the Garand in 1954. You get a platoon of guys on a firing line, I guarantee you that nobody a hundred yards off is gonna hear a Ping. Sure, you can hear your own, or that of the guy next to you, but at any distance? With a bunch of guys shooting in your direction?

I can dream up a scenario of an isolated Garand guy trying to deal with an isolated enemy, and the Ping being helpful to the opponent. But that enemy guy had better be really, really ready to pop up and shoot, 'cause he has only a second or two. That's if the Garand guy is just standing around leisurely reloading--which I don't really see happening.

I saw that History Channel program. Sorry, but that Ping deal wiped out a whole bunch of Attaboys for credibility.
 
I agree with you Art but everyone over looks the real draw back of this en block system and that was not being able to top off the magazine. Soldiers would shoot off their last few rounds in the clip so they could reload with a full clip. This caused them to run out of ammo very, very quickly and again with no ammo you are dead or captured.

I read somewhere that Mr. Garand wanted to put a 20 round detachable magazine on the Garand when he originally designed the gun but the military Neanderthals wanted a gun that could be carried magazine down over the shoulder like the 1903 Springfield when on parade. Talk about stupidity, but its about what you would expect from them.
 
If anyone wants to see how fast a Garand can be fired and reloaded, rent a few episodes of the old Combat TV show and watch Pierre Jalbert ("Caje"). While these were modified blank-firing Garands, he can reload in about 1~1.3 seconds. I caught him talking about the show on a late channel one night. He actually bought his own M1 and practiced with it until he could empty 8 rounds in 5 seconds an reload in under 2 seconds. (yes, he said he had a callous on his shoulder from all the practice too!)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the trip down nostalgia lane but I remember thinking to myself as a young boy when watching him shoot that no one could actually hit anything when firing as fast as he did. Later in life when I shot rapid fire in National Match shooting this fact was confirmed to me in no uncertain terms.
 
Ever hear a Garand fire without ear plugs on?

Ever hear 10 Garands and Mausers fire at same time without ear plugs? Bet it's real hard to hear that ping! Add grenades, machineguns, shouting, etc... well you get the picture.

So I doubt if the ping matters much.
 
I agree with you Art but everyone over looks the real draw back of this en block system and that was not being able to top off the magazine.
Click to expand...
The garand magazine can most most certainly be topped off. It's not the easiest thing to do, but it can be done. May have been easier to eject the partially full clip, pocket the two or three rounds that come out, and put in a new clip.
 
Myth? most likely

There may have been GIs killed due to the enemy hearing the "ping" of the ejecting M1 clip, but there is no way to make it a verifyable fact. I'm sure any GIs killed that way are balanced out by the number of enemy killed attacking an "out of ammo" GI when is foxhole buddy, or he himself shot them.

Stories about the enemy waiting until they heard the ping and attacking are just that, stories. It probably did happen, at least once, nearly everything you can think of has happened, at least once.

GIs working in pairs (so that one was always loaded), and GIs throwing an empty clip against a rock to fool the enemy into attacking (sometimes it worked) are common knowledge.

The Garand enbloc clip did not get US soldiers killed. Quite the opposite, I would say.

Want another one? Watch the movie "The Longest Day", and see where one of the paratroopers gets killed because he mistakes the sound of the bolt action Mauser for the "cricket" recognition device. Click click, click click. Bang! Click click, click click. Ain't Hollywood somthin'?
__________________
 
The only way I could see it happening is when a GI is on outpost by himself and being attacked by a larger group in the dead of night with all other sounds of battle far off. If there are 3, 4, or 5 jerries or japs coming at this GI, and he fires his 8 rounds and they hear that ping, then its possible that when they heard the ping the enemy rushed him. I do doubt that this happened often, as most GI's probably wouldnt want OP duty by themselves, but with units that saw lots of combat and had high casualty rates it may have been necessary for a lone GI to be out there. Hopefully it didn't happen much, but in an actual firefight it probably didnt happen at all.
 
I do doubt that this happened often, as most GI's probably wouldnt want OP duty by themselves, but with units that saw lots of combat and had high casualty rates it may have been necessary for a lone GI to be out there.
Click to expand...
In night combat, if they were getting that close I one would probably want to apply grenades to the affected area.;) For night, they would have probably been better suited with a M1 carbine or subgun of some type due to the limited visibility at night. I understand that the M1 carbine was popular in the Pacific because of the short combat distances. (Of course, so were subguns, grenades, bazookas, and flamethrowers.)
 
everyone over looks the real draw back of this en block system and that was not being able to top off the magazine. Soldiers would shoot off their last few rounds in the clip so they could reload with a full clip. This caused them to run out of ammo very, very quickly
Click to expand...

That would be a very foolish thing to do. To "top off" a Garand, you eject the partial clip, insert a fresh, fully loaded 8 round clip and close the bolt. You then pick up the partly expended clip and pocket it. Later when you have the time, you fully load the partially expended to 8 rounds. No need at all to "shoot off" all your ammo simply to insert a new clip.

I agree that most civilians have NO IDEA how noisy a battlefield is. In the movies, 81 mm mortars when fired go off with a gentle "thump". Yeah, right...:rolleyes: Anything that can throw a 12 pound projectile almost 5000 meters is NOT going to go off with a gentle "thump"! This applies to all the other weapons being used. I put the Garand "ping" firmly into the urban legend catagory.
 
Garand clip 'ping' - cost many soldiers their lives in WWII

Goat droppings. My service was with the the M14 and M16. Currently I have two Garands. I'm certainly no expert with them but I can assure you that even I can reload fast enough to neutralize any aggressor who might "pop up" at the sound of a "ping".
 
I've never had any battlefield experience whatsoever.....However I have heard about this and thought it through. Put Saving Private Ryan in the DVD player and crank up the surround sound, In the heat of the moment you probably wouldn't be able to hear a mortor inpact 10 meters away let alone the "ping" from a garand clip. Just my two cents. To all those that know this firsthand you have my respect and admiration more than you can ever know. Thanks for being a Veteran!!!!!
 
According to my WWII history class professor, who was a Stars And Stripes reporter during the war, the sound of the Garrand ping would alert Jerry that the soldier was about to reload but the only time that ever happened and made a difference was in an isolated situation where just a few soldiers were in a fire fight. I was not there of course but I know what my prof said and he was there in the foxholes at Anzio, Casino etc.. It didn't result in the soldier with the Garrand being charged though. It resulted in the guy in the other foxhole taking the chance of popping his head up to take a shot. Charging someone trying to reload would have been suicidal. Altogether it was a very rare event that the Garran ping made a difference but it did sometimes happen. But again it was very, very rare.

As for the click click of the Mauser on D-day that was a definite factor. That happened often in the confusion of the air drops behind the lines. The GI's were issued clickers that clicked twice much as the toy turtles we got as stocking stuffers as kids in the early 60's and late 50's. They clicked when you pushed in and they clicked when you let them out. The click of a Mauser bolt being pulled up pulled back and then the second click of the bolt being put down was very similar to the sound of the clickers the GI's were issued. It did cause some soldiers to lower their guard thinking they were close to another GI signalling them instead of Jerry working the action on his Mauser to chamber a round. Remember these were people wandering the countryside a long way from any battle. It was Jerry on patrol and the 101st and 82nd trying to regroup to attempt to reach their objectives. In fact pretty much everything in the Longest Day was based on true incidents including the column of GI's marching right past a column of Jerrys without anyone noticing until it was over that they were marching right on the other side of a stone wall from the enemy. It was confusion central that night and all sorts of strange things happened. In fact The Longest Day is one of the most accurate war movies ever except it leaves out some of the major errors made by the Allied high command. For example the troops actually landed at low tide making them have to cross over a quarter of a mile of open beach before they got to the cover of the cliffs and also there's no mention of the fact that the tanks that were supposed to do the work of breaking through the machine gun nests were almost all dropped off in choppy water and they promptly sank because they had never been tested in choppy water. They had only been tested in calm water.
 
Follow the money

When wondering why unlikely rumors (like the M-1's clip ping killing GI's) persist, I usually come to the same conclusion: Follow the money -- who might profit from such a rumor? Well, if I was trying to convince a post-war peace loving congress that all those millions of M-1's, victorious in WW II, should be scrapped in favor of a new service rifle. Then, a killer ping rumor would make the M-14's ping free, rechargeable, detachable, higher capacity magazine seem an absolute necessity.
 
When we shot the M-1 in the Army the reloading was so fast the enemy would have to be very quick to move, not quick enough to charge the position. With reaction time about one second and getting started out of the hole taking another second, the M-1 rifle shooter would be loaded and ready to roll by the time the enemy got up.
 
It's easy to speculate about how much of a disadvantage the ping was but it takes going to historical sources to know the truth. Let's look at a few:

Also, the spent clip was automatically ejected after the last round was fired, making a distinctive sound, which could be fatal in close quarter or sniper operations.

The ping could also be used to your advantage:

I droped the spent clip to trick the Germans into charging. As they Charged I shot each of the 5 Germans with my M1 Garand.
Nickolas Nelson Aug 4, 2006

That trick was used often in fact. The US soldiers weren't dumb. They knew what the Germans would do when they heard a ping. So they took advantage of it.

There are also descriptions of how one soldier would shoot his full clip resulting in a ping while his buddy was ready for an enemy charge with a full clip.

In full battle it certainly could not be heard. But, again, in a small skirmish it could be and it was a factor. It was a disadvantage for a short time but it became an advantage.

Again this is information I got first hand from someone who was there and was trained to report what he saw.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top