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

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"hear that sound because in the heat of battle, you knew when you had to install a new one instead of racking the bolt on an empty chamber like the springfield that he was first issued."


Unless his bolt-action Springfield was broken or otherwise modified, I don't see how this would have been a factor for your father.

On Springfields, as with Mausers, when the magazine runs dry the follower comes up and blocks the bolt.

This does two things:

1. Lets you know that your gun is dry.

2. Holds the bolt in the proper position so that you can load 5 more rounds with a stripper clip.
 
I've read of Japanese thinking we stil had 5 shot Springfields and after 5 were fired at them in the jungle they got their heads up to shoot. But that old Garand still had 3!

Lt. Col. George John said in his book, "Shots Fired in Anger" that a squad of GIs could take on a whole platoon of Japanese and whip them in the jungles. Remember the Japanese had almost no submachineguns and thus it was with a 5 shot Ariska or a Nambu (plus 'knee' morters... which he thought was a real good weapon.)

I have also read of one GI holding off a German company by shifting is postion every time he fired a round or two from his Garand. The Germans still had the mindset of 5 shot bolt guns to.
 
The Japanese had those very long rifles (some were over 50 inches) and when they had bayonets installed they were taller than the soldiers were. They were terrible jungle weapons. They were weapons meant to be fired from entrenched positions but as we all know, WWII wasn't fought that way. Another case of having the right weapon for the previous war.
 
Even if the Germans used the tactic of rushing at the sound of a "ping" at first, they would have immediately caught on to there being a second GI, or a thrown clip to cause the sound. Remember, the German troops were the seasoned, combat hardened vets, we were the "noobs" going into WWII.

Surely word would have spread like wildfire through German lines and intel that we (the Americans) were using this tactic to any kind of advantage and be discarded very shortly.

I still do not buy it. Like someone else said, if it happened at all, it most likely happened in isolated areas away from indirect fire and air (from either side) and in very close quarters.
 
I stood several yards away once without ear covers as a friend of mine emptied an M1 clip (stupid, but I wanted to know what it sounded like). By the end of the clip my ears were so rattled that I couldn't hear anything, much less a ping. One of the only reasons I did this is because he kept spouting this same bs about the germans, and I wanted to prove him wrong.
 
I've heard that soldiers are trained to endure the loud noises of battle by being gradually exposed to loud noise more and more. From what I have heard in battle you barely hear the sound of your own gun firing much less the heavy artillery that goes with it. I don't know how much of that stuff is true but I've heard it more than once. I also know that many soldiers suffer severe hearing damage from things much larger than a 7.62. Think about being close to a .50 caliber machine gun. Then think about tanks, artillery, mortars, etc. etc..

Some people still attempt to protect the hearing of their children by gradually raising the level of gunfire noise they are exposed to. Some claim this makes their ears immune from the pain of incredibly loud noise. I have serious doubts about this but some swear by it.

I just know I heard this whole scenario spelled out on a radio program about a year ago. Maybe they were completely nuts. I don't know. They talked about making the ear drum thicker by gradual exposure to louder and louder noises.

Again from what I heard the whole "ping" issue was a very rare event. You read comments on the net where people say one thing or another. It's hard to know who's telling the truth. I did trust my history prof.. He seemed like an upstanding guy to me and not prone to bragging or the like. He was proud of the whole war effort as he should be but he also acknowledged that his job was mostly being a reporter but he did end up in some fox holes.
 
My Father was a WWII vet of France and Germany, and a fan of the M1.
The first time I ever heard of the "Ping" alerting the enemy was from him...
While he did not go into detail (he really never went into too much depth on his combat experiences), he did fight in the Battle of Falaise Gap in the hedgerow country, where there was alot of close, small unit action.
His unit, an armoured cavalry unit, was also first in many small german towns.
 
The terrain there was exactly the kind of place where a ping could have been a problem. You're firing through a hedgerow and your rifle goes ping and someone 30 yards down the same row you were in but hiding in the hedge steps out and fires at you. The action was very scattered there and very confusing. It was very early on in that area too. Who knows if word of the ping has spread from Italy or North Africa. I'm guessing it wouldn't have been a problem at all at either of those places because in Africa it was all major battles with only a few patrols out into the desert in Jeeps. Italy was mostly about the high ground and Sicily was about Patton's tanks. The hedgerow country might have been the first place the ping became an issue. It was probably the place where soldiers were closer to each other sometimes without knowing anyone else was around. Of course the paratroopers and gliders that dropped behind the lines might have known about the issue sooner but they wouldn't have had any way to tell anyone else about it.
 
I suggest an experiment in which we see how far away the "ping" can be heard, first in a quiet environment and then after the ears have been exposed to the sounds of battle. People forget that one result of the adoption of smokeless powder and repeating rifles was the phenomenon of the empty battlefield, as longer range weapons firing smokeless powder forced
massive changes in tactics, such as greater use of cover and concealment and emphasis on "digging in" as well as lengthening the ranges at which combat was conducted.
 
King Ghidora said:
Some people still attempt to protect the hearing of their children by gradually raising the level of gunfire noise they are exposed to. Some claim this makes their ears immune from the pain of incredibly loud noise. I have serious doubts about this but some swear by it.

I just know I heard this whole scenario spelled out on a radio program about a year ago. Maybe they were completely nuts. I don't know. They talked about making the ear drum thicker by gradual exposure to louder and louder noises.
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False.

Exposure to loud noises above about 95 db (decibels) can permanently damage your hearing. Constant noise above 95db or short-duration noises above 120db can cause hearing loss. Read up on the subject and you'll understand why.

The only thing unprotected exposure to gunfire will do is reduce your ability to hear well in the future. Many GI's coming home from the war realized their hearing had been damaged. Some to lesser degrees than others. Some navy crew, especially the 20-40mm gunners, came home with 50% hearing loss, as did many front-line ground troops. Once it's gone... it's gone.

Please... Always wear hearing protection on the range.
 
One of my friends that I shoot with from time to time was in the military in the mid 90s. He didn't seem to be bothered by the sounds of 9mm, .45, and .223 shots without ear protection. I would believe that his training did involve some type of exposure to loud noises since sounds that make my ears ring did not bother him. People can get used to just about anything. Another possibility could be that his ears were royally screwed up from shooting without ear protection. He doesn't seem to be hard of hearing though.
 
Do you think I don't know the conventional wisdom on loud noise Bill? I just reported what I heard. I said I doubted it was true. I also said soldiers suffered from hearing loss quite often. So why tell me what I just said?
 
I didn't attack anyone either Mike. And I didn't say Bill attacked me. You relax. I just wondered why he repeated what I had already said as if I needed to be told something I had just said.
 
I just wondered why he repeated what I had already said as if I needed to be told something I had just said.
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Perhaps because you didn't say it.

In your post #46 you describe the idea, held by some, that one's hearing can be "conditioned" to loud noises. And you say you doubt the claims. Good enough. You also said "I don't know how much of that stuff is true but I've heard it more than once." And later you said that you heard it discussed on a recent radio show, adding "Maybe they were completely nuts. I don't know."

So my post was not a repeat of yours. I offered factual information (as best as I can remember it), along with the warning that hearing loss is permanent.

Actually, it's both permanent and cumulative. Exposure to lower levels of noise for longer periods can make you as hard of hearing as an artilleryman with 3 years of combat.

So now you know. There's no way to "condition" one's hearing to loud noises like gunfire without permanent hearing damage.
 
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
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Let's look at those 'historical' sources. The first is a military history source. Cool. The second is from the urban dictionary and is NOT a historical source. It isn't even documented as to its source for the alleged quote.
 
Just a comment...after a firefight you can barely hear yourself talk and generally have to yell real loud at folks to be heard at all. After the first few rounds you fire, or your buddy next to you fires, your hearing just ain't very good. I wasn't in WWII, but I don't think combat was that different back then. I particularly like it when folks talk about using verbal fire control commands in combat....that is why hand and arm signals exist, because you can't friggin' hear after the fight starts, not cause your gonna out Ninja the enemy. Soldiers are taught to always look at their team leader for signals, whether patrolling or fighting, same thing with the buddy team concept. You look cause you can't hear but you can see hand and arm signals. After a firefight it is so quiet it is weird...but it is because your hearing is shot for a while and you can't hear low sounds until your hearing recovers.

Anybody that routinely shoots firearms without hearing protection is either stone deaf to begin with or is trying to find a reason not to have to listen to his significant others nagging.....:)...it just isn't physically possible to avoid hearing damage if you don't wear hearing protection when firing weapons unless you are using silenced weapons.
 
Maybe I'm just no so inclined to always believe the conventional wisdom. I know lots of folks who went to war and came back with no hearing damage to speak of. How did they manage that? A good friend of mine was a door gunner on a chopper in Nam but he can hear much better than I can. He saw lots of action. Want to call him up and ask him about it? I have his number but I'll tell you right now he won't want to talk about it.

I've heard military people swearing that there was a method to make your ear drums adapt to noise. I doubt it's true but I'm not so sure that I know everything or that you do either or that the conventional wisdom is always correct. I've lived long enough to see conventional wisdom change over and over again. I've seen instructions on brushing your teeth change half a dozen times at least. One week you're supposed to brush up and down then you're supposed to brush back and forth then they change it back again. Much of the time it's just some joker trying to prove he's an expert by trying to rewrite conventional wisdom. There's good money in doing that. I have my opinion about the theory regarding adapting to loud noises but I've learned to recognize the difference between opinion and fact. Until I see first hand whether the claims made are true or not I'm not going to try to replace facts with my opinion. In other words I'm not going to claim I know something I don't know. Unless you know of this theory and you know for a fact that it isn't true then you're substituting opinion for fact.

Also when a soldier says something it's part of the historical record. I don't find it so easy to dismiss what they say as some seem to do. History is written based on first hand accounts and that's what the comment I posted was. I do believe I have a grip on what constitutes historical data since I was a history major in college. I studied lots of battles and I took at least 2 classes that were about specific war. One was WWII and the other was Vietnam. I know how historical data is collected and when a first hand witness says something historians just don't dismiss what they say out of hand. Again there are situations where a few rounds could be fired without a full fledged battle going on. The hedgerows are a perfect example of that. Unless you have some reason to doubt this particular soldier's story you really come off as knowing stuff not in evidence when you proclaim what he said to not be part of the historical record.

What I see here is a bunch of people without first hand knowledge claiming that they know the facts when really what they are saying is based on assumptions. Probably the most important thing I learned in college is to not do that because someone can always make you look bad when you do it. I know Medal Of Honor winners who aren't so sure of things. If you think I'm likely to believe posters on a ng who don't even claim first hand knowledge of the issues then you're mistaken. I've heard the theory about adapting your ears to loud noise more than once. I've heard the ping stories from people who had first hand knowledge. Someone's deductions and assumptions here aren't about to dissuade me about either.
 
zippy13 said:
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.
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I think it has to do more with why my thumb is all bruised and swollen! :mad:
 
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