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

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Do you think I don't know the conventional wisdom on loud noise Bill? I just reported what I heard
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And that is also exactly what you have done here regarding this myth about the Garand "ping". You have not provided one single real piece of actual documented evidence to show that you are doing anything more than spreading this myth.

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All I will say is this,
There might be a little truth to that, I'm sure it probably happened but without that rifle many more of our guys might not have made it back home.

The M1 Garand is a fine rifle and I'd rather go into battle with one of them than a original M16
 
Those who doubt it could be possible flatly dismiss it.
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Well, the problem is that for most people to accept something as being a fact, they need to be able to see some sort of truly documented evidence.

And anonymous posts on an internet forum just don't cut it for most folks. If people believed everything that they read on the Internet, the world would certainly be one messed up place.

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amd6547, I agree with you totally. My father-in-law was a mud Marine on Iwo Jima and in Fox Company, 7th Marine Regiment in Korea. I've talked to him at length about his experience with the M1 in both wars. I've posted this on this forum before, whenever this subject comes up. In WWII, on Iwo Jima, his experience was that the "ping" was no big deal. Many posting on this forum are correct in that in "force on force" actions (look that one up, you armchair commandos) put too many troops in proximity to the enemy with enough noise that hand and arm signals win out over voice or radio commands.

...but, his USMC company was detailed to patrol the area "behind" the allied lines dealing with infiltrators consisting of a few enemy soldiers up to a company of enemy soldiers who had slipped behind and congregated. Most of his time in Korea was spent in patrolling in platoon down to fireteam size forces. He spent time on lots of LP/OPs with just a buddy. Most of the firefights were two or three guys on one or two enemy. He told me he never saw or heard of anyone actually getting killed because of the ping but he said he was aware of the concept, had been taught to operate so that it wouldn't happen to him, and did so by keeping a spare clip in his left hand while balancing the forend of his M1. This made for a quick reload when his clip ejected.

The title of this thread is probably false – not many soldiers lost their lives in WWII because of this phenomenon. ...but is it a myth, an urban legend, a false concept? Not on your life. Lots of soldiers never operated at the small unit level. Most were just part of a maneuvering battalion or regiment. But some did operate in small groups and noise discipline was much more important to them.

So to all you guys who claim it as a legend because you can think of so many ways it couldn't have happened – good luck trying to prove a negative. You can't. One problem these days is the rapidity with which the veterans of these wars are leaving us.
 
I still have very acute hearing in some ranges, but in others? Nothing.
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Apparently one of the ranges I'm deficient in is the same as my wife's voice.


It's really hard to prove stuff on the internet without a link to some accepted authority. Making a claim that you are the, or an, authority just doesn't do it.
That doesn't mean that you or anyone else making that claim is being disrespected, it just is what it is.

Just a note on Historians. "Citizen Soldier" by Stephan Ambrose is a wonderful pop history of American involvement in WWII told through interviews with common soldiers. It is rife with errors. Perhaps those errors are because the book is based on anecdotal evidence and somewhat casual research on Ambrose's part.

I can't remember the title or author now, but a few years ago a lady wrote a book on The Battle of Gettysburg that compared eyewitness accounts to physical evidence. The eyewitness accounts were invariably wrong, sometimes wildly so.

One of the pop gods of WWII history is SLA Marshall. His interpretation of after battle interviews were, for many years, taken as gospel. While still an ongoing discussion, most people interpret Marshall's interviews differently than he did regarding the use of small arms.

It is possible that some soldier(s) Where killed because of an expended clip. It is possible that some soldier thought others were killed by the ping of an expended clip. It is possible that the story of soldiers dying because of the ping of an expended clip got into the historical record even though it was apocryphal.
But just the logic of the situation seems to indicate it was not something that happened. The historical record that is accessible on the web is equivocal at best.
 
It is very easy to prove one way or another about the ping.

Just ask those at Camp Perry, where they shool leg matches with M1 Grand rifles quite a bit, if when all those guys are on the line firing, can anyone here a 'ping'?
 
Like I said before, I don't believe it was a factor and probably fits the urban legend, old wives tale category.

However, even though my hearing is not the best in the world, when I fire my Garand with ear plugs or ear muffs, when the clip ejects, I can clearly hear the ping.

Others wearing hearing protection standing several yards behind have said the can clearly hear it.

I just don't see how it could be used to tactical advantage.

Granted this is hearsay, but one man who I trust, told me they could hear MG42 crewmen changing their hot barrels. What he did not tell me was that this was a cue to charge, in fact he said they did it very fast.

Now if a machine gun crew changing barrels does not give you time to rush them, I doubt hearing a Garand clip eject does either. Unless you were very,very close.
 
You are a historian, right? How many oral history pieces have you read where GI's describe German Panther tanks and their 88mm guns? Or call anything the Germans had that was hand-held and full-auto a "Schmeisser"?
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I don't just take the word of one person on this issue. Just look how many people here relate stories they have heard from relatives about the subject. Look at the detail of the story retold by support_six. Do you think his father-in-law made all of that up? Why would he do that? I certainly know of the propensity of people to exaggerate and to just get things wrong.

Historians don't generally take the word of one person when there are so many sources to use. In this case their were thousands. The story is not a fabrication no matter how many times you deduce that it isn't logical. There's a difference between history and speculation.

My history prof. was a reporter from Stars And Stripes and as such he was a trained observer. If he had reported something ridiculously wrong, as you seem to suggest, he would have quickly found himself assigned to a rifle unit. His job was to spend time with ordinary soldiers and report what was going on with them. That had him spending time in foxholes and talking to a lot of soldiers. That's not some GI Joe making assumptions. That's a professional accumulating data and sorting out the wheat from the chaff. I seriously doubt he reported that Panthers had 88's on them.

Since the Panther came out so much earlier than the Tiger, which did have the 88's, I doubt most Allies thought the Panther carried the 88. Up until the development of the Tiger the 88's were used as anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns. Since the Panther was used from the battle of Anzio on it would seem unlikely that soldiers connected it with the 88. But here I am speculating. If you have proof that what you say is true I'm willing to listen.
 
How does anybody know what the enemy heard? How does anybody know what decisions the enemy made, based on what the enemy might have heard? Did the war stop for a few minutes so that questionaires could be filled out?

A GI fires his last of 8 rounds and hears his own "ping". Moments later the enemy makes a rush towards him. The enemy is hit, the GI lives to old age being sure that the "ping" was the reason he was charged. But how can he know? Did the dying enemy motion him over and mention the "ping"?

That's the way I see the "Story of the Ping" being sustained.

Bart Noir
 
I agree with Bart.

Thers is another good reason to have a .303. Zombies can hear pings too!

(yes, dear moderator now i have mentioned zombies please kill this thread!)
 
The best way to know what the enemy heard is to ask them. You think no one bothered to do that?

Again this bit of trivia is a well documented historical fact. Yes sometimes historians are wrong. I sometimes wonder if the History Channel really shouldn't be called the "I know more than those other guys so pay me more" channel. Historians lived to make a name for themselves by re-writing the conventional wisdom. It gets their name in the journals and it gets them tenure if they do it enough. But I went to a school where such things were rarely important because no one there ever got their names in the journals at the time. Later on they wrote the history of things no one cared about when I was in college. So some of them did make a name for themselves. BTW I have a long interview with one of those people in my current project.

Historians without any agenda are usually more reliable than those looking to make a name by re-writing existing history. That's why it's so easy for people to pick out the errors in the History Channel stuff. They're more interested in re-writing history and often it's more about their political agenda than it is anything else.

I know how history works. I know that first hand accounts are often dismissed but they later turn out to be true. No one believed Marco Polo at first. People still argue about his recounted adventures and that's been hundreds of years ago. There's no end to applying speculation to the known facts. We had a term for this where I went to school. It's a common term really. This is a family board though so I'll only repeat the initials. We called it B$.

It's often said that history is written by the victors. IMO that's pure Barbara Striesand. The facts don't change just because we want them to. There's two kinds of history really. There's the Babs S. kind and there's the facts. I won't say there's no value to the first kind. There is especially when we see history repeating itself. But we shouldn't dismiss the second kind because the first kind makes no sense at all if it doesn't follow what the second kind lays out. But a meaningless bit of trivia like the one we have beat to death here isn't going to be important to much of anything. So I'm done beating this dead horse. It's a waste of time.

Before I quit I'd like to point out a few other first hand accounts that were dismissed as wild tales for years before they became proven true. No one in the east believed a place could have hundreds if not thousands of geysers like Yellowstone does so they dismissed the first hand accounts from the mountain men who were the first white people to see it. Those easterners also dismissed reports of a massive gorge over a mile deep in Arizona. We know it as the Grand Canyon today.

So dismissing single accounts is not always the right thing to do. Judging who's lying and who's just plain crazy isn't always easy of course. But dismissing first hand accounts out of hand isn't right. Absent a good reason to claim someone is lying I find it's better to trust people who otherwise appear to be honest and not prone to wild exaggerations. We have a parallel situation in the world today. How many believe in UFO's without having actually seen one? What about Bigfoot? Angels? Have you seen any of these things? People claim they have. Do you automatically dismiss them all? Remember that just over 100 years ago the conventional wisdom was that the wild tales of gorillas were fantasy yarns from attention seeking wackos. What about the JFK assaination? Are you able to fire 3 rounds with a bolt action rifle in 8 seconds and be accurate at distances between 50 and 100 yards? Are you ready to dismiss every story you hear that doesn't fit the conventional wisdom? If you are then likely as not you'll have to eat crow at some point. Of course some people continue to cling to old thinking despite incredible evidence. Are you one of the people who think we didn't really go to the moon? People believed the world was flat for hundreds of years after the proof it isn't was common knowledge. So maybe it's not always the right thing to do to dismiss a single anecdote.
 
King Ghidora said:
Since the Panther came out so much earlier than the Tiger, which did have the 88's, I doubt most Allies thought the Panther carried the 88.
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The Panther made its combat debut at Kursk in 1943; Schwere Panzer Abteilung 501 rolled Tigers on the Leningrad front with Army Group North in late Autumn '42.

I'm riffing off the top of my head here, but several books of oral history including the well-known ones by Ambrose, as well as O'Donnell's Beyond Valor, contain transcripts of combat veterans mentioning Panther tanks and 88s. (Unsurprising, as G.I.'s who weren't intel weenies or cannon cockers often referred to any direct-fire German cannon as an "88".) I'm not going up to the attic to get page cites, because it just doesn't interest me that much anymore, frankly. As for trained observers with Stars and Stripes, well, read Bill Mauldin? It's a wonderful read, but it's not a textbook.

I think we can drop this conversation, though, as your post I quoted tells me where you and I stand on relative knowledge on the topic of WWII history (or at least Wehrmacht AFVs). We are both sure we're right, and isn't that enough to make anyone happy?
 
Tamara, Ernie Pyle would be the one to read. I read a book of his columns last years. They guy could write pretty darn well.
If Pyle had heard of that story he would have written about it and the rifle probably would have been redesigned post haste.
 
Tamara beat me to it

Tiger tanks entered production in August 1942, and entered combat in the fall of that year. Panther tanks began production in November 1942, but were not used in combat until the Kurk offensive, in July 1943.

GIs had a well noted habit of calling all German guns 88s (sometimes even when they knew better), and anything bigger than a Sherman tank was a "Tiger" to the majority of the infantry. Tankers (and AT gunners) usually knew better, as it could be a matter of life and death to them, but to the average infantryman, the distinction was not quite so important.

As to the ping of the Garand clip, sure, it probably did result in a death or three during the course of the war, but was it a failing of the rifle that constantly lead to the death of our troops? No. Not hardly.
 
Actually I was referring to when soldiers on the western front saw the Panther. I don't believe any of our soldiers would have seen it in action in Kursk. It's no secret the Panther was developed as a hedge against the powerful T-34's with their slanted armour. But we were discussing whether our soldiers said the Panther had 88's. And the first place our soldiers saw the Panther was Anzio. So your assumption about our relative knowledge of WWII is just smoke the best I can see. If you think I don't know the Panther first appeared on the eastern front you're really grasping at straws. That's like saying that the Garrand was a German rifle. You can't seriously think I thought the first time the Panther appeared was in Anzio. Well maybe you do but that shows how weak your argument is.

Since we're playing this game let's see you describe where the 88's first gained notoriety as anti-tank guns in addition to being good anti-aircraft guns. For extra credit you can tell me which anti-aircraft gun was actually the most effective in the war. And just for kicks tell me what the Ultra intercepts were. I've got a strong feeling you have no chance in this contest. You picked on the wrong guy pal.

BTW no one bothered answering the questions I asked earlier. Tell the truth. Did you know who Yoshio Nishina was before I mentioned him? Do you know now? Do you know why I keep mentioning his name?

Since you didn't answer my question when I asked it I'll go ahead and tell you who he was. He was the leader of the Japanese effort to develop an atomic bomb. Recent revelations (mainly the release of information that at least one submarine run between Germany and Japan occurred where the main cargo was non-enriched uranium - we captured that sub but the possibility that more such runs happened is considered relatively high or at least that was the story when this information first came out) seem to possibly indicate that Japan actually detonated an atomic bomb during the war. The actual detonation is a subject of great dispute but there are those who believe it happened and it had a great effect on our own decision to drop out bombs. At any rate they certainly did have an advanced program in place to develop an atomic bomb.

One thing is sure. They were trying to do the same thing to us that we were trying to do and there's not a doubt they would have used their bomb if they had the chance. One look at the things they did in the war should remove all doubt of that.

Most everyone knows about the attack on the German heavy water plant in Norway. If the Allies hadn't done that chances are the Germans would have had an atomic bomb long before we did. It was the super weapon Hitler talked about so often. But very few know that the Japanese had a very formidable atomic program too. Here are some links that back up this story including a reference the allegation that Japan did explode an atomic bomb in their testing.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Yoshio-Nishina

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Japanese-atomic-program

So unless you knew that I doubt you can come close to my knowledge of WWII. I can't believe I'm playing this game with you but I guess that's what happens when someone claims superior knowledge about something when they really don't know what the other person knows.

As far as Ernie Pyle goes, he was the spokesman of the dogface but his slant often left him left out of the important stories of the war. The soldiers loved him. The leaders didn't so they didn't give him much information about anything mainly because they thought he was bad for morale. They tried to can him once but the GI's demanded his return. The brass tolerated him but just barely. There were a lot better sources of important information in Stars And Stripes.

Here's something I bet you didn't know. GI Joe was actually based on Pyle's life indirectly. The term GI Joe came from a movie and the character in that movie was based on Pyle. Also Gomer Pyle was not based on Ernie.
 
I'm going to step past the Jerry Springer part of this.

Seems like I recall reading about how the Brits didn't think much of the first versions of the B-17.The P-51 Mustang's first versions were lame.The P-38 was killing test pilots in dives till some dive brake flaps were added.The original 30-03 had problems due to bullet jacket alloys.Was it Kaiser who built the Liberty Ship yard in the Northwest? When they went to welding instead of riveting ,it cost some failed ships and lives.
There is always som dilrod to bellyache about how "the bad guys" twist their hands with glee about screwing our troops.
How about "We did the very best we knew how and we won"
What yawn inducing lame drivel over egos and whizzing contests!!
This is tiring.
 
Since we're playing this game let's see you describe where the 88's first gained notoriety as anti-tank guns in addition to being good anti-aircraft guns.
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Me,Me I know, North Africa.

And just for kicks tell me what the Ultra intercepts were.
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Thats where the British broke the German Enigma codes.

For extra credit you can tell me which anti-aircraft gun was actually the most effective in the war.
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Bofors. I'm just guessing, you got me there I don't know.
 
Very good on the Ultra intercepts. They were very important in N. Africa too. They gave the Brits the information on Rommel's planned offensive at El Alamein (the last one) which led to his final defeat on that continent and sent the Desert Fox running back to Germany with his tail between his legs as a sick man. And as Churchill put it, it was the end of the beginning. After that the Allies didn't have any defeats. Before that they didn't have any victories.

That was one of the first great advantages the Brits got from their work on the codes. Early on it was very hard to decipher the daily codes and during the Battle Of Britain

BTW the exact location of the first use of the 88's as tank killers was indeed in N. Africa at Halfaya Pass. It became know as the "Hellfire Pass" because of the effectiveness of the 88's on the Allied tanks. "They are tearing my tanks apart," was the last words heard on the radio from the Allied Commander.

And the best anti-aircraft gun in the war? It was the American 90 mm Mark 1. It shot higher with heavier rounds and had a faster rate of fire than the 88's. It was not as versatile though but it was eventually adapted as an anti-tank weapon. The Brits also had a better anti-aircraft gun than the 88 in the 3.7-inch Mark 3.

Now that we answered the questions for Tamara I'll have to think of more. :) Let's leave N. Africa and skip Sicily (everyone who's seen Patton knows that story) and go right to Italy. I could ask what the big holdup was at Monte Cassino but I'm guessing most people know that. The real question was whether the Germans were actually doing what they claimed they weren't doing. If you know the story you know what they claimed they weren't doing. It's only been in recent years that the real truth of the matter has come to light. If you know the story you can make my rambling make sense.

BTW my wife's uncle earned a Silver Star at Anzio. The hospital he was working in took a direct hit from heavy artillery. It was quite possibly Anzio Annie that struck the blow. He was the lone survivor out of about 100 people. I never got to meet the guy. He died before I met my wife. But his brother, my father in law, told me the whole story. There's another good question in there. What was Annie's counterpart called?
 
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