The clip "ping" is bogus.
Talked to one of the Gun Club's few remaining WWII Vets.
S. Ramon was an under age kid living in El Paso. He wanted to join the service so much that he convinced his parents to let him join the Navy, in Communications.
He left San Diego, to Pearl Harbor, and then participated in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He was second wave in both of these invasions because his job was to relay the communications from the Island to the Command Ship offshore.
(I worked for a Boss who told me he knew he was going to die, because he had been assigned third wave in an island invasion. The guys assigned to the early waves, were understood to be, dead men.)
S.Ramon was wounded, probably on Iwo, woke up on a Hospital ship, but he won’t talk about it.
Anyway, I have gotten a few combat stories out of him, but you have to pry.
Today I asked him about the “ping” providing a sign. His overall reply was that any empty rifle would be reloaded so quickly that any Japanese exposing themselves would be dead in seconds. Essentially that. There were snorts and hand motions involved in the explaination. I had the overall idea that the firepower of a squad of Americans armed with carbines, Garands, BAR’s was such that any Japanese caught out in the open died very quickly.
In fact, based on one story of his, it seems that catching Japanese in the open would be a preferred event. Because the trip to the mouth of a cave, to roll a grenade down to the Japanese inside, was very dangerous.
He said the “ping” story, including people tossing clips to get a “ping”, were a myth, in his experience.
He mentioned he was very frustrated with the lack of accuracy with the M1 Carbine. He described a chance at a quick 200 yard shot, but he claimed the carbine was not accurate enough to hit moving Japanese at that distance. He told me that he had time to sight in his carbine before he embarked. He shot it, told the unit armorer where it shot, the unit armorer adjusted the sights until the carbine was zero'd.
He also mentioned slinging bandoliers of ammunition, to GI’s who were calling for ammo. Said if you did not catch the bandolier, it would hurt real bad when it landed…