RE: en bloc clip
Battler,
You are correct in that the Garand takes an en-bloc clip. My experience with rough environments is only in Saudi Arabia and Iraq and with the M-16 which was a colossal pain in the arse to keep clean. Sand got everywhere. I spent 2 hours each day trying to keep that thing clean, and in two more hours, there would be a fine, chaulky dust all over it again. I would think the Garand to be a superior design for climates such as that.
One must use a certain amount of care to keep the rifle clean in a combat environment. I used a fine meshed pair of black panty-hose to cover my weapon which kept all but the finest of dust out of her. I also carried a high-quality paint-brush and shaving lather brush along and would use it to dust off my weapons' parts. Needless to say, I'm glad I didn't depend on my rifle for anything but shooting up non-living stuff like glass windows and Iraqi equipment.
In that environment, the en-block clip would be an excellent improvement over magazines. The AK 47 may not need this, and in fact the AK might work better with a little grit, but the AK's we played with over there were of the poorest quality, and the ammo they had was pathetic. Some of it we could fire, and see the underpowered bullets (they reloaded their own apparently, and seems like they tried to skimp on powder-- At least that's what I think) actually hit the ground about 75 - 100 yards downrange, and not even cycle the bolt in some cartridges. IMO the magazines would hold dust and grime, and you can't just brush off the rounds like you can with a garand clip, prior to loading. You can shake them out some, but you will still leave a lot of grit behind. Each time you pull the trigger, that grit just rattles loose with the recoil, and has the potential, especially in a weapon as tight as the M16, to cause no end of feeding and functioning problems. Unfortunately, when you really need that thing to go bang, you can't worry about a malfunction.
The en-bloc could be tapped lightly on its base to remove the big stuff, and your handy little paint-brush would remove the small stuff. Then you can load the clip, and should you need to eject a bad clip, you just launch the thing out of the action, insert new clip, and go back to using the weapon. While a huge pain to do this in combat, it's better than having a $400.00 non-functional USGI club to use for a weapon. Not to mention, if the other side is using AK's, which invariably they will be, I'll take the occasional cleaning of clips and the huge difference in MER over a dependable but highly inaccurate, and low powered weapon such as the AK.
The AK design is a good one for its purpose, and for the Eastern bloc countries' doctrines, but I think they entended to lose about 2 or 3 soldiers to our one. The Israeli's came up with the Galil which cured the inaccuracy and underpoweredness of the AK. If I could afford one, that would be the only battle rifle one would ever need. An AK in .308 would be the trump card. Plus the tritium night-sights would be a benefit for low light combat. Unfortunately, the Galil didn't qualify for US funding since it was made in Israel (not the US), so I think it only saw action in limited units in the IDF.
So while the En-Bloc is a magazine of sorts, it isn't. No springs to go soft, easy access to inspect the cartridges, and an open action to make grit removal somewhat easy. The M1 may could benefit from minor design changes to adapt it to modern times, but the weapon's accuracy, knock-down power, dependability, and range are not questioned.
