Why ".30" carbine???

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bamaranger

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I've always thought the M1 carbine was a neat little rifle, and its combat history interesting. One comment you often hear/read is that it was oft criticized for its lack of stopping power.

So why did the Army adopt the .30 Carbine CARTRIDGE?? Before we go on and on about the role of the CARBINE replacing the handgun for troops w/ other duties, note that I've got an understanding of all that. What I am interested in is why the diminutive .30 Carbine CARTRIDGE was accepted.

Winchester had better cartridges available. The .351 Win SL was a proven number for LE in the gangster years and seems an obvious choice and a good bit superior to the .30 carbine round. Why not it? Or something short and fat like a lengthened .45 ACP round? Seems like a read somewhere that such a .45 was considered for the Thompson sub gun at some point. While I'm at it, what about a shortened version of the .401 Win SL. reduced to fit in the carbine. Say what, a .40 Carbine????

But what we ended up with was the tiny 110/.30, and a bunch of criticism over the years of an otherwise neat little carbine.

What do you have to say guys?????
 
Compare the M1 carbine to contemporary PDWs like 9mm and 45 cal submachineguns. The M1 was a much better all around fighting weapon.

The intent wasn't to field a great service rifle, it was to field a great PDW, and the 30 Carbine round was a very effective and easy to implement fix for that. The common caliber with the Garand and everything else we were fielding would have, I assume, streamlined wartime production greatly in terms of barrels (and associated peripherals like cleaning kits).
 
You hit the nail on the head HorseSoldier, the M1 Carbine was only intended for personal defense. In that roll I am not aware of any weapon that fits the bill better. .30 Carbine is an extremely effective defense round, on par with the 357 Mag and is useful to 100-150 yds. Some claim out to 200 but I wouldn't want to try 150 yds let alone 200. The use of .30 Carbine allowed the designers to keep the weapons weight down and keep recoil to a minimum.

With proper bullet selection the little round is devastating. If you search the net you will find many cases where it performed well. In particular check out the NYC stakeout crew account. Also check "Fury in the Pacific". There is a clip of a IJA solider attempting to flee a bunker. Two Marines were standing there when he made his break. One shot with the M-1 Carbine dropped him like a rock, not a head shot.

Fury in the Pacific, 9min 48sec and 10 min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7KsOfVm8Bs
 
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Neighbor boy has shot a couple of coyotes at 200+ yards in my back field with his uncles old Korea era carbine and they only took one shot each. I keep coffee cup sized groups at 100 yards with that same gun and moldy old surplus ammo his dad gave him. Not my first choice as a battlefield gun since I am a dinosaur who was brung up with a M1 Garand but I will never bad mouth the carbine. It was used for guard duty aboard ship and on base and that was a good thing. Our sentries could hit a target with it and but were hopeless with the 45's we had. If I found one I could afford I would be adding a new caliber to my collection.
 
Locate from the mid-70's...

the American Rifleman magazine, they did a two month spread of the development and trials of the Carbine.

It would have been nice if they stuck with the .45ACP cartridges and used 1911 magazines, simplify the supply lines a bit..

Mine is on HD duty, stoked with Winchester Commercial 110gr HPs, in three mags, ready to go! wouldn't feel underwhelmed for that purpose.
 
The cartridge came first. In 1940 Army ordnance took the .32 Winchester self-loading cartridge and modified it to what they felt was an ideal pistol/carbine cartridge. At first it was called the .30 SRM1 (.30 cal., semi-rimmed, M1), later changed to .30M1.

I wonder if the concept may have been an outgrowth of the WW I Pedersen device, which converted 1903 Springfield rifles to semiauto fire. Of course the pistol-size cartridges of the Pedersen device had to be .30 cal. to match the Springfield's barrel. Ballistics of its cartridge were 80 gr. @ 1,300 fps.

Possibly the .30 M1 designers felt a common bore size with the M1 Garand rifle would simplify manufacture of barrels. Or they may have felt larger caliber cartridges would either reduce magazine capacity or require a larger and heavier weapon, which would negate it's reason for being.

Winchester had no say in cartridge choice. Army ordnance specified what they wanted: this cartridge, semiauto, 5 1/2 pounds and we need it yesterday.

Much of the WW II criticism of the carbine came from the European theatre where ranges tended to be long. There was less criticism from the Pacific theatre where the carbine was often used for clearing bunkers and caves (as were Thompsons, shotguns, flamethrowers and grenades). Its short length, light weight, fast handling, 15-round magazine capacity and (at close range) generally adequate power made it well suited for this kind of combat.

As others have already said if you think of the carbine as a battle rifle it seems rather inadequate. Think of it as a pistol (one with which most soldiers can make hits with) and it starts looking pretty good.

For its intended purpose it was pretty good weapon. Criticizing it for not being a battle rifle is rather like criticizing a Jeep for not being a tank.
 
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The M1 Carbine was introduced to replace the 45 acp pistol. It gave Officers a light compact weapon with better aiming qualities. It proved to be quite successful for what it was designed to do. They even made a few M2 versions that would go full automatic.
 
The idea of the Carbine was based on the certainty that the coming war was not going to be a static trench war like the last war.
We'd already seen the German Blitzkrieg very rapid, mobile form of mechanized warfare.

It was understood that in this war, it was almost a certainty that rear echelon support troops like artillerymen, supply, and other support troops would suddenly find themselves under attack by rapid moving mechanized forces staging sudden break throughs. This was proven a number of times, especially during the Battle of the Bulge.
Under those circumstances, the pistol was understood to be totally inadequate for defense.
So, we had the idea of a low powered carbine type rifle as a replacement for the pistol for most supports troops and those not needing a full sized battle rifles.

The idea was for a short, lightweight carbine, firing a low powered, low recoiling cartridge, that would be effective at ranges of under 200 yards, and would offer better hit capability than a pistol.
The military wanted a .30 cartridge to allow use of existing ammunition manufacturing equipment, and would eliminate having to have different cleaning gear.
They were very familiar with the Pedersen device, and decided that a modified Pedersen cartridge would fill the need. So the final development was the .30 M1 Carbine cartridge.

The Carbine was not intended to be issued to combat troops, other than officers and sargent's who didn't need a battle rifle.
However, the idea of a very short, large magazine capacity, fast firing, and handle little carbine simply was too good not to find it's way into regular issue.

The Carbine cartridge and the Carbine itself got very little complaints in WWII either in the European theater or Pacific. The complaints that were posed were mostly by the senior paratroop commanders, many of who disliked the Carbine and considered it to be an unreliable weapon, with not enough power.
The real complaints came in Korea where the Carbine was over-issued to combat troops and simply wasn't suitable for the longer ranges that were common there.
 
No, nowhere close. The Pedersen device was blowback and its round of pistol power. As said above, the .30 Carbine was a development of the .32 WSL brought down to the .30 caliber the Army was familiar with. Not much commonality otherwise, even the rifling twist rate differs from .30-06.
 
The main issue they had in Koreia was the stocks of WW-2 ammunition they where using. They had a new type tropical powder stabilizer in them that tended to degrade the powder in storage that was exaberated by cold weather. Army ord. was finding out that a lot of the stuff was lucky to hit 650fps out of the 16 inch barrels. Pretty much you would have done better with a .32 Walther PP than a carbine with this ammo.
 
...the M1 Carbine was only intended for personal defense...
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However, besides intending it to replace the .45 for some personnel, it was issued to some airborne and other troops as an offensive weapon.
 
Cause they work as intended, I personally know a korean vet who used one to survive mass assults from the Chi-coms. He told me At 50 yards they were deadly, just about a one shot stop. I busted a jack rabbit at about 175 yards with good effect. If I had to give a rifle to my wife in dire times, that be the one.
 
I love my 1911, I'd take an M1 carbine in .30 carbine over it every time though if there was some way to magically concealed carry the later. Hope that puts it in perspective.
 
Cause they work as intended, I personally know a korean vet who used one to survive mass assults from the Chi-coms. He told me At 50 yards they were deadly, just about a one shot stop.
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The one Korea veteran I talked to at some length about weapons once swore by the M2 version of the carbine, and similarly reported it as a simply lifesaving weapon when the bad guys were on the attack and trying to close up the range to his unit.
 
I've loved those litle guns since I was a kid! If we had been able to field a 15 round clip full of hollow points.....well, I just can't imagine a better close range defense setup. I still wouldn't want to try to kill coyotes at 200 yards with one, though.:o

-7-
 
.32 SL and the cartridge came first

Dave A

Yeah, I had read somewhere too that the cartridge came first, and with little testing or explanation why. Which is what stumps me. Certainly the diminutive ctg allowed a portable handy carbine, which was the goal. And they wanted it PDQ.

But something on .351SL power level, especially since it had been proven and around for many years prior, seems to make more sense to me.

Here's the ctg, build a carbine around it. Why that cartridge?
 
Why the cartridge? as the army ord bord spent a lot of years on it. They had a round they liked and wanted a gun that would chamber it.
 
I would say that since it was pressed into rolls it was never intended for, with a great deal of success. I'd say it preformed very well.
I find it almost amusing how a 123gr projectile at 2300fps is somehow one of the deadliest round ever developed for warfare. but take 13gr off and subtract 300fps it'll just bounce off people.:confused::rolleyes:
 
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