On Mon, 11 Oct 2010 22:14:12 -0500, Pete Keillor
wrote:

On 12 Oct 2010 02:27:58 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2010-10-12, J D Slocomb wrote:
On 11 Oct 2010 23:30:03 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2010-10-11, Gunner Asch wrote:

[ ... ]

And it tells the other side when its empty.

I don't think that anything tells the other side that more than
a Luger. :-) (I guess that you could paint the toggle links day-glo
orange or something, but even without that, it is still pretty obvious,
even to the person you are pointing it at.

Is the Garrand empty status more visible to someone off to the
side? Does it perhaps drop the magazine automatically? (I've never had
one of those to play with -- just the 98 Mauser, and the SKS for long
guns.)

[ ... ]

He is talking about the rather distinctive "ting" the Garand makes
when it ejects the empty clip. This story has been going round and
round probably since the days that the Garand was accepted and makes
perfect sense - there you are in the middle of a fire fight - 50
people shooting guns, grenades exploding, machine guns blasting away
and you fire your last round and the rifle ejects the clip - Ting.

Immediately the enemy, hearing that noise, amid the sounds of battle,
and knowing that your rifle is empty leap to their feet and charge
your position as they now know that your weapon is empty.....

Hmm ... how likely are they to hear that with all the other
noise sources around you that you just described?

And in a battle, would there not be others near you who were not
yet empty?

And, given that you can load 8 rounds into a Garand faster then you
can load 7 into a colt 1911 you can see that the enemy has a plenty of
time to come and get you.

It doesn't take long to put a full magazine into the 1911 if you
aren't worried about saving the empty magazine -- or are you talking
about the time needed to fill an empty magazine? Did the Garand use a
stripper clip, or something which shoved into the underside of the
action?

Thanks,
DoN.

Stripper, I think (don't own one). They were loaded through the open
bolt, not by a magazine. That's basically the M14, a selective fire
Garand with box magazines.

It is not a stripper clip. The Garand clip, viewed from the top, is a
sort of "U" shaped sheetmetal device that enfolds the 8 cartridges and
the cartridges and clip are simply shoved into the top of the action
and lock in place when the reach the bottom of the magazine well. At
the same time this releases the bolt to go into battery stripping the
first round from the clip.

As the rifle won't function without the clip in place so when shooting
rapid fire strings in a rifle match, that require a 10 round string, a
clip and two loose rounds are loaded in the receiver.

I'd heard that savvy GI's (those still alive 3 days after delivery
from the repple depple) learned to save the empty clips and throw one
on the ground after firing a shot if they wanted to lure out the
opposition. That'd pretty quick make it a non-issue.

Pete Keillor

Frankly I doubt that as this as it would really require a one on one
situation in nearly silent conditions.

However, the Armory did experiment with plastic clips in WW II, for
whatever reason, but this appear not to have not been pursued.

Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)