When did the U.S. Army convert to "Modern" firearms?

The M14 is kind of hard to place, because although it’s almost identical to an M1 and not an assault rifle it’s important despite being and deserves to be called out in that it introduced select fire in rifles.

So you have
M1 Battle Rifle : High Power, Self Loading, big, heavy
M14 Battle Rifle: High Power, Select Fire
M16 Assault Rifle: Intermediate Power, Select Fire

The museums at Springfield Armory and Rock Island Arsenal are well worth a visit if you’ve got an interest in US Martial arms history. They have M1903 and M1 serial number 1 & 2, a Pedersen device, etc. Overall I’m not impressed with US rifle design. The Krag, M1903, and M1917 were all copies of European designs. Probably the best of the bunch is the M1903A3. The problems with early M1903s literally blowing up in peoples faces were long gone (They had used a “that looks about right” method to determine when they had been properly heat treated, and the ones made on bright sunny days got heated too much, up to 300 degrees hotter) and it had an easier to use sight that was adjustable for windage like the M1s was.

I don’t disagree the M1 was a masterpiece, but it would have been even better and forward thinking with a lesser powered round, and there were problems with it that didn’t get ironed out until after the war such as the trouble with the site locking mechanism. With the M14 they kept the high power round, which made it even worse in practice as something that was heavy and difficult to control in semi-auto was even harder to control in full-auto. The M16 debuted before the bugs were out and had that huge problem with stuck cartridges.

^^^^^ I agree!!!
Transition period breach loading rifles like the Maynard, Ballard, Winchester, Smith, Smith, Burnside, Sharps, Etc. were very slow to be accepted. But by the late yeas of the Civil war the Spencer was in huge demand. Then the conversion of the musket that ECGeek covers so well took place.
The big difference was what the infantry used in comparison to the mounted Cavalry.
The 1892-98 Springfield (Krag-Jorgensen) is a good example of the ammunition conservative beliefs of the Military Mind with the magazine cut-off feature where the soldier would fire the rifle single action and when TSHTF flip the switch and your rifle was now a repeater.

After the war broke out every rifle made was purchased to the extent that reject rifles sold by the Burnside company to sporting good dealers were then sold to the Government for the same price they paid for the rifles that passed inspection.
The inspection of the day was, the barrels were plugged at one end and filled with water. The next day if the barrel held water, it passed! :cool:

I’m glad you said that, because it’s not a popular observation to a lot of people in the firearms world. I’ve had discussions with US Firearms enthusiasts who don’t seem too keen to acknowledge the M1903 is, realistically, a modified Mauser Gewehr 98 chambered for .30-06. And there’s nothing wrong with the Mauser 98 design at all (there’s a reason why it’s the basis for nearly all modern hunting rifles), but it’s not like the folks at the Springfield Armoury came up with it out of whole cloth.

Ditto the M1917 Enfield - it was a .30-06 version of the British Pattern 1914 .303 rifle, with a few minor changes to components for mass production.

Interestingly, the British had the same thing with the Lee-Enfield rifles of the same era; the rifles had 10-shot magazines but until 1915 were fitted with magazine cut-offs to enable single-round loading, with the magazines in reserve.

The earliest models of Lee-Metford (1888) even had a chain attaching the detachable magazine to the rifle so the soldiers couldn’t lose them(!).

I have to say, I think this sounds… apocryphal. Water and guns are, after all, not friends and this has been known since, well, pretty much the first time it rained during a battle involving firearms.

I can’t imagine the US (or even Confederate) military would knowingly fill gun barrels with water and leave them overnight as some sort of “Quality Control”. I mean, if they weren’t properly swabbed and dried, the barrels would start to rust, or there’d be issues with the powder not burning properly, or any one of a host of other issues. I’m sure it may have happened in isolated cases, but I am highly skeptical it was an official or widespread practice.

British (and many continental European) firearms had to undergo a rigorous “proofing” process even in the mid-19th century - entire treatises have been written on the subject.

I’m not sure what the process in the US was, but as the US military in the 19th Century were as modern and civilised as the British, Spanish, Germans, French etc militaries, I seriously doubt their QA process involved filling gun barrels (on completed guns) with water to see if they leaked or not.

Which is hysterically funny if you’ve ever fired one… it was the first one with an “AUTO” switch, but the M16 was the first US issue rifle where automatic fire was practical.

After i posted the water test i was looking back for the reference and although I have yet to find the text, it was a barrel inspection, in that before a barrel could be used it had to be tested and because barrels were made by hammer weld of a flat bar of wrought iron over a Mandel, the seam of the barrel was water tested.
I guess the x-ray was a couple years in the future, probably only sen in Si-Fi movies. :stuck_out_tongue:
I did read where rifles were rejected during inspections because the sights and barrel bands were inferior to specifications. (on Burnside Carbines)
Further on in my Book on the Burnside Breech Loader, [In 1861 the Army Ordnance Office wanted no breech loaders except carbines for the cavalry]

I know this isn’t GD, but in wake of current events I’d just like to point out that if you just replace the wooden stock with a smaller, modern one you get an evil assault rifle! :smiley:

Point being that the term ‘assault rifle’ is so meaningless…

In the Spanish-American War (1898-99), the US Army was still using black powder cartridges-while the Spanish had modern smokeless powder. The troops were wearing blue wool uniforms (left over from the Civil War). I’d say the USrmy was fairly obsolescent, up till the time of WWI.

To be picky, I think the term you want is “Assault Weapon”. The term “Assault Rifle” is a meaningful, nonpolitically motivated term that specifically refers to intermediate powered select fire, while “Assault Weapon” is whatever politicians define it to be.

Actually, I think he used it exactly as he wanted to; the M14 is hardly the kind of rifle that anyone would use to commit an atrocity or commit a crime, but given the right stock, it’s exactly what the less informed anti-gun people would scream bloody murder about as an “evil assault weapon”, even though it’s most emphatically NOT an assault rifle.

It’s a select fire, military-issue centrefire rifle with a bayonet lug and detachable magazine - so yes, it is an assault rifle.

I think the Spanish-American War was the start of the modernisation. Indeed, the Springfield M1903 came about after studing captured Spanish Mauser rifles.

M-3’s were still issued into the 80’s when I joined. They were issued to tank crews and drivers where long arms would get in the way on one’s primary job. As the .50 gunner for the spoon platoon I was issued a grease gun instead of an M16A1 as late as '85.

True, but I think bump is talking about civilian models, 99.9999etc% of which are semi-automatic. Under an AWB/in certain states specific features may affect the legality. The most popular model currently sold I believe is sold as the M1A and made by Springfield Armory (the modern company, not the defunct government armory).

No, the M-14 is a **battle **rifle, as it uses full-sized 7.62x54 ammo. **Assault **rifles use smaller rounds, like the 5.56 or 7.62x39.

It’s the cartridge that makes all the difference, like Alessan said.

The one I fired was straight up, unmodified US Army issue, and there is a huge difference between the M1 Garand, FN-FAL and the M14’s I’ve fired versus the M16, AK101 and AK-47s I’ve fired.

Even though the furniture may be the same, the experience definitely is not.

Galil has a 7.62 NATO version. G3 is also chambered for that round. Both are assualt rifles.

Wikipedia defines the G3 as a “battle rifle”.

I don’t know about the Galil - the 7.62 was never a popular weapon anyway. Could you direct me to a cite referring to it as an assault rifle?

Nope. The whole point of an assault rifle is that it’s firing an intermediate cartridge. which is “intermediate” in power between a pistol cartridge used in submachine guns such as 9mm or 45 ACP and a full power rifle cartridge (as used in WWII) such as the .30-06, 8mm Mauser, 7.62x54R, .303 British.

The first assault rifle, the German StG-44, fired a 7.92x33 Kurz cartridge, with a 125 grain bullet @ 2250 fps, for 1408 ft/lbs of energy.

By comparison, the standard German rifle fired the 7.92x57(8mm Mauser) round with a 197 grain bullet @ 2500 fps, for 2427 ft/lbs of energy.

Quite a difference- this made the StG-44 quite a bit more controllable and useful at the typical sub-300 meter distance of modern infantry combat, and allowed for useful automatic fire as well.

The difference between .30-06 and 7.62 NATO is very slight in practical terms, while the difference between 5.56 NATO and 7.62 NATO is pretty drastic.

It’s not just a matter of control, it’s a matter of weight. A soldier can carry twice as much 5.56mm ammo than 7.62mm. In many situations, that difference can be crucial.

In the civilian market, many insist that assault rifle = fully automatic. But on the other hand, I don’t see many people quibbling that AR-15s that have a different upper and use a larger or smaller round (e.g. .50 Beowulf or .22 LR)also invalidates them.

IIRC the average US Army rifleman carries something like 240 rounds of 5.56 - 7 loose magazines and another one loaded (one in the chamber?). How much did the average soldier carry in the M1/M-14 era? In other countries, and AR-15 vs. FAL?

I believe the standard ammo belt for the M1 Garand held 10 clips of 8 rounds each for a total of 80 rounds. I guess they could have had one clip in the rifle too for an extra 8 rounds. I’ve read many stories about soldiers loading up a second belt with as much ammo as they could get before large battles though so I’m not sure how “standard” the standard load really was.

I believe the Russians and Germans carried fewer rounds per soldier.