Today In Guns, 16 June 1841 (a Monday). Today in Guns, on the third Monday of June 1941, official US Army trials began to select a new lightweight rifle. This weapon would eventually become the M1 Carbine.

Among the companies participating were Auto Ordnance (which was already manufacturing the Thomson SMG), Harrington & Richardson, Hyde, Savage, Springfield Armory, and Woodhull. John Garand himself submitted two designs, and Winchester, which had, ironically, declined the original invitation to submit a prototype because it was heavily involved in Garand rifle production, joined the trials two weeks later. 

Featured image, above: Winston Churchill and Generals Eisenhower and Bradley engage in a friendly shooting competition using M1 Carbines somewhere in the UK in 1944.

M1 Carbine History: Something for Support Troops

The Ordnance Department had been looking for a carbine, designed from the ground up, to be used by support troops and other personnel. The initial concept was for a lightweight weapon (five pounds or less, counting the sling), with an effective range of 300 yards. It was to be semi-automatic with full-auto capability, minimal recoil, and chambered in a cartridge similar to the .32 Centerfire, originally developed by Winchester for their Model 1905 autoloading rifle. 

In the fall of 1940 – a year before they actually started developing the new weapon – they went to Winchester to have the cartridge developed. In June of 1941, right around the time the trials were just beginning,  they ordered 150,000 rounds of the new cartridge. They ordered more than a quarter of a million additional rounds a couple of months thereafter. 

That September, after an extraordinarily compressed development period (more than a month of working day and night literally), the first finished M1 Carbines were available for testing at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Upon completion of the trials, the Board unanimously recommended Winchester’s completed design. 

Above: US Army comparison on the M1911 pistol, M1 Carbine, and M1 Garand on a German Stahlhelm (helmet). With thanks to @hw97karbine on X.

An order for 350,000 M1 Carbines was subsequently placed with Winchester less than two weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but manufacturing did not go as quickly as development. As a result, the first M1 Carbines – a whopping lot of ten (10) – were not delivered until August 1942, nearly three weeks after the Marines landed on Guadalcanal. 

A dozen companies produced more than six million M1 Carbines and variants (like this one), and it’s still in production today. The “first PDW” served in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and other conflicts. It’s actually still in use on battlefields today.

But it all started with a testing and evaluation committee in 1941 on the third Monday of June.

And that is what happened TODAY IN GUNS.