In this episode Matt takes a look at an M1 Garand select-fire conversion developed by Winchester in the late 1940s. Likely chambered in an early version of 7.62x51mm NATO, the rifle is believed to be the work of Winchester (and later Ruger) lead engineer Harry H. Sefried. Be sure to check out Mat...

The MC-1952 was a variation on the M1C Garand sniper rifle, adopted by the US Marine Corps in 1952. The Marines were not satisfied with the low magnification of the Lyman scopes on the Army M1C, and after some experimentation they adopted their own version of the rifle using a 4x scope made by Ko...

The M1C was an M1 Garand with a telescopic sight, using a mounting system developed by the Griffin & Howe company of New York. It utilized a rail pinned and screwed to the left side of the receiver, coupled with a quick-release scope on top. The rails had to be installed prior to heat treating th...

The M1D was the final adopted form of John Garands sniper M1 rifle, originally the M1E8. It was intended to be a kit issued in the field to add optical sights to any rifle deemed worthy, and retained that capability in a slightly different form than originally intended. Garland’s initial plan was...

When the M14 rifle was developed to replace the M1 Garand, is was met with some uncertainty by the US Navy. The Navy had a lot of things to spend money on, and not a lot of need for a replacement for the M1 Garand (note that the Marine Corps did adopt the M14 despite being a component of the Navy...

In a last hopeful attempt to get a rifle adopted and produced for the US military, John Pedersen designed his own copy of the M1 Garand rifle in the late 1930s (approximately 1939). His toggle-locked rifles had been irreversibly rejected, and the Garand rifle fully adopted by 1936. Pedersen's exa...

Dozens of countries around the world received M1 Garand rifles from the United States in the decades after World War Two, and Denmark was one of those that not only got some rifle but went so far as to formally adopt the M1 as its post-war standard. The US and Denmark signed a mutual defense agre...

After World War Two, both the Beretta and Breda companies in Italy began manufacturing M1 Garand rifles. When Italy decided that they wanted a more modern selective-fire, magazine-fed rifle, they chose to adapt the M1 Garand to that end rather than develop a brand new rifle. Two Beretta engineers...

In the years after WWII, several countries experimented with general-use optical sights on service rifles. The Germans had pioneered the concept with the ZF-41 long eye relief optic during the war (and the ZF-4, to some extent), and the British actually adopted the EM-2 with a permanently-mounted...

Two of the scarcest and least known of John Pedersen's designs are the Model GY and GX rifles, which are basically copies of the production model of the M1 Garand. After losing out in the Army rifle trials with his toggle-locked rifle design, Pedersen made one last attempt to garner a US military...

Even during World War Two, it was clear that the United States was interested in improving on the M1 Garand rifle. A company that could develop and update to the Garand to make it selective-fire and feed from a box magazine would be in a great position to sell the government a ton of rifles, and ...

Partway through 1944, the Japanese Imperial Navy began a program to provide their infantry units with better firepower than was afforded by the bolt action Arisaka rifles. The initial experimentation was based on rechambering captured US M1 Garand rifles for the 7.7 Japanese cartridge, but an inc...

After World War Two, Colombia adopted the .30-06 cartridge as standard, purchasing a thousand .30-06 FN49 rifles and 19,000 surplus American M1 Garand rifles. With the subsequent development of the 7.62mm NATO cartridge, Colombia experimented briefly with converting their existing Garand rifles t...