Why is .30 Carbine not made in rifles other than the M1?

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I didn't realize the M1 carbine was so difficult to clean. I can tear mine done and clean it in my sleep. I have some old rifles that are really awful to take apart and clean... like the SVT-40 comes to mind.

You do not normally want to clean the gas tapped out. Generally if it works, leave it alone so you don't strip threads or anything.

Just clean out the barrel and breech as on other long arms.
 
I didn't realize the M1 carbine was so difficult to clean. I can tear mine done and clean it in my sleep. I have some old rifles that are really awful to take apart and clean... like the SVT-40 comes to mind.
Ya, the Garand is easy by comparison- but even then they used stainless for the piston and cylinder since M2 ball is mildly corrosive.
 
Generally, yes. One Marine commander in the Pacific theater in WW2 said it was "the ace weapon of the war." It was light weight, easy to use in the island jungles of the Pacific, and the round penetrate better than the .45 ACP from the Thompson or Colt 1911.

Very interesting, I always figured that a .45acp from a carbine would be more deadly than a .30 carbine... but I have never seen anyone shot or even anyone with a gun shot wound... I would expect a commander in the field to be the one to know which was deadlier from first hand experience.
 
Very interesting, I always figured that a .45acp from a carbine would be more deadly than a .30 carbine... but I have never seen anyone shot or even anyone with a gun shot wound... I would expect a commander in the field to be the one to know which was deadlier from first hand experience.

The Thompson was the closest thing to a .45ACP "carbine" in WW2. The one thing it had over the carbine was full auto fire. In the Pacific, some Japanese officers had ballistic armor -- really rather crude shaped metal panels. They would defeat the .45ACP from the Tommyguns and the handguns but the .30 carbine went right through. Of course the Garands worked well too if you had one, which would have been pretty likely.
 
Got any pictures of the MAC French "10/22" .30 carbine and its works and hidden mechanisms?

You got me -- not coming up with anything matching that description.

What I do have are photos from Full Circle by R. Blake Stevens of three roller-delayed prototypes by Ludwig Vorgrimler made during his short time working with CEAM in France:

VorgrimlerM702.jpg
VorgrimlerMI2.jpg
VorgrimlerM501.jpg

You can clearly see the common heritage with the CETME/H&K battle rifles in the last prototype.

CEAM was not the only French company to experiment with .30 Carbine variants. Check this sucker out from MAS:

MASM1939.jpg

Incidentally, Howa produced M1 Carbines to both military and sporting patterns. The Model 300 sporter had a smooth top receiver with a barrel-mounted rear leaf sight and integral muzzle brake.

howa300early.jpg howacomm.jpg
 
The Thompson was the closest thing to a .45ACP "carbine" in WW2. The one thing it had over the carbine was full auto fire. In the Pacific, some Japanese officers had ballistic armor -- really rather crude shaped metal panels. They would defeat the .45ACP from the Tommyguns and the handguns but the .30 carbine went right through. Of course the Garands worked well too if you had one, which would have been pretty likely.

On this general side topic, i.e. purpose-built 45 ACP carbines, check out this interesting video on the Reising Model 60 semi-automatic carbine:

 
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I suspect the reason is that the M1 carbine is a perfectly good firearm for the cartridge and there really is no good reason to create something else, given the limited market for it.

One might think it would be relatively easy to create an AR platform that used the carbine cartridge. I think there have been a couple companies that made 30 cal carbine uppers but they apparently never sold well enough for the manufacturers to keep making them.
 
On this general side topic, check out this interesting video:



Oh yea, the Reising. It saw little use; purportedly it was too sensitive to foreign matter intruding into the action. It's said U. S. Marines tossed crates of Reisings into the ocean so they couldn't be issued.
After the war, some police depts. were given them, and in non war conditions they worked pretty well.
 
Dave,

Thanks again for some great info and photos.

Just pulled out an old Smith& Smith Small Arms of the World from 1969 ( it is in sad shape as it was well read when new)

96,983 carbines were issued to the Free French in WWII. About 18,000 additional guns were given to resistance forces.

The MAC carbine was called the M1949 carbine and was a delayed blow back There is but one photo and it was described as a proto type. It really does remind one of a 10/22 in one of the faux carbine stock kits. Looks nothing like the SMG version M1949 from MAS ….but then Fords ain't Chevys either!

I would have sworn I saw a French Policeman in a photo armed with the MAC 1949 but S&S SAOW says it was proto type only

Perhaps I saw one of their custom Mini14s and not knowing about those at the time filed it in the old noggin locker as an MAC 1949

-kBob
 
Perhaps I saw one of their custom Mini14s and not knowing about those at the time filed it in the old noggin locker as an MAC 1949

Could be -- they are roughly the same size, and at least some of the French contract M-14s have a wood handguard and a sling cutout in the buttstock broadly similar to the M1 Carbine's:

French-Police-using-Ruger-Mini-14.jpg

I think my copy of Smith is the same edition ;-)
 
The issue with the Reisings that really upset the Marines was the parts were not truly interchangeable....and they tried bulk cleaning while shipboard they could not get some together at all and some just did not work right anymore.

-kBob

Agreed. I suspect the fit of the parts within the Reising's wooden stock may have also caused reliability issues in the humid Pacific theater, and the magazine design and construction left something to be desired.

Like the Johnson, the Reising SMG was a hurried, off-the-rack acquisition that was used for a short time and then set aside as other weapons became available. I think the Reising's basic design was sound. It would have benefited from a program of product improvement and ruggedization for military service, but in trials Hyde's M2 and M3 designs proved better suited to requirements.
 
I personally just don't see a niche for it. In the AR, you have a plethora of options, the 5.56 and the .300 Blackout being the most popular. The .30 Carbine is probably too short to make efficient use of rifle, so you end up with an AR PCC, competing with more established cartridges, from 9x19 to 5.7x28 to 10mm Auto. Sure, it is fun, but can it do anything any better than any of the others? Probably not.

In other platforms, it has to compete with the same cartridges, plus magnum revolver cartridges like the .357 Magnum or the .44 Magnum. Any time I try to picture something new an exciting in .30 Carbine, I instantly think of all the other, more established and useful options I have, and I just wonder, why?
 
Just noted in Leroy Thompsons book that Howa in Japan initially made 5,000 M 1 carbines for the JDF before making double that number for the commercial market

He also stated that Erma, who made the neat little .22LR look alike, made them for use by the West German Army before 1957 adoption of the GI (FN-FAL)

interesting....

-kBob
 
Old Stumpy,

Would You believe Auto Ord also made a .30-06 Thompson? John Malloy wrote about the weird Thompsons in an old Gun Digest once.

I once held a .30 carbine Thompson at a Florida Suncoast Collectors Show at the Tupperware Center in the 1980s (maybe the same one that ended up in the Cody Museum reviewed by Ian) ....as Ian points out , boy did they get the idea wrong.

-kBob
 
Corrrosive in M1 carbines.... when I used the French ammo I used a water based cleaner ( I suspect water, ATF fluid, and a mild detergent) that was sold in store by a guy named Buff Cobb. Early in the cleaning I would plug the bore and fill it with that pink goo and then work the gas piston back and forth until the goo started oozing out around the piston. I would then clean every thing and come back and pour hot water into the stopped barrel and work the piston until clean water showed up. Lube everything and set it aside. I would then over the next few days perform the double end test (lock the slide back, point the gun straight up and listen for the piston to click back then point it straight down listening for the piston to click forward and repeat the test several times.

I had that gun about 13 years and it never showed signs of rusting up from the corrosive even though I never once pulled the piston out of the gun.

Still had I not been a teen on a budget when I bought the French ammo I would not have shot it.

-kBob
 
Old Stumpy,

Would You believe Auto Ord also made a .30-06 Thompson? John Malloy wrote about the weird Thompsons in an old Gun Digest once.

I once held a .30 carbine Thompson at a Florida Suncoast Collectors Show at the Tupperware Center in the 1980s (maybe the same one that ended up in the Cody Museum reviewed by Ian) ....as Ian points out , boy did they get the idea wrong. -kBob

IIRC, when John Thompson first started working on his Tommygun, it was originally supposed to be .30 - '06. The controversial "Blish device," called the "H" device by the army (due to its shape) did not work as Blish desired with full power rifle cartridges, so Thompson re-imagined it into a submachine gun in .45acp.
The M1 and M1A1 Thompson eliminated the controversial Blish device and maintained it's slow rate of fire through other means .... which is probably what should have been done back when it was in development.
 
Would You believe Auto Ord also made a .30-06 Thompson?

Yup. The history of the Blish lock is almost hilarious. They tried so hard to make a successful battle rifle using their dissimilar metals adhesion principal, and failed. Finally they conceded that it would only work with a pistol cartridge. Then John T. decided to produce a "Trench Broom" and the T-Gun was born, only to be quashed by the terribly inconsiderate secession of hostilities. The rest is well known up to WW2 and the 1921 and 1928 models.
Finally, the M1 Thompson redesign simply eliminates the Blish lock entirely, and goes to a straight blow-back, proving that it really did hardly anything at all.
 
Thompson’s are heavy, not something you’d want to carry all day, that cartridge is a perfect fit for the Carbine. Want full auto, get an M-2.
 
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