M-1 Carbine Review: Power/Accuracy/Relevence

[Music] five we're out on the ranch today so please bear with gunfire you hear in the background recently a lot of people and when I say a lot I do mean a lot I don't mean one or two have contacted me requesting a presentation on the m1 carbine so here we are and I was able to purchase this rifle because of donations to the patreon account thank you everybody and because someone sold it to me at a very good price thank you Andy now the m1 carbine was used by the American military for a couple of decades and sources disagree as to when it went into and went out of service but m1 carbines have been made by many different manufacturers in many different configurations for the military and the commercial market and to do an in-depth analysis of the m1 carbine we could be here for days but to keep this presentation best measured in minutes I want to hit some of the high points such as the statistics of length and weight of the rifle and the power of the 30 carbine cartridge how it stacks up against a couple of other cartridges and why it gets such a reputation for being underpowered accuracy and the relevance or lack thereof of the m1 carbine in the 21st century and I want to start with the discussion of power and I'll start that with a close-up of what the ammunition looks like from your left to rioter the 760 by 51 also known as 760 - NATO 7-6 - by 39 3030 also known as 760 - about 51 our 357 Magnum 30 carbine 38 special 45 ACP and 9 by 19 so we can see that the 30 carbine compared to some common rifle rounds is fairly small so we see the 30 carbine ammunition is kind of small compared to most rifle rounds but how powerful is it I've got the chronograph set up at 7 yards and we'll see what kind of velocities we get however there's going to be a couple of yachts and a big punch line at the end of this segment so please hold all commentary until then also I'm going to test several types of ammunition today so the chronograph portion is going to be tedious and you are invited to skip ahead to the part with the chart so let's get started and we're going to start with Remington green and white box 30 carbine 110 grain Full Metal Jacket round nose 1960 to 2003 1982 1976 and 1961 now let's try another type of animal now let's try some Remington green and yellow box 30 carbine hundred and ten grain soft point two thousand six 1970 to 1999 1963 in 1977 let's try another type of ammo now we'll try a Salette in below 30 carbine 110 grain soft point 1943 1949 teen 71 1942 and 1943 now let's try another type of ammo now this is Hornady custom 30 carbine 110 grain round nose soft 1 mm 1 mm 27 2019 [Applause] 2023 and 2021 now we'll try one more type of ammo and now hornady critical defense 30 carbine 110 grain FTX projectile like a ballistic tip 2005 [Applause] 1987 2004 1993 1967 and 1987 so I fired five different types of 30 carbine ammunition all of which had 110 grain projectiles among commercially available 30 carbine ammo 110 grain is the only projectile weight I've ever seen now some people will say that 30 carbine fired from an m1 carbine will be similar in power to a 357 magnum let's see if we can put that to the test it won't be a perfect comparison because this Henry lever action 357 has a 20-inch barrel is where the m1 only has an 18-inch barrel but at least it'll be close and to make it as fair as I can I'm going to use Winchester white-box 357 Magnum 110 grain semi-jacketed hollow point so let's see what kind of velocities we get with this 16:23 1635 1643 1663 and 1627 now let's go crunch the numbers well I crunched the numbers in here they are with a Remington green and white box 30 carbine we had a mean velocity of 1976 with the green and yellow box 1983 a gain of 7 feet per second that's within the variation of one round to the next and not enough difference to make a difference our lowest velocity 30 carbine was to slay and below with a mean velocity of 1947 that's 29 feet per second less than the Remington green and white box and 71 feet per second less than the Hornet accustomed with a velocity of 2018 the Hornet accustomed was her highest velocity round so how does that compare with 357 Magnum fired from a carbine well with the Winchester white box 357 with 110 grain projectile I got a mean velocity of 12 36 that's 309 feet per second less than our lowest velocity 30 carbine round that is a lot less so off-camera chrono graphed a couple of other types of 357 ammo one being the Remington green and white box with 125 green projectile and got a mean velocity of 20 127 that's 109 feet per second more than our highest velocity 30 carbine and with a heavier bullet 125 grain versus 110 grain so when comparing the energy foot-pounds if I did my math right we'd go from 9 94 to 12 56 which is 262 pounds more that's a lot more I also chronograph the federal American Eagle 357 with 158 grain projectile with a much heavier projectile we got significantly less velocity Amina 1716 and energy foot-pounds 1036 which isn't that much more than a 994 so it would appear with the right ammunition choices or perhaps the wrong ammunition choices 30 carbine fired from an m1 carbine and compare favorably in power to 357 Magnum however here's the yeah 'but you measure power with velocity and energy foot-pounds energy foot-pounds being the real bottom line but more power does not necessarily mean more effectiveness if we were comparing the effectiveness of all of these on medium to large-sized game factors like the 357 being a 35 caliber rifle instead of a 30 caliber rifle and the much heavier projectiles even if they have less energy foot-pounds can retain that energy for more penetration in larger game will be factors that influence effectiveness power does not necessarily equate the same thing as effectiveness but we see that the adage that a 30 carbine fired from an m1 carbine can fire with very similar power to a 357 magnum does seem to have some merit and a 357 magnum is considered to be a powerful handgun and when you put that cartridge into a carbine with the right ammunition choices it's still considered perfectly adequate for hunting game like deer at reasonable distances so if we consider that powerful and our 30 carbine with the right ammunition choices has similar power where does the 30 carbine get the reputation for being so grossly underpowered let me see if I can shed some light on that obviously the 30 carbine is not as powerful as some of its contemporaries like the 303 British the 7-6 - but 54 are the eight millimeter Mauser and the 30.6 but it has a reputation for being pitifully weak for being grossly underpowered to the point where I have heard people say in an angry frustrated tone things like what the hell were they even thinking when they designed it and where does that reputation for being grossly underpowered come from well the explanation comes with four caveats one this is the boring part of the video where I talk to everything I'm going to say are my conclusions my conclusions are based on my experience my observation different people have different experiences they make different observations they have different conclusions three just this particular topic is something I could go on about for an hour but I'm gonna try to convince it to just a few minutes and four there's a big punch line at the end of this so getting started there are some people who will say it has a reputation for weakness based on this and some people will say it's based on that I'm going to say there are several things and I want to cover three of them the first one being something that I call overly confident conjecture backed up by fictional data now I'm sure somebody with a psych degree could come up with a better term than overly confident conjecture backed up by fictional data but I think that's a big part of the m1 carbines reputation for being underpowered and there's a couple of things that go into that the first one being the propensity of military personnel to tell tall tales you may notice that my military based anecdotes are short infrequent and boring that's because they're true not all military personnel will follow that guideline the other thing that goes into this requires a close-up of the ammunition let's take a look on your left is a 45 ACP 230 grain Full Metal Jacket round nose and on your right a 38 special 130 grand Full Metal Jacket round nose both of these cartridges in these configurations were in widespread use by the American military when the 30 carbine was introduced now you can see that the 30 carbine is slightly longer than the 38 special but it's smaller diameter and its overall dimensions are in fact less than the 38 the 38 special is a moderately powerful handgun round but the type and amount of propellant in conjunction with the 130 grain Full Metal Jacket round nose configuration that the military uses is a particularly weak version of 38 special so we have troops using this and then they see the 30 carbine cartridge someone's going to notice that it's smaller and have the legitimate concern that it might be less powerful but instead of expressing his concern as a concern and saying something like a 30 carbine is really small it might not even be as powerful as the 38 he will express his concern as an overly confident turell's statement where he will express his hypothesis as absolutely tested fact look at the size of that round that's not even as powerful as the 38 at which point someone will challenge that statement by saying something like well smaller doesn't mean weaker how do you know it's less powerful now here's where somebody doesn't want to back off of his statement and admit that he was just speaking conjecture Lee and he really has no evidence to base that on and so he will make up fictional data and he'll say something like because there's been a couple of times where I've had to shoot very mock soldiers five times killing with a 30 carbine although he might use a less flattering term than fair mocked soldier and then that lie gets believed and gets repeated and on down the line someone who wants to appear to have more first-hand knowledge than they really have will repeat that story but repeat it as though it happened to them personally and the next thing you know you've got a lot of people out there talking about the dissatisfactory results they've gotten from a 30 carbine now let me tell you an anecdote that will illustrate this point long time ago I was sitting there trying to mind my own business when I overheard a conversation being had by three people now two of these people were teenagers and one of them had been in the military I don't know exactly in what configuration but this person who'd been in the military starts talking about how military issue 1911's we're fully automatic and I'm thinking wait what and starts going on about how if you pull the trigger part way back it's semi-auto but if you pull the trigger on the 1911 all the way back it's fully automatic and it'll empty that magazine before you even know what happened about then one of the teenagers says oh yeah I know what you mean and starts going on with an anecdote about how his grandfather had one and he'd shot one and the recoil almost threw the gun out of his hand and then the other teenagers start saying how his uncle it had one and repeats and anecdotes it's basically the same thing and I'm listening to this thinking I don't want to say anything that these people but did I miss something here and of course no I hadn't missed anything this is just a bunch of tall tales going on but someone who doesn't know any better listens this kind of stuff and hears it repeated and believes it and this kind of thing is really destructive and it's at least in part responsible for the 30 carbons reputation for being grossly underpowered now the second thing I want to discuss again requires a close-up look at the ammunition this is a military issue 30.6 cartridge you can see it's peeling up here a little bit but this one is a tracer the 30.6 is a very powerful rifle and it's perfectly adequate for elk moose or buffalo I've killed a buffalo with the 30.6 and in the early 1940s when the 30 carbine was introduced at that point the 30.6 had been the caliber for America's main battle rifles for over 30 years and when the 30 carbine is introduced you can see it is a lot smaller and it is significantly less powerful however less power does not mean inadequate power and smaller does not necessarily mean too small let me show you something that I think will illustrate my point this is Buckley and he's a Bernese Mountain Dog now depending which source you weigh anywhere from last time Buckley was on the scale he weighed about 105 so he's not at the high end of the scale but he's not a [ __ ] either but as we go out in public people frequently comment by how small he is how under sized he is why is that mainly two things one he is a little bit on the smaller scale and to come here ski this is whiskey who is an Irish Wolfhound who last time he was on the scale weighed over 150 so when the two of them are together Buckley can't help but look small now the third thing on my list takes a few minutes to explain but I think it's very important so please bear with me in the state that I live in if someone under age 18 wants to go hunting they're required to attend a hunter education class he takes several hours of instruction and take a test to get your little card and off you go when I took that class I was still measuring my age in single digits and I was issued a hunter education manual in that manual was a ballistics chart sponsored by Remington and it had nice big pictures of all the different cartridges that Remington was manufacturing at the time and information like the different projectile weights and different projectile designs muzzle velocities velocities at two and three hundred yards energy foot-pounds trajectories all kinds of good information so a couple of years after taking the class when I acquired an m1 carbine I got out my manual line going there and I look at the ballistics chart and I was dismayed at how weak the 30 carbine cartridge was I ended up looking at a different hunter education manual that was a few years newer and it had a different chart so it had been reprinted but the information was still the same I also looked at a reloading manual now reloading manuals will show many different velocities because they're different propellants and different projectiles but the numbers it was showing pretty consistent with the chart and what the chart showed was that Remington green and yellow box 30 carbine 110 grain soft point projectile had a velocity of 1310 feet per second you saw earlier we chronograph that same ammunition at 1987 the book is showing a velocity that's six hundred and seventy-seven feet per second less than what we actually Crona grafted and no the ammunition hasn't changed that chart was misprinted and based on that misprint and checking a couple of other sources that were just newer versions in the same misprint was in part of why I decided to get rid of the m1 carbine and why I have advised several people over the years to not buy them because the 30 carbine cartridge is so underpowered there was a time where one of my colleagues was going on an angry rant about how stupid the m1 carbine and the 30 carbine cartridge was because it's so underpowered and I realized he read the same manual I did now the significance of this is that that same manual was issued to who knows how many thousands of kids in the state that I live in over quite a few years and so a lot of people were exposed to the same misinformation I was and another thing and I don't know the answer to this so if anybody has any information please share it but the hunter education manuals of other states did they have a similar chart did the kids in Washington Idaho Montana Minnesota the Dakotas Colorado Wyoming Kansas Nebraska the list goes on did all of those kids see the same misprinted chart and it leaves me with many thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of people saw that misinformation and came to the same erroneous conclusion that I did that the m1 carbine and the 30 carbine cartridge are grossly underpowered now that we've talked about power ad nauseam but see how that power translates into effectiveness and I'm going to demonstrate the effectiveness of a 30 carbine by shooting a 357 magnum at the meet target now for those who haven't seen it before the meet target is leather jacket skin followed by porkchop pectorals pork ribs a bag of oranges to simulate lung tissue more pork ribs on the back four layers a t-shirt on the front four layers on the back and the whole thing followed by the new and improved high-tech police bullet stop and I'm going to shoot Remington green and white box 357 Magnum 125 grain jacketed soft point and I'll shoot from 25 yards and let's see what kind of effectiveness we get [Applause] [Applause] I fired four shots but only two of them hit the meet target in any meaningful way one being stopped by the t-shirt on the back of the target the other making it through to about the tenth layer of police unfortunately in four shots that Henry rifle malfunctioned three times and shot so inaccurately that the rifle felt so bad about itself that it went down range and committed suicide by shooting itself with an m16 rifle so it's no longer with us but I can show you a close-up with the two projectiles I recovered and we see a lot of expansion from both our projectiles one losing its jacket well our 357 Magnum ammunition was impressive even if the Henry rifle was not but now let's see how that stacks up against our m1 carbine loaded with Remington green and yellow box 30 carbine 110 grain jacketed soft point and again I'll shoot from 25 yards [Applause] this time I fired four rounds and all four hit the target doing a lot of damage to our pork chop pectoral annihilating the ribs on the front of the target thrashing our orange lung tissue but unfortunately the target got turned enough but all of the rounds went through missing the ribs on the back of the target and they all penetrated anywhere from the 20th to 40th layer of fleece now let me show you a close-up of these projectiles and here's our projectiles covered with multicolored fleece and you can see that they have excellent expansion the fourth projectile was completely fragmented and now we'll try our hornady critical defense 30 carbine 110 grain FTX projectile like a ballistic tip [Applause] well there's a lot of damage to our ribs on the front of the target just annihilated our orange lung tissue a couple of the rounds did hit the ribs on the back of the target but made much smaller holes so they lost a lot of their velocity but still where the bullets hit the ribs broke and all of our projectiles penetrated to about the 30th layer of fleece now let me show you a close-up of what these look like and again one of our projectiles fragmented and there was only bits of it left but as far as the other three we see very good expansion so far our m1 carbine seems to be performing pretty well but what kind of results will we get using ammunition that's more similar to what you'd see in a military setting now I'll shoot from 25 yards with our Remington green and white box 110 grain full-metal-jacket round nose [Applause] and with the full-metal-jacket projectiles we get basically the results that I expected holes in the ribs on the front of the target but not near as much damage as we saw with the expanding projectiles as far as our orange lung tissue some damage but significantly less than with our expanding projectiles and as far as penetration I did not recover any as far as I can tell they all went through every single layer of the police bullets top so how will our 30 carbine full-metal-jacket ammunition compared to 556 NATO full-metal-jacket well I've got my a1 loaded with bedro XM 193 five five six NATO 55 grain Full Metal Jacket spear point so let's shoot this from 25 yards and see what kind of damage we can do now with our five five six NATO we see just five five six caliber holes and their ribs on the front of the target but on the back of these ribs we see exit holes that show that some of these projectiles are already starting to fragment and some of them are already starting to tumble and that's why we see a lot of damage to our orange lung tissue and the ribs on the back of the target are just pretty well thrashed so comparing our 30 carbine Full Metal Jacket ammunition to our 556 NATO Full Metal Jacket ammunition we see two profound differences one five five six gives us a lot more damage to our meat target and to a lot less penetration in our police bullet stop let me show you the projectiles I was able to recover and this is all I was able to recover a piece of the jacket of one projectile and the Front's of two other's recovered from about the 20th layer of fleece everything else was fragmented and lost somewhere in the meet target or in the fleece bullet stop well we've discussed power and effectiveness ad nauseam let's talk about accuracy the m1 carbine has a reputation for mediocre accuracy and let's see if we can put that to the test I've got three shoot and C targets set up and I'll shoot the one on your left with this Ruger 10/22 which has been equipped with a peep sight I'll shoot the one in the middle with the m1 carbine and the one on the left with this a1 platform and I'll shoot prone unsupported from 100 yards [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] now in comparing our groups what we see with the a1 is that the group is okay but it's not centered that's the Sun glare that's me that's something other than the rifles fault but rather than the location of the group we have to concentrate on the size of the group which compared to the m1 is smaller but not that much smaller and with our 1022 of course at 100 we see a little bit of drop and a mediocre group but what we have to take into consideration here is that we're measuring not only the rifle but me with this 1022 and this a1 platform I've owned them both for a long time and have one shooting competitions with both of them the m1 carbine I've owned for less than a month so let's try a different drill I'll shoot these two targets alternating left-right left-right firing as fast as I think I can hit the targets from 50 yards and I'll shoot off hand side note often does not mean shooting with your non-dominant hand it means shooting while standing unsupported and we'll start with the AR and now the m1 [Applause] [Applause] let's take a look at the targets obviously after shooting the targets with AR I took those down put up the m1 targets now for the AR target's back up for side-by-side comparison and the side by side comparison looks like this on our left hand targets with the AR I fired six shots got six hits four in the ten ring with the m1 I fired six shots got six hits four in the ten ring on our right hand targets with the AR fi are six shots got five hits four in the ten ring with the m1 I fired six shots got five hits four in the ten ring so no meaningful difference in the numeric score and as far as the difference in time negligible okay we're almost done just a few other things I want to cover the first being reliability along with the m1 carbines reputation for being grossly underpowered and having mediocre accuracy is its reputation from mediocre reliability the first thing I have to say is I put over 200 rounds through this one and so far its reliability has been a hundred percent a lot of times when there are reliability issues it has to do with ammunition or magazines military issue m1 carbines were intended to shoot Full Metal Jacket round those ammunition and sometimes soft points won't feed properly although they seem to be fine in this one another problem comes from using very poorly made magazines also some people will use thirty shot magazines and m1 carbines can have a problem with these although again this one seems to work just fine however the old tired concept of downloading a magazine by a few rounds and people will tell you that it's not necessary I've found that when using thirty shot magazines in an m1 carbine if you load them with only 25 rounds instead of thirty it can greatly increase your reliability so if you have an m1 and you're having reliability issues before you throw it off a cliff switch out your magazines switch out your ammo now some other stats on the m1 carbine military issue m1 carbines are caliber 30 u.s. carbine I have seen some copies of em ones and other calibers there was a rifle that looked similar to it was caliber 9 by 19 but over the years I've met a few people I mean just a few who wrote the opinion that military issue m1 carbines were caliber 3030 Winchester well if anybody's ever made an m1 carbine in 3030 I've never seen it and most certainly military issue and ones were not 3030 their caliber 30 u.s. carbine and on the subject of military issue rifles you'll notice this one does not have a bayonet lug it's a common conception that military issue em ones have a bayonet lug those made for the commercial market don't and there is some fact to that however if you look at old photographs of American military personnel during the Second World War the Korean Conflict you'll see a lot of people carrying m1 carbines that have bayonet lugs and a lot of people with em ones that don't now another statistic on the m1 carbine is the barrel length this one has an 18 inch barrel and all the military issue rifles that I've ever seen had 18 inch barrels there's a misconception that they have 16 inch barrels again if there's a version of the m1 carbine that has a 16 inch barrel I haven't seen it if anybody has please share a real big point of the m1 carbine as its weight sources don't seem to agree on what the weight is I read a source that said 5.2 pounds a source that read 5.4 pounds that might have something to do with the absence or presence of a bayonet lug but even at 5.4 pounds that sounds pretty light and compared to the carbines contemporaries like the tommy gun or the m1 garand five point four pounds is very light and side note I say garand some people will tell you that its garand tomato tomahto Caribbean Caribbean caramel caramel carbine carbine this is not the format my pronunciation but by today's standards how light is five point four pounds well by textbook this a one rifle has a weight of six point five the a2 is seven point nine pounds and even some of today's carbine versions of your AR platforms are still gonna weigh significantly more than five point four pounds so the m1 is still pretty light however right about now is when someone brings up the weight of the ammunition your ammunition has four components projectile propellant primer casing your projectile being typically copper-jacketed lead is a big part of the overall weight of your ammunition and because your 30 carbine ammo is a 110 grain projectile and 556 NATO was a 55 grain or 62 grain projectile it can lead to the conclusion that although smaller 30 carbine ammo would weigh more well I weighed some ammunition and when you weigh whole cartridges they can vary in weight depending on the manufacturer even when they all have the same projectile weight and what I found was that 30 carbine ammo weighs just about a hundred and 80 grains while by comparison 556 NATO ammunition loaded with a 55 gram projectile weighs a little over a hundred and 70 grains so the weight of the 30 carbine ammo is more but not by very much to put it in perspective if you were carrying a basic load of 200 rounds the 30 carbine ammo would increase your weight by a little over 4 ounces and if you were using 556 NATO ammo with a 62-grain projectile the difference in weight would be almost nothing so the advantage of the 5.4 pound rifle seems to be a very significant advantage but that brings us to the next topic the relevance our lack thereof with the m1 carbine in the 21st century well even though today we saw that it seems to have more power than with great credit for and more accuracy than we gave it credit for it's not gonna really stack up against a our platform rifles at distances of three four five hundred yards also there's the problem with the availability in the cost of the ammunition because 30 carbine ammo is not as or as it once was it's not add a lot of stores and its price tag can be 70 even 80 percent more than five five six NATO ammunition then there's the cost and the availability of the rifles themselves a long time ago m1 carbines were a dime a dozen they were very inexpensive but today because they're considered collectors items rifles like this in good working order that haven't been modified will at least where I've seen them for sale fetch prices of nine hundred dollars or more even though you can go down to the store and buy a good AR platform for six hundred dollars or less at least in my local area and that's a big difference in price so if I were looking for a rifle to buy the m1 carbine would not be one of the finalists however if you happen to have one because you purchased it long enough ago that it was inexpensive or perhaps you inherited it based on what we've seen today the m1 carbine most certainly can get the job done so as always don't try this at home on what you call a professional and thanks for watching the m1 carbine video [Music]

Channel: Paul Harrell

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Keywords: paul harrell, paul harrell m-1 carbine, paul harrell m1 carbine, paul harrell m1, m-1 carbine, m1 carbine, 30 carbine, paul harrell 30 carbine, puppy, dog, dogs, puppies, paul harrell dogs, wwii, wwii rifle, wwii gun, wwii rifles, wwii guns

Id: V4Eg3TKkpTY

Length: 38min 13sec (2293 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 05 2019