M1D Garand Sniper

hi guys thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm Ian I'm here today at the James Giulia auction house taking a look at some of the guns that they're going to be selling in their upcoming October of 2016 firearms auction and we've looked at some other US military sniper rifles in fact we looked at the m1 C previously today we're going to take a look at the m1 D now this started out life as the m1 e8 experimental variant and this was the scope mounting option designed personally by John garand and the people helping him now the major difference what garand was going for on this design was to make the sniper rifle a field creatable thing basically that the m1 d could be issued as a kit to an armor out in the field who could convert a standard infantry rifle into a sniper rifle now with the m1 C you had to drill and tap the receiver and you really kind of had to do that before the receiver was heat-treated that couldn't be done in the field the idea with the m1 d was that they would mount the scope on a sleeve on the barrel right at the back here and you could do that to any rifle now that changed a little bit between when it was originally envisioned by garand and when it was actually adopted in fact what's kind of interesting is there was a lot of hoopla going back and forth and animosity about which version of the m1 sniper to adopt and it seems that part of the reason aside from politics part of the reason that the m1 D wasn't adopted is that in addition to this really pretty slick scope mounting system garand had also designed an adjustable cheek rest for the gun which was frankly apparently way too complicated and complex and expensive and finicky and if he'd gotten rid of that and just stuck with a typical leather pad like they ended up adopting he might have been more likely to get the m1 D adopted in the first place at any rate he didn't that's that's all historical speculation which we can avoid ultimately these weren't adopted until 1951 so the m1 C was adopted during the war although there were substantial accuracy problems with them and none of them really actually saw service in world war ii by 1950 one the thought process had changed and it had maybe the political connections involved in the adoption of the m1c were gone but more substantially they'd seen the the accuracy problems from the m1c which were a direct result of not being able to adapt the scope to an own rifle they had to put an m1 sea rail on an untreated receiver and then build it into a rifle and only then would you see if the complete rifle actually shot really well or not the idea of being able to take an existing really nice rifle and convert it into a sniper it took a couple years but people realized that that was probably the better way to go so in 1951 the m1 D was adopted the initial order was for about fourteen was a fourteen thousand three hundred and twenty five of them in December of 1940 1951 it took a little while for them to actually get manufactured and they didn't actually apparently see much service or see any service in Korea the Korean War was fought with him 1c rifles these came out just at the end of the Korean War when they were actually getting into soldiers hands they would stay in inventory until they were eventually replaced by m14 and bolt-action sniper systems in Vietnam so they actually didn't see a whole lot of military use but they're a neat system so why don't we go ahead and take a closer look we can see how this actually attaches the pros and cons because the attachments good but there are some downsides to it as well and some details on the scope so we'll start by pointing out again for folks who might not have seen other videos on sniper M ones that the scope is offset to the left of the receiver to keep the action clear so that you can still load this rifle with and block clip and so you don't interfere with its ejection now the scope on this is actually different than on the m1 see this scope was adopted in the 1950s as a replacement for the ma t1 and m82 scopes it is designated the m84 but it basically has the same statistics this is a 2.2 power scope so just slightly less magnification has a 27 27 foot field of view at 100 yards which is again actually slightly less than the MA and 82 we do have some advantages in that the adjustment knobs are larger they're still not audible clicks really the Marine Corps got that right with their 1952 sniper but the army kind of stuck with this type however these flip-open protective caps are definitely a step up from the threaded caps on the 81 and 82 those are easy to lose and they're time consuming to to access this just flips right up it's pinned in place so you won't lose it interestingly this was also done with a hinge type of scope mount so instead of having a pair of rings that you have to unscrew and take off this has a hinge you take out these two screws open the hinge up and you can replace the scope you don't have a separate piece here that you're potentially going to lose in a lot of ways the m1 d is a little bit more of a an idiot-proof field survivable type of design now the attachment is this big hand tightened knob maybe that wasn't the greatest idea this is really simple to use nice and tight now you can hear it there we unscrew that and the scope just lifts right off now as you can imagine when you put something like this into military service and you tell a grunt that his scope is held on by handset tightness of that wheel you are going to get a significant number of stripped out threads from guys who crank that thing on there way too tight I think the hope was a well trained snipers will recognize how tight that needs to be to actually stay on and not crank it down so tight that they break it but on top of that we have a totally different style of mounting precision mounting system than they did on the m1 C so these scopes are set in place by this surface and that little tab so when you set this on there those fit into place on the angled surfaces on this mounting block and then the screw just tightens them down now that works as long as it's in good condition and this is a very simple system it's very fast it was much easier to manufacture and could be adapted in the field the problem came when you damaged it back off if you damaged these surfaces if you got a ding or a burr or something in there all of a sudden you don't have a smooth fit you're not going to be able to hold 0 and things are going to be problematic until you can get something like a nice fine file or stone to riri smooth these surfaces out so that was a potential longevity based problem you know the every system like this is going to have some pros and some cons to it and that was one of the cons to the m1d now this mounting sleeve originally had been intended to be just that a sleeve that could be added to any rifle by the time these were actually adopted and put into production that plan had changed a bit and instead this is integral to the barrel there is a special m1d barrel that has this mounting block on it now changing a barrel on an m1 is not a particularly difficult operation and it was something that a unit armor could easily do in the field so despite it being a little bit more difficult than just a sleeve this was still something that could be filled adapted easily now the m1 d like the m1 c was issued with this leather cheek piece that is of course not to bring your eye up but to bring your eye over to the left so that it is in line with the offset scope you can see the the actual line of sight in the scope that guy's a little crooked but the line of sight in the scope is barely any higher than the iron sights so you don't need to raise your eye you just need to offset it to the left these were also used with the m2 or t2 flash hider which simply snaps over the muzzle and the bayonet lug to act as a pretty basic simple flash hider ideally you want this to fit nice and tight to avoid any accuracy problems this one's a little rattling like they most are most of them are and that can potentially lead to accuracy problems in fact so this was a lot of sniping pictures you find with these rifles you'll find them without the flash hiders because the accuracy problems that those caused were more significant than the benefit of hiding flash for for the collector today one of the unfortunate aspects of the m1d is that none of these were actually manufactured from the ground up as m1d rifles these were existing in ones that were taken out of service and refurbished they were fitted with new m1d barrels and became snipers there's no serial number blocks there's there's really no anything that really marks out a true m1d from a potential fake one and that's that's a problem today it's hard to find good provenance on these now a lot of them have been sold by the Civilian Marksmanship program and those came with documenting papers which that's probably the best and easiest way to authenticate m1d is to have one that originally came from the cmp but obviously you can't always find that thanks for watching guys hope you enjoyed the video I certainly enjoyed taking a look at a whole series of these different m1 sniper variants if you have a collection of these or if you'd like to the m1 D is probably the most accessible m1 sniper that you can get and if you'd like to take a look at this one in your living room everyday take a look at the description text below you'll find a link there to the James Julia catalog page on it you can take a look at their pictures in their description and place a bid over the phone or come up here to Maine and participate in the auction life thanks for watching

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 682,246

Rating: 4.9628429 out of 5

Keywords: m1c, m1d, m1e7, m1e8, ww2, world war 2, wwii, world war ii, world war two, garand, m1, sniper, sniping, development, john garand, history, vintage, korea, korean war, vietnam, vietnam war, .30-06, 30-06, en bloc, m84, alaskan, lyman, 2.2x, optic, scope, telescope, usmc, army, united states, american, america, m40, m40a1, model 70, unertl, weaver

Id: eqcMwiKfxb8

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 22 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/10-4Apricot]

Anton Plz Re-add the M1D with the Flash Hider cone! or even just the cone as a muzzle attachment. I love the look of that cone.

(also thanks for fixing explosions)

[u/cleganal]

I thought this was already in the game?