M1 Carbine

Happy Firearm Gympie Show day Friday!

Here we have the M1 Carbine, the specifications were sent to several manufacturers and included a maximum weight of five pounds. Winchester won the contract, and among those responsible for its design was David Marshall Williams, a moonshiner from the mountains of North Carolina who had a talent for designing things no one else had thought of. Several of his ideas, later used by Colt and Winchester in various firearms, came to him in a machine shop while serving time in a minimum-security state prison for shooting a revenue officer who was busting up one of his liquor stills. One of Williams’ most important inventions at the time was the short-stroke piston variation of gas operation used in the M1 Carbine. His story is depicted in the classic film “Carbine Williams” and he was played by the great James Stewart. Little bit of movie trivia… I found a quote from the film that I think needs sharing…

“But there isn't enough time Maggie. You can have enough of everything else. You can enough food, you can enough land, you can even have enough money, but you never can have enough time, because it's the only thing you can't save.”

This is the folding-stock version of the carbine, the M1A1, was also developed after a request for a compact and light infantry arm for airborne troops. The Inland Division of General Motors manufactured 141,000 of them in two product runs in late 1942 it was only 25.5 inches.

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