M1 Garand "PING"

[kanowarrior]

A series of interesting articles in the American Rifleman magazines these last few months.

The Ml's Tactical Advantage?

The "Question & Answer" on "The Ml 's 'Deadly Defect?'" (November 2011, p. 42) reminded me of a conversation I had with my dad regarding the Ml Garand and its clip during WorldWar II. I just got off the phone with my dad to confirm his Garand clip experiences. His name is Robert Emary, and he served in I Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, l0lst Airborne Division. When the war ended, he was a technical sergeant and first sergeant for the company. He was a replacement and fought from Market Garden to Berchtesgarten.

According to him, at Bastogne it was very common practice to bait the Germans by squeezing and releasing an empty clip to get the "ping," and a lot of times an enemy would stand up, and that was the end of them. Initially, the Germans always seemed to know the exact time to expose themselves to put accurate fire on someone who had just emptied their Garand. He and his comrades knew the Germans could hear the clips coming out and also figured they were counting rounds. This happened pretty regularly at Bastogne, he said, because there were a lot of close-range engagements in the woods and dug in positions. Also, he always carried a couple empty clips in his field jacket pocket and would simply squeeze the clip, let it slide out of his fingers, hit the ground and be ready to shoot. After they started doing this, the Germans got a lot more cautious.

He also told me some of the other tactics they used. When they were badly outnumbered, which was almost all the time, the Browning Automatic Rifleman would initially never fire other than a couple semi-automatic rounds. They were baiting the Germans and trying to get a number of them to get bold and expose themselves. When this happened the BAR man would let them have it. He said this was very effective and several times got them out of some bad situations. ~

DAVE EMARY, NEBRASKA

I found the above recollections to be most interesting, and they correspond with similar reports regarding the M I rifle during World War II. Robert Emary and other combat veterans ofWorld War II were truly heroes and we all owe them a great debt ofgratitude. The point of the recent "Q&A" was to refute the widespread myth that the pinging noise made when the MI 's clip was ejected cost the lives of many American soldiers during the war. In the majority of cases, the ping could not be heard even a few dozen yards away over the din on a typical battlefield. There were certainly isolated exceptions when an enemy may have been able to hear the noise. Even in close-quarter combat-when the ping may have been audible-the American with the empty Garand would usually just keep his head down for the few seconds it took to reload using a fresh eight-round clip. Rather than being a "deadly defect,"Emary's experiences suggest that, in isolated instances, it could actually be an advantage. While the MI rifle can be justly criticized for several reasons, to maintain that the ping of an ejected clip resulted in the wholesale deaths of American soldiers
simply wasn't the case.

-BRUCE N. CANFIELD, FIELD EDITOR

[kanowarrior]

This article was published in the next months issue of American Rifleman:

MORE ON THE PING

I read with interest Dave Emary's recounting of his father's experiences, "The M1's Tactical Advantage" (February 2012, p.22) with the Garand and its so-called "deadly defect." While I do not discount the veracity of the senior Emary's account, nor those of other vets who have made similar observations in the past, I do think Field Editor Bruce N. Canfield correctly observed that it was actually a very rare thing for the "ping" to be heard in combat, and unlikely to be a factor in most individual engagements. This is something I, too, had heard many times through the years, and as a career soldier myself, I often wondered what role this might have played.

I had an opportunity to travel to Bastogne in 2004 with several well-known veterans of "Band of Brothers" fame, and while overlooking Foy and listening to them discuss their experiences, I could not help but notice a number of older gentlemen on the path at the edge of the forest who were watching our activities, but maintaining a respectful distance. When I approached them after a few minutes, I was surprised to discover that they were members of German units that had fought in and around Bastogne - to include the company commander of the troops in direct opposition to Easy Company. I spoke at length with these gentlemen, and later, with a number of other veterans from various Panzergrenadier and Infanterie units that had fought against the "Amis". I asked each one of them about this matter of the Garand and its distinctive "ping." Who would know better than the men who actually faced it in combat, right?

The reality is that every Alte Kaempfer with whom I spoke found it laughable. Not only was the ping totally inaudible during engagements, they said, but even in the still of the night, the ruses of cycling a bolt or clearing a clip were well-known to both sides. Sure, an en bloc clip clearing the breech might mean that a G.I. was reloading, but it told them nothing about who else from his squad was likely waiting around the corner ready to engage. In other words, while the "deadly effect" has become a popular part of the M1's lore (and makes for a great story), it seems to be a uniquely American construct, with little-to-no validation from the Wehrmacht troops who actually faced them in combat-not from those that lived to tell about it anyway.

CWS Charles D. Petrie, U.S. Army, North Carolina

[kanowarrior]

And the NEXT month!

IF THEY WERE THAT CLOSE...

I was very interested in the information provided by Dave Emary's letter about how our troops used the distinctive ping made by the Garand's empty clip ejecting to their advantage. About 10 years ago, when I bought my M1, I heard the myth about how the noise of the clip ejecting caused many of our heroes harm. Soon after, I took the rifle to my grandfather's house to let him see it and shoot it. At the time, he was in his 70's and commented it "kicks a lot more than I rememeber." My grandfather, Charles Jackson, has said that he took his "senior class trip" to Okinawa in 1945. He was a Navy Corpsman attached to Weapons Platoon Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment, 1st Marine Division. I asked him about the issue of the enemy hearing that ping and taking advantage of the few seconds it took to reload. His answer, in very few words, spoke volumes about the fierce fighting on Okinawa. He simply said, "Any Japanese that was close enough to hear that was aleady dead."

Robert Dickson, Tennessee

[tomd]

These articles pretty much agree with what Dad told me about the dreaded ping. "It was no big deal" is what he said when I asked him about it. Usually the guy in the hole with you covered for you when the clip ejected, and vice versa.
I would imagine in real close quarter combat like Hill 609 in North Africa your opponent could see the clip being ejected, if not hear it over the din of battle. So training, skill and your buddies would offset any minor disadvantage (if any) of the M1 Rifle.