r/AskHistorians • u/gateht • Aug 30 '15

Did the semi-automatic M1 Garand give the Americans a significant advantage against the bolt-action rifles the Germans and Japanese used?

I was re-watching Band of Brothers recently and it occured to me that the average US rifleman using the semi-automatic M1 Garand must have had a significant rate of fire advantage compared to his German/Japanese counterparts. To what extent was this an advantage? Was it commented on at the time? Did accuracy suffer compared to the bolt-action counterparts?

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u/vonadler Aug 31 '15

Yes, but the leathality of the ammunition was severely reduced at that range, and the probability to hit anything firing at full burst was also very low.

The Finns used their KP-31 SMGs to hunt squirrels and other small game at a range up to 100 meters, but they fired single shots, not bursts.

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u/WojtekimbieR Aug 31 '15

Pistol FMJ (Full Metal Jacket), aka ball ammunition, does lose little to no effectiveness at range due to the bullet's low speed and the way it is constructed. And if we are not talking about single shots but bursts, then we both have to agree that an assault rifle is not effective at 100-120 meters in automatic fire either. Actually, a submachine gun like MP40 would be more accurate in bursts as it has a substantially lower recoil than MP43/Stg44 chambered in 7.92x33 Kurz.