They are awesome guns. After I got my first one I bought (actually my wife got it for me for Christmas) a book by Gen. J. S. Hatcher called Hatcher's Book of the Garand. It covers the development (along with a lot of info on the politics - military and civilian - and the other rifles that competed with the Garand to replace the 03 Springfield) of the M1 with lots of additional interesting information.
Did you know, that after WW2, they realized that not a single M1 Garand had blown up during the war? There were cases of 03 Springfield blowing up prior to WW2, but no M1's blew up during a war where it was used in climates from tropical islands, to the deserts, to arctic conditions. They conducted some tests in the late 40's to determine the limits of the M1 Garand action.
During the test they used an M1 Garand, Springfield Armory pressure test guns (big heavy bolt action things) and a Type 99 Arisaka converted to 30.06 (also known to be a strong action/receiver). They started with arsenal/GI ammo and then began to work their way up in pressure by intentionally overloading the cases with the standard powder. At one point they began to fear damage to their pressure test guns so they stopped using them and extrapolated pressures based on what they'd measured vs. powder increases up to that point. Eventually they got to the point where they blew up the Arisaka. Finally they had a case failure in the Garand that damaged the stock, the trigger housing/floor plate. The base of the cartridge case blew out releasing gas into the action/receiver of the M1. The estimated, based on the earlier measured pressure, that the case gave out at a pressure of about 180,000 psi. They replaced the damaged stock and trigger housing and continued firing the M1 with GI issue ammo for several hundred rounds with no problems.
I'm not advocating the firing of overloaded rounds in the M1, I'm just relating test results showing how strong that rifle/design really is.
Lot's of good info in that book on Garand, too. He was a tool designer/maker. He designed the rifle, the tools that the rifle parts were made with, the tools that were used to measure the finished parts and the tools that measured the tools used to measure the parts. Lots of work/time goes into insuring all the parts have the right dimensions and will work when fitted to the next rifle coming down the assembly line.
Sorry, for the long post. It's just an amazing rifle with an amazing history.
Oh, my wife has two uncles who were in Korea. After church one night one of them looked at me and said, "The M1 was a 30.06, right?" I told him yes, it was. He said, "I thought it was, but I only remember two things about the M1. It was heavy and it killed good. It killed real good." And that was all he said before we went back to talking about other stuff.
If I was still deer hunting, I'd be hunting with my "shooter" M1 Garand. It outshoots my M1A that I used to deer hunt with.
