Garand's rifle was originally chambered for the .276 Pedersen cartridge, charged by means of 10-round clips.
The Springfield 1903 rifle reflected the era of high development in rifles operated manually which ended in 1936 with the introduction into the United States service of the Garand design, designated M1. This first of the successfulul gas-operated rifles of full infantry power outgunned enemy rifles in Europe and the Pacific in the ratio of 3 to 1. It was rugged, sure functioning, powerful, and accurate. The tiring bolt manipulation, so painfully learned by former generations of American soldiers, was no longer necessary. The M1 rifle ushered in an era that saw foreign nations scrambling for semiautomatic designs in individual infantry weapons. Britain and France discarded their old, time proven bolt actions and took up the Belgian FN design. Soviet Russia developed as her now standard infantry weapon, a rifle-powered submachinegun of 30 shot capacity (the AK).
Later, it was chambered for the then-standard .30-06 SpringfieldThe U. S. Rifle, caliber .30 M1 (fig 1) is a clip-fed, gas-operated, air-cooled, semiautomatic shoulder weapon. This means that the rifle is loaded by inserting a metal, clip (containing a maximum of eight rounds) into the receiver; that the power needed to cock the rifle and chamber each round comes from the expanding gas of the previous round; that the air cools the barrel; and that the rifle fires one round each time the trigger is pressed.
The rifle has a fixed front front sight and an adjustable rear sight. The rear sight aperture can be raised or lowered by means of the elevation knob on the left of the receiver, and moved right or left to adjust for the force of the wind by means of the windage knob on the right of the receiver.
