American Rifle - Alexander Rose [271]
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79. “Wanted: A Rifle,” Time, May 6, 1940, has a summary of Ness’s findings. See also F. C. Ness, “M1 (Garand Semi-Automatic) Rifle,” American Rifleman 88, no. 5 (May 1940), pp. 43–45.
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80. See, for instance, F. C. Ness’s in-depth “The New Johnson Rifle,” American Rifleman 86, no. 11 (November 1938), pp. 3–7, 37. Ness was so positive about the Johnson that he thought that even if the army had selected the Garand, American civilians should purchase a Johnson and familiarize themselves with it so they would be ready “in case of a national emergency.” See also Ness’s column Dope Bag (on the Rotary-Johnson semiautomatic) in American Rifleman 87, no. 12 (December 1939), pp. 42–43.
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81. On Johnson’s background, see www.johnsonautomatics.com/Biography.ht m, and the obituaries (from Boston Globe and American Rifleman).
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82. For these numbers, see table I in Hatcher, Book of Garand, p. 143.
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83. The cross words were Hatcher’s, ibid., p. 137. Until two years before publishing this book, Hatcher had been a director of the NRA (and he remained its magazine’s technical editor), so he was obliged to be quite discreet about his views on the Garand-Johnson affair.
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84. Based on reports in the Washington Times-Herald, May 10, 1940, in Hatcher, Book of Garand, p. 138, and “Questions for Defense,” Time, May 20, 1940.
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85. “Semi-Automatic Demonstration,” American Rifleman 88, no. 6 (June 1940), p. 32. Johnson would go on to invent a moderately successful light machine gun. (It was issued in small numbers to specialized Marines and army units.) He frequently visited the Ordnance Department, to which he transferred as a reservist in 1949; that same year he joined Winchester as an adviser when the company agreed to buy his struggling Johnson Automatics firm. In 1951 he acted as a weapons consultant to the Pentagon, and later to ArmaLite, before dying of a heart attack during a business trip to New York in 1965, aged fifty-five. See his obituaries at www.johnsonautomatics.com/Biography.htm.
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86. For an example of unvarnished pro-Garandism, see “The Garand Rifle,” American Rifleman 90, no. 12 (December 1942), pp. 37–38.
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87. The most detailed breakdown of the Marine Corps results may be found in Hatcher, Book of Garand, pp. 141–53; “Report on the Garand,” Time, March 24, 1941; and “Marine Corps Rifle Tests,” American Rifleman 89, no. 5 (May 1941), pp. 5–10. Time magazine was consistently hostile to the Garand, calling its relative lack of ruggedness a “grave indictment” and menacingly warning that weapons that performed satisfactorily in tests all too often failed in the field. “Report on the Garand,” Time, March 24, 1941.
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88. “Bataan Proves Garand Worth,” Washington Post, February 23, 1942, p. 2; “Garand Rifle Praised by Gen. MacArthur,” New York Times, February 23, 1942, p. 1. In its editorial, “The Garand in Action,” February 26, 1942, p. 18, the Times observed that the Garand’s performance bore out MacArthur’s 1932 decision to scrap the .276 and keep the .30. It meant that “the Philippine army did not have to be provided with ammunition of several different sizes for its small arms.” See also the Washington Post’s editorial, “Garand’s Test,” of the same date, p. 10.
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89. Personal memoir, in Hatcher, Book of Garand, p. 248.
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90. M. M. Johnson, Jr., “The M1 Rifle,” reprinted in Marine Corps Gazette 85, no. 4 (April 2001), p. 51.The Springfield Model 1903 to this day (and justifiably so) retains a fervent fan base. In 1951, for instance, the Washington Post ran an editorial about “arms standardization” that offhandedly remarked that the Springfield “did not stand up to trench conditions” in the First World War, only to be assaulted by a fusillade of angry letters claiming its superiority in all things. The editorial board issued an apology