dosborn81 wrote:Sweet!
What exactly do you have there? Action looks Garandish....
308?
Yes sir! The awesome accurate action of the M1A battle rifle is far superior to the blundering busted behavior common to other upstart rifle offerings.
That was what I was instructed to say by experienced M1A owners when asked about my rifle.
Here's my take on it:
The M1A battle rifle, chambered in the 7.62x51 rifle caliber, also capable of firing certain .308 Winchester rounds, is a rifle based on the Garand design. Development began near the end of WWII as a replacement for the Garand. The military decided that a rifle in a similar caliber and reliability, but with fully automatic capability and a larger ammo capacity, was needed. The M14 battle rifle, the military version of the civilian M1A manufactured originally by Springfield Armory, was adopted by the military after the Korean War and served briefly in Vietnam. Ironically, the first war it served in was also its last, as the functions that make the M14 an elite battle rifle were not needed in the jungles of Vietnam. The power and recoil of the .308 was not needed in close jungle warfare, and 20-round magazines did not provide the soldier with enough firepower. The M16, more controllable in automatic fire, lighter, and with 30-round magazines, was chosen by the military for the environment of Vietnam.
Stupidly, the military destroyed about (I think) 90% of its M14 supply instead of converting them to single action only rifles and making them available to the public. Seeing the potential benefit of the M14 in a civilian market, Springfield Armory made the M1A, its civilian cousin, which it has manufactured ever since. The military has maintained its small store of M14 rifles and have a limited number split among all the different services. They are primarily used in a designated marksman role, and are seeing increased, and highly effective, use in the open, mountainous environments of Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is my hope that our guys will wise up and go back to the M14 as our main battle rifle. One shot of .308 center mass is an almost guaranteed out-of-the-fight enemy casualty, and two shots are a definite kill. There are reports of the .223 round being ineffective, and I have actually read multiple reports of enemy combatants in the current Mid-East conflicts surviving more than a dozen decently-placed shots by Marines and soldiers. One combatant was shot, according to one soldier, over 20 times and was
still crawling over to an RPG to shoot at the vehicles.
M14 battle rifles are just that, battle rifles, capable of hitting targets effectively and reliably at 500 yards or more (with an expert marksman, a standard M1A can hit targets out to 700-800 yards). The .308 round is capable of great destruction with only one shot and is far preferable to the 5.56 or the 7.62x39 rounds for both accuracy and velocity at any distance. In my opinion, military commanders who believe that the M16/M4 platforms are adequate for our troops' needs have forgotten the great potential of the M14 and its .308 round. Our troops are being given inferior weapons and are put in danger because of it.
