[ M1D Sniper Garand ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the James Julia Auction
House taking a look at some of the guns that
they're going to be selling in their upcoming
October of 2016 Firearms Auction.
And we've looked at some other US military sniper rifles,
in fact we looked at the M1C previously.
Today we're going to take a look at the M1D.
Now this started out life as the M1E8 experimental variant.
And this was the scope mounting option designed
personally by John Garand, and the people helping him.
Now the major difference, what Garand was going for on this design,
was to make the sniper rifle a field-creatable thing.
Basically that the M1D could be issued as a kit to an armourer out in the field,
who could convert a standard infantry rifle into a sniper rifle.
Now with the M1C you had to drill and tap the receiver,
and you really kind of had to do that before the receiver was heat-treated.
That couldn't be done in the field.
The idea with the M1D was that they would mount the scope
on a sleeve on the barrel, right at the back here, and you could do that to any rifle.
Now that changed a little bit between when it was
originally envisioned by Garand and when it was actually adopted.
In fact, what's kind of interesting is there was a lot of hoopla going back and forth,
and animosity about which version of the M1 sniper to adopt.
And it seems that part of the reason, aside from politics,
part of the reason that the M1D wasn't adopted is that in addition to this
really pretty slick scope mounting system, Garand had also designed
an adjustable cheek rest for the gun, which was frankly,
apparently way too complicated, and complex, and expensive, and finicky.
And if he'd got rid of that and just stuck with a typical leather pad, like they ended up adopting,
he might have been more likely to get the M1D adopted in the first place.
At any rate he didn't, that's all historical speculation which we can avoid.
Ultimately, these weren't adopted until 1951.
So the M1C was adopted during the war,
although there were substantial accuracy problems with them,
and none of them really actually saw service in World War Two.
By 1951 the thought process had changed,
and ... maybe the political connections involved in the adoption of the M1C were gone.
But more substantially they'd seen the accuracy problems from the M1C,
which were a direct result of not being able to adapt the scope to a known rifle.
They had to put an M1C rail on an untreated receiver and then build it into a rifle.
And only then would you see if the complete rifle actually shot really well or not.
The idea of being able to take an existing really nice rifle and convert it into a sniper,
it took a couple of years, but people realised that that was probably the better way to go.
So in 1951 the M1D was adopted.
The initial order was for about 14,325 of them in December of ... 1951.
It took a little while for them to actually get manufactured,
and they didn't actually apparently see ... any service in Korea.
The Korean War was fought with M1C rifles. These came out
just at the end of the Korean War when they were actually getting into soldiers hands.
They would stay in inventory until they were eventually replaced by
M14 and bolt-action sniper systems in Vietnam.
So they actually didn't see a whole lot of military use, but they are a neat system.
So why don't we go ahead and take a closer look, we can see how this actually attaches,
the pros and cons, because the attachment's good, but there are some downsides to it as well.
And some details on the scope.
So we'll start by pointing out again for folks who might not have seen other videos on sniper M1s
that the scope is offset to the left of the receiver to keep the action clear,
so that you can still load this rifle with en bloc clips.
And so you don't interfere with its ejection.
Now the scope on this is actually different than on the M1C.
This scope was adopted in the 1950s as a replacement for the M81 and M82 scopes.
It is designated the M84, but it basically has the same statistics.
This is a 2.2x power scope, so just slightly less magnification.
It has a 27 foot field of view at 100 yards, which is again actually slightly less than the M81 and 82.
We do have some advantages in that the adjustment knobs are larger.
They are still not audible clicks really,
the Marine Corps got that right with their 1952 sniper, but the Army kind of stuck with this type.
However, these flip-open protective caps are definitely a step up
from the threaded caps on the 81 and 82.
Those are easy to lose, and they are time consuming to access.
This just flips right up, it's pinned in place so you won't lose it.
Interestingly, this was also done with a hinge type of scope mount.
So instead of having a pair of rings that you have to unscrew and take off, this has a hinge.
You take out these two screws, open the hinge up, and you can replace the scope.
You don't have a separate piece here that you're potentially going to lose.
In a lot of ways the M1D is a little bit more of an idiot-proof, field-survivable type of design.
Now the attachment is this big hand tightened knob.
Maybe that wasn't the greatest idea, this is really simple to use
(it's nice and tight now, you can hear it there),
we unscrew that, and the scope just lifts right off.
Now as you can imagine when you put something like this into military service,
and you tell a grunt that his scope is held on by hand set tightness of that wheel,
you are going to get a significant number of stripped out threads
from guys who crank that thing on there way too tight.
I think the hope was well-trained snipers will recognise how tight that needs to be
to actually stay on, and not crank it down so tight that they break it.
But on top of that we have a totally different style
of ... precision mounting system than they did on the M1C.
So these scopes are set in place by this surface, and that little tab.
So when you set this on there,
those fit into place on the angled surfaces on this mounting block.
And then the screw just tightens them down.
Now that works as long as it's in good condition.
And this is a very simple system, it's very fast,
it was much easier to manufacture, and could be adapted in the field.
The problem came when you damaged
(take it back off),
if you damaged these surfaces.
If you got a ding, or a burr, or something in there.
All of a sudden you don't have a smooth fit, you're not going to be able to hold zero.
And things are going to be problematic until you can get something like a nice fine file,
or stone, to re-smooth these surfaces out.
So that was a potential longevity based problem. ...
Every system like this is going to have some pros and some cons to it,
and that was one of the cons to the M1D.
Now this mounting sleeve originally
had been intended to be just that, a sleeve that could be added to any rifle.
By the time these were actually adopted and put into production, that plan had changed a bit,
and instead this is integral to the barrel.
There is a special M1D barrel that has this mounting block on it.
Now changing a barrel on an M1 is not a particularly difficult operation,
and it was something that a unit armour could easily do in the field.
So, despite it being a little bit more difficult than just a sleeve,
this was still something that could be field adapted easily.
Now the M1D, like the M1C, was issued with this leather cheek piece.
That is of course not to bring your eye up,
but to bring your eye over to the left so that it is in line with the offset scope.
You can see the actual line of sight in the scope.
(That guy's a little crooked.)
But the line of sight in the scope is barely any higher than the iron sights.
So you don't need to raise your eye, you just need to offset it to the left.
These were also used with the M2 or T2 flash hider, which simply snaps over the muzzle
and the bayonet lug to act as a pretty basic, simple flash hider.
Ideally you want this to fit nice and tight to avoid any accuracy problems.
This one's a little rattly, like ... most of them are,
and that can potentially lead to accuracy problems in fact.
So ... a lot of sniping pictures you find with these rifles, you'll find them without the flash hiders,
because the accuracy problems that those caused
were more significant than the benefit of hiding flash.
For the collector today one of the unfortunate aspects of the M1D
is that none of these were actually manufactured from the ground up as M1D rifles.
These were existing M1s that were taken out of service and refurbished,
they were fitted with new M1D barrels and became snipers.
There's no serial number blocks, there's really no anything
that really marks out a true M1D from a potential fake one.
And that's a problem today, it's hard to find good provenance on these.
Now a lot of them have been sold by the Civilian Marksmanship Program.
And those came with documenting papers, ...
that's probably the best and easiest way to authenticate an M1D
is to have one that originally came from the CMP.
But obviously you can't always find that.
Thanks for watching guys, hope you enjoyed the video.
I certainly enjoyed taking a look at a whole series of these different M1 sniper variants.
If you have a collection of these, or if you'd like to,
the M1D is probably the most accessible M1 sniper that you can get.
And if you'd like to take a look at this one in your living room every day,
take a look at the description text below.
You'll find a link there to the James Julia catalogue page on it.
You can take a look at their pictures and their description, and place a bid over the phone
or come up here to Maine and participate in the auction live.
Thanks for watching.