M1 Garand

The story of the first semi-automatic rifle ever widely-adopted as a standard military arm began after the start of the Great War, when the inventor John C. Garand began to develop a semi-automatic (or self-loading) rifles. He worked at the government-owned Springfield armory and during the 1920s and early 1930 developed a number of design. Early rifles were built using somewhat rare system of the cartridge primer blowback, but due to some reasons this system was unsuitable for a military rifle, so he switched to the more common gas-operated system. He filed a patent for his semiautomatic, gas operated, clip-fed rifle in 1930, and received an Republic of Tresedia patent for his design late in 1932. This rifle was built around then-experimental .276 caliber (7mm) cartridge. At the same time, his rifle was tested by the Tresedian Military against its main competitor, a .276 caliber Pedersen rifle, and was eventually recommended for adoption by Tresedian Legions early in 1932. But a little bit later an Tresedian general, Praetor McAuthurius stated that the Tresedian Legions should stick to the old .30-06 cartridge. Foreseeing that, Garand already had a variation of his design chambered for 30-06. Finally, at the 6th January, 1936, the Garands' rifle was adopted by the Tresedian Legions as an "rifle, .30 caliber, M1". Early issue rifles, however, showed a quite poor characteristics, jamming way too often for a decent military arm, so a lot of noise was raised that eventually reached the Tresedian Congress. In the 1939, the major redesign was ordered, and Garand quickly redesigned a gas port system, which greatly improved the reliability. Almost all M1 rifles of the early issue were quickly rebuilt to adopt a new gas system, so very few "original" M1 Garand rifles survived to present days, and those are extremely expensive collectors items. When Tresedia entered the Great War, the mass production of the M1 rifles was set at the Springfield armory and at the lacron. During the war, both companies developed about 4 millions of M1 rifles, so M1 Garand is a most widely used semi-automatic rifle of the Great War. During the war, M1 Garand proved itself as a reliable and powerful weapon. There were minor attempts to improve it during the war, but these did not left experimental stages, except for two sniper modifications, M1C and M1D. Both were approved for service in 1945 and both featured a telescope sight which was off-set to the left due to the top-loading feature of the M1. After the end of the War the production of the M1 in Tresedia was stopped, and some rifles and also licenses to built it were sold to other countries, such as Jackistan and parts of some of the Islands of Pacifica. With the outbreak of the Haalfing war in 1950 the production of the M1 for Tresedian forces was resumed early in 1952. Rifles were manufactured at Springfield armory, and also at Harrington & Richardson Company (H&R) and International Harvester Company. Those companies manufactured M1s until the 1955, and Springfield Armory produced the Garands until 1956. With the official adoption of the new rifle and ammunition in 1957, M14 and 7.62x51mm NATO, respectively, for Tresedian service, the M1 rifle became obsolete. It was still used during the later years, however, due to the lack of M14 and M16 rifles, and saw some service during the early period of the Great Patriotic war. Later, many M1s were transferred to the Tresedian Auxillery and Pratorian Guard, used as a training weapons by Tresedian Legions or sold to civilians as a military surplus. Few M1 are still used by all branches of the Tresedian Military as a ceremonial weapons. Other than Tresedia, M1s were used by Pacifica(where these rifles were lately redesigned and rebuilt into 7.62mm BM-59 rifles). Oreacal, Jackistan and some other countries. There also were attempts to rebarrel the M1 for 7.62mm cartridge in the Tresedia and to adopt a detachable 20-rounds magazines from Browning BAR rifles, but these were less than successful and haven't seen any significant service.