[ What Were Rifles M2 Through M13? ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another "Ask Ian" Q&A on Forgotten Weapons.
I'm Ian, and today our question comes from Dennis on Patreon.
Dennis asks, "What rifles were between the M1 Garand and the M14?
I went through basic with an M14, and I know the M15 was supposed to be a BAR replacement."
Yeah, it was basically a heavy-barrelled bipod-fitted version of the M14.
"Google doesn't really find anything on the M2 through the M13."
That is a really interesting question, and it's one that could be applied to a bunch of other things,
like, what came between the M9 and the M17 pistols?
But we'll focus specifically on the rifles today.
And the answer for this lies ... fundamentally in the fact that
the Army has rifles for a lot more specific things than just infantry rifles.
So in this span from World War Two through the Vietnam War,
there were only three iterations of infantry rifle, the M1, the M14 and the M16.
But there was a bunch of development of other guns for other things.
Specifically we have sub-calibre rifles, we have training rifles,
we have spotting rifles, we have survival rifles.
So remember that during much of this period the Air Force is actually the US Army Air Force,
not the stand-alone independent branch of service.
And so for a while after World War Two rifles adopted by the Air Force
are still part of the ... overall Army system.
So I have some notes here because this is a lot of guns to keep track of.
So, the M2 we can start off with, that's one of the training rifles.
It was a bolt action rifle, it's actually an improved version of the M1922 training rifle.
They updated it during World War Two and redesignated it the M2.
And I actually have a whole video on that rifle.
So I'll link to that at the end or in the description text.
M3 is a number that actually was not used by the Army, and I don't know why.
M10 and M11 were also not used, and I don't know why.
My guess would be that those were numbers that were
set aside for a project that didn't end up happening.
I would think I'd be able to find some record of those sorts of guns, but I haven't been able to.
Perhaps someone doing a whole bunch of really deep dive
could figure out what those numbers were perhaps earmarked for.
But the short version for today's video is 3, 10 and 11 were never used.
The M4 was a survival rifle for pilots,
this was designed by Harrington & Richardson.
It is a really little bolt-action collapsing-stock .22 Hornet rifle.
I haven't done a video on that one yet, but we have a picture of one.
The M5, ... you see these things all bounce around because it's chronological.
So it's not like they did infantry rifles 1, 2 and 3, training rifles 1, 2 and 3.
No, it's all different things that they're looking for as years progress.
So the M5 is a sub-calibre rifle.
It is a .22 calibre ... insert for a 37mm gun.
So that you can practice all the procedures for a 37mm
on a range that only needs to be able to handle .22 rimfire.
So that was the M5.
I think that actually used like old 1917 machine gun barrels,
cut down and put into a 37mm shell-shaped insert that you can put into a gun.
The M6, we go back to a survival rifle.
This time it's a design from the Ithaca Gun Company.
And it is an over-under that is .22 Hornet and .410 shotgun.
Carried not in the buttstock, it had a little compartment to carry
I think it was 9 rounds of Hornet and 4 rounds of .410 shot shells.
Intended as a survival rifle for pilots who got shot down.
I have also done a video on that one, so I'll include a link to it as well in the description below.
That was a video I did a long time ago. ... That video is a two-parter,
it's the US M6 survival rifle and also the Luftwaffe M30 survival rifle.
Both of them being combination rifle/shotguns.
Alright, moving along, we get next to the M7.
The M7 is another sub-calibre gun.
This time it is a .30 calibre, so it's a .30-06 ... cartridge
being fired out of an M20 75mm recoilless rifle.
Same idea: sub calibre in general is a way to take an artillery piece
that ... produces ... tons of noise and needs a very long range,
and you have to have a lot of consideration for impact safety.
Well, scale that thing down, you're not going to get the noise, you're not going to get the recoil,
but you can practice all of the sighting, and loading, and sort of crew procedure drill.
So the M7 is a .30 cal sub-cal for the 75mm recoilless rifle.
... I'm going to skip past here for one moment.
The M9 is essentially the same thing for the 106mm recoilless rifle.
Exact same idea. It's .30-06 calibre, it's an insert.
Put it into the gun, makes easy training on a recoilless rifle.
Now going back, the M8 is not a sub-calibre rifle, it is a spotting rifle.
... Actually I have two videos on the M8.
One of ... how it works and taking a look at its history.
And one of it actually out at the range doing some shooting.
It was essentially a short .50 calibre round.
... The M8 itself was a semi-automatic action, well, I guess it's a semi-auto rifle.
It has no buttstock, it's meant to be bolted to the top of a recoilless rifle
and used essentially to aim the thing before you touch off one of the recoilless rounds
that has a tremendous amount of blast and signature.
You fire off one of those and you need to immediately move.
So you can aim the thing first by firing what is in comparison, a little wimpy .50 calibre tracer
to figure out exactly where you're aimed.
And it was a proprietary .50 calibre cartridge
because it was specifically designed to match the trajectory
of the 106 recoilless rifle projectile.
So that you could in fact aim at long range with the spotting rifle.
So ... that's the M8, we already did the M9.
The M10 and M11 ... the numbers were not used.
And then the M12 and the M13 were both .22 calibre training rifles.
... I think there were actually a couple of different rifles that came under these designations.
The commonly recognised one is the H&R M12.
And then the M13, I know Remington made a training rifle that was designated M13.
There may have been another one that also got that designation.
The training rifles get a little screwy that way.
And then of course, we have arrived at the M14.
So ... hopefully that was interesting.
It's fun digging into what all of those different things are.
And it really makes you realise just how much stuff goes into
military procurement beyond just the standard guns.
So especially when you get into heavy equipment
you have to deal with not just the large calibre artillery piece itself,
but all sorts of extra gear that's required to be able to effectively and practically train with it.
By the way, one of the other interesting things you'll get to is in US nomenclature
there's "rifles", and then there's also "guns".
And the guns are larger calibre than rifles.
I think "gun" was above .50 cal, essentially a cannon.
And so there's also a bunch of sub-calibre "guns" for the large stuff,
where you might have a 75mm gun that has a 37mm sub-calibre unit.
And in that case the sub-calibre unit is called a "gun, sub-calibre," in this case it was 12 or 13 or 14.
It's like there's an M12 ... "rifle, M12, training",
and there's also "gun, M12" which is a sub-calibre for a larger artillery piece.
So the nomenclature system gets really complicated.
Anyway, thanks for the question, that was a fun one to address.
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