Was There a Fatal Flaw in M-1 Rifle?

In John Ford’s classic western film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the character Maxwell Scott describes one way of sorting facts and myth. “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

That could be one way of explaining the most enduring story about one of America’s most significant battlefield weapons, the M-1 Garand.

Military historians – both from the civilian world and scholars with military backgrounds – and some veterans of World War II and the Korean War describe what is often called the “M-1 ping.”