Greetings from North Carolina; old man here pushing 80 and not very active with firearms these days, however, early on I received training on and have experience shooting a wide range of USA and foreign firearms while serving in several airborne units ending up assigned to the 2nd/503 Airborne Infantry Regiment during the Vietnam era. In addition, I shot the M1 rifle on rifle teams, and for many years I was a licensed firearms collector mostly focusing on old military firearms; 1800’s, WWI, WWII, and Korea. With that said it may seem strange that the only M1 rifle I kept is not a collectable, however, don’t worry the originals are now in the good hands of younger collectors.
Anyway, my M1 rifle keeper was built for me by the guys at Orion 7 some years ago with super fine competition features like; a new commercial American walnut stock, a bedded and floated Krieger barrel chambered for the .308 cartridge, and a match trigger and sights.
Parachuting with the big heavy M1 rifle took some training, but one quickly learned the technique. In fact, it was pretty simple; during a jump the earlier practice of protecting the rifle with some type of case or cover was totally eliminated; we jumped with the rifle out in the open slung over the shoulder behind our back with the muzzle pointing down; the rifle was then securely held in place by strapping the parachute harness over it; this allowed the rifle to be quickly put into service on the ground as soon as the harness was released.
I mention this because we never had any problem jumping the M1 rifle this way, however, in the 1960’s when the M1 rifles in my unit were replaced by M14 rifles we found we could not keep the M14’s sights aligned. Low level troopers like me were just told the stresses of landing during a parachute jump could not always be tolerated by our batch of M14’s because there was some kind of heat treating problem. All M14 rifles were returned and replaced months later with M14 rifles without the problem. I would be interested if anyone on the forum remembers or knows anything more about this situation. I have read about some early M14 rifle production issues, but nothing I could tie directly to this situation.
Anyway, my M1 rifle keeper was built for me by the guys at Orion 7 some years ago with super fine competition features like; a new commercial American walnut stock, a bedded and floated Krieger barrel chambered for the .308 cartridge, and a match trigger and sights.
Parachuting with the big heavy M1 rifle took some training, but one quickly learned the technique. In fact, it was pretty simple; during a jump the earlier practice of protecting the rifle with some type of case or cover was totally eliminated; we jumped with the rifle out in the open slung over the shoulder behind our back with the muzzle pointing down; the rifle was then securely held in place by strapping the parachute harness over it; this allowed the rifle to be quickly put into service on the ground as soon as the harness was released.
I mention this because we never had any problem jumping the M1 rifle this way, however, in the 1960’s when the M1 rifles in my unit were replaced by M14 rifles we found we could not keep the M14’s sights aligned. Low level troopers like me were just told the stresses of landing during a parachute jump could not always be tolerated by our batch of M14’s because there was some kind of heat treating problem. All M14 rifles were returned and replaced months later with M14 rifles without the problem. I would be interested if anyone on the forum remembers or knows anything more about this situation. I have read about some early M14 rifle production issues, but nothing I could tie directly to this situation.
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