M1 Garand vs SVT-40
Likely the most widely-used, full-sized, semi-automatic rifles of the second world war; the SVT-40 and the “U.S. Rifle, Caliber .30, M1.” Though known as the M1 Garand, the designer’s name was not stamped anywhere on the rifle or, to my understanding, used in any official capacity in the rifle’s naming. Still, it is what it is colloquially best known as, though I tend to call it the M1 Rifle. Anyhow, where to begin?
Their origins, at least in terms of Military adoption, are pretty much neck-and-neck. 1936, at that time the M1 was adopted though the gas system was different. A “Gas-trap” system, which would quickly be changed. Back in the early days of semi-auto rifles, the concept of boring a hole into the barrel to redirect gas so as to cycle an action, it was a concern that making such a hole in the barrel would negatively affect accuracy. So to avoid drilling such a hole, designer John Cantius Garand (originally from St. Remi, Quebec) used something like the ‘Bang’ system in which gas port would basically stretch forth to actually encompass the muzzle so as to funnel the expanding gases (controlled explosion) towards the op rod. Such a system was also used on the semi-auto Gewehr 41 (W) used by Nazi Germany, but they would end up copying the gas system of captured Soviet SVT-40 rifles when they redesigned it into the Gewehr 43. The development of that initial Gewehr 41 (The ‘W’ stands for Walther, who’s design won, rather than Mauser’s) is in and of itself deserving of a piece which may just be written at a later date. Back on point.
The SVT on the other hand began in 1936 as the AVS 36. Select-fire for semi or full automatic, it utilized a 15-rnd (15 round) magazine. In automatic, it fired at 800 RPM (rounds per minute). As is generally found in shoulder-fired, standard-sized rifles utilizing full-sized rifle ammunition, in fully automatic it tends to be quite unwieldy especially when standing. When crouched, the lower centre-of-mass makes for better control of automatic fire, but with full-sized rifle rounds it tends to just be too much. The American M14 rifle used heavily in Vietnam was also select-fire, was even a tad heavier than the AVS-36 which helped to control recoil, but soldiers were eventually trained to not use the select-fire switch whatsoever and keep it semi-auto. In fully automatic it was little more than an ammo-wasting, loud-noise-generator.
As the rifle was fielded and used, it was found to have issues. The design allowed dirt and debris to get into the action and it was considered overly-complex, which can be a nuisance for soldiers when maintaining their long-arm. The AVS was designed by Sergei Simonov, and he’d won the mid-’30s trials against Fedor Tokarev’s rifle, however a new trial was to take place between the two. There was much debate by those in charge in the Soviet Union, but ultimately Joseph Stalin chose Tokarev’s platform and thus the AVS-36 made way for the SVT-38. This rifle saw its first use against Finland in the Winter War of 1939–1940, in which legendary sniper Simo Hayha would become known as “White Death” to the invading Communists. It took a shot in the face to take him out of action, however it failed to ultimately kill him.
The SVT-38 had been pretty negatively criticized by the soldiers who wielded them. In particular, the magazine was found to be a bit in-the-way with its 15-rnd length, but more alarmingly, had a tendency to fall out of the mag-well. There is a considerable gap between the front of the trigger guard and the magazine release behind the rifle. It would be all too easy to hit said mag release when taking cover, for instance if you were to rest the rifle on a window sill or something, take a shot, then when the recoil bucks the rifle backwards the front of said sill hits the mag release, thus dropping your magazine on the other side of your cover. It was also reportedly disliked that the cleaning rod was housed in a long indentation on the side of the stock, making the rifle a bit bulkier than necessary, and the stock itself was considered overly complex. So the design was refined into the SVT-40 which simplified the stock, placed the cleaning rod inside the stock beneath the barrel (a standard thing to do for centuries dating back to when it was a ‘ramrod’ used for reloading instead of a cleaning rod) and redesigned the magazine release so that it can be folded out of the way. The mag was also shortened to 10 rounds. Reloading was often done with 5-rnd M91/30 Mosin clips so leaving the magazine in a fixed position was quite fine. To my understanding, generally two magazines would be issued and the rest of the ammo was in clips. For an emergency reload, swap mags. Ideally, get behind cover and reload with clips or loose ammunition. Clips were infinitely cheaper to manufacture and were far less bulky or heavy as the magazines.
Like how Tokarev’s SVT had its competition, namely Simonov’s AVS, the M1 had its competition too. Early on in the 1920s and early 1930s was the Pedersen rifle. It used a top-break action, very much like a Luger P08 pistol except ramped up to be used on a rifle. It used an en bloc clip not unlike the M1 and, according to Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons whom had the lucky opportunity to try shooting one so many decades after the prototypes were produced, had fantastic handling. Although the action technically rises up in the way of the shooter’s eye, obscuring their view between shots, the action is so fast that it wasn’t particularly much of a distraction. Ultimately, due to some issues with slam-fires (the round detonating upon being chambered) and requiring lubricated ammunition, plus a poor trigger pull (which can negatively affect accuracy), a vulnerably open receiver when the bolt is locked open, among other things, Garand’s design came out on top.
The French Canadien’s competition would not end there, however, nor even with official adoption. The M1941 Johnson rifle, which used an entirely different feed system and action. There is some give and take when comparing the M1 to the M1941. The M1941 could hold 10 rounds in the magazine plus it can be reloaded at any time, even with the bolt closed. It can also easily be reloaded with loose rounds of 5-rnd clips, which the M1 was not particularly good at accepting either of those. The rifle’s weight were quite similar, maybe a small advantage of a half-pound (225g) or so to the M1941. A particular down-side is that due to the Johnson’s barrel reciprocating while firing, if you have the added weight of a bayonet on the end of the barrel, it can potentially cause reliability issues. The M1941 was also more complicated that the M1, generally requiring an armorer to perform detailed maintenance on it meanwhile the M1 can be stripped almost completely without the use of any tools. If a problem arises with the bolt or trigger/hammer assembly, or any of the pieces of the magazine, then the soldier himself could remove the assembly or the piece and the armorer can give a replacement so that the soldier can continue his business while said armorer can go ahead and repair or scrap the malfunctioning/broken article.
Ultimately, the M1941 Johnson would indeed see some use during WWI, namely by the USMC. One particular instance in the hands of Captain Robert H Dunlap lead to the winning of a Medal of Honor, the highest possible award in the United States, and Dunlap praised the rifle and credited it with saving his life and the lives of others in the Battle of Iwo Jima. M1941 rifles would also see use in the Chinese Civil War, Indonesian National Revolution, and the Bay of pigs invasion. Clearly, inventor Melvin Johnson was able to sell some of his rifles to other nations in spite of not having US Army Ordnance support, however it would never see the widespread use and decades-long fame of the iconic M1 Rifle.
Alrighty then, I think that catches us up nicely on the quick-and-dirty of the SVT’s and M1’s development. Now, let’s get into the details on their specs, and how they function and operate. The M1’s rotating-bolt actions is shorter than the SVT’s tilting-bolt design, so even though the SVT’s barrel is only 0.6” (1.5cm) longer, its overall length is 4.4” (12.6cm) longer, making it slightly less wieldy in close-quarters situations such as room-to-room engagements. The slightly unwieldy length of the rifle was a complaint back with the SVT-38 as well, but was an aspect that ultimately was not particularly tended to. The M91/30 Mosin rifle that it was seeking to replace had a barrel length of a whopping 29” (73cm), 4.1” (10.5cm) longer than the SVT’s 24.6” (625mm). In spite of this, the Tokarev rifle was virtually the same length as the Mosin rifle; less than 10mm (0.4”) in difference for overall length.
For weight, though, the Tokarev comes out on top of the M1. 8.5lb (3.85kg) unloaded vs around 10lb (4.4kg) for the American rifle, and of course that would increase with the addition of its bayonet which was originally 15.5” in length if memory serves. 150gr M2 Ball .30–06 weighs 1lb (450g) for every 16.7 rounds, and so one of the M1 Rifle’s 8-rnd en bloc clips would add an additional half-pound or roughly 225g to the rifle’s weight. It turns out that Light Ball 7.62x54r weighs 1lb (450g) for every 20.6 rounds, perhaps due to the Russian round being shorter and squatter with its 54mm casing length vs the .30–06’s 63mm casing.
Speaking of which, the feed system of the two rifles are very different. The M1 sported a fixed magazine that could accept an 8-rnd en bloc clip, and this clip was necessary for the magazine to function. An ‘en bloc’ clip went into the rifle itself, unlike standard stripper clips, or charger clips as the British sometimes call them. The Italian Carcano rifle and the old German M1888 Commission Rifle both used en bloc style of clips. The SVT-40 had a 10-rnd detachable box magazine which could be loaded from the top with 5-rnd clips or loose ammunition, although this was nearly impossible to do unless the magazine was empty. There is no bolt hold-open except for the one inside the rifle that was operated by the follower once the bolt is opened after the magazine has been depleted. Even decades after WWII with the M14, as has been mentioned before, ammunition was often given out in both magazines and clips. Then there is the Czech vZ.58 assault rifle which can be reloaded with 10-rnd SKS-style clips as well as detachable 30-rnd magazines. So outfitting soldiers with both mags and clips for firearms that can accept both has been in common practice for some designs in WWII and in the decades that followed WWII. The M1 Rifle can be loaded with loose ammunition from the top, but it is more difficult than with the SVT and it is generally advised to manually eject the partial-clip entirely to replace it with a fresh 8-rnd en bloc clip.
The difference between their use in sniping is quite stark. The SVT quite early on was found to have a common issue with vertical shot displacement, meaning groupings at long distance would be found to have shots going somewhat erratically up and down even though it was good for windage, meaning side to side. The M1 on the other hand, with its M1C and M1D, as well as the USMC MC-1952, would see use well beyond the second world war even reaching into the Vietnam War. So for general accuracy, it would seem as though the M1 would take the cake in this rival of WWII semi-auto war horses.
Ah yes and about boring a hole into the barrel, this would occur after the ‘gas trap’ system was abandoned on the M1. The SVT always had a hole drilled into the barrel, though it’s doubtful that that had anything to do with the vertical shot displacement. Some might point to the tilting bolt, which was also used on the FN FAL platform. A belief sometimes held is that there are inherent issues in accuracy with that bolt design, and that a rotating bolt is generally inherently more accurate. I’ll leave you to be the judge on why the SVT experienced its issues with long-range accuracy. Theories and myths run deep in the firearms world on a variety of issues, another idea for a piece to write in future.
Both the M1 and SVT were produced in huge numbers, with the M1 eventually becoming the first ever standard-issue semi-auto rifle, meaning the standard go-to rifle that the basic infantryman would be given after or even during basic training. The SVT-40, however, came close to taking that title. Over 1,000,000 were produced in the year 1941, and by the end of that year only 429,811 M1 Garands were manufactured in total since 1936. In fact, the one millionth M1 wouldn’t come off the assembly line until November 1942. What’s more, the Soviets were intent on reaching 2,000,000 units produced per year by 1942, however 1942 production had instead only brought about 264,000. Production diminished year by year until it entirely ceased in January 1945. Total production of SVT-38/40 was roughly 1.6 million, of which 51,710 were scoped variants. The M1 surpassed 1.6 million in May 1943, so why did the Soviets slow down and stop producing SVT rifles? They were perfectly serviceable, more than accurate enough for the average WWII engagement distance of 100–300m, quite reliable, and they even had adjustable gas settings so that it could utilize most any type of 7.62x54r ammunition and if the action began to get a bit sticky or grimy, the gas could be opened to improve reliability. The M1 Garand had a fixed gas port, meaning it was limited to certain loadings. Well, the reason production ceased didn’t lie with the SVT-40 itself.
Operation Barbarossa, summer 1941. Though there was a pact of non-aggression between the Nazi Fascists and the Soviet Communists, Adolf Hitler broke that pact with the aim of taking all of the USSR before the end of the year. Well as we know, they failed in that endeavor, however not before incurring great wrath in those first 6 months of the operation that stretched to the end of the year. In those 6 months from summer to winter 1941, the USSR suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties, hundreds of thousands of POWs and tens of thousands of vehicles/tanks taken out of commission.*
Anyhow, back on track, those six brutal months hurt the Red Army badly. Land was taken at a rapid pace, and many of those precious Tokarev rifles ended up getting captured, some of them still in crates and unissued, only to then be put into Wehrmacht hands and used against those they were meant for. The need for rifles was great, too great, and the Soviets could produce the simple bolt-action M91/30 Mosin far faster than they could crank out the far higher-quality and more complex SVT Tokarevs. 19.8 million Mosin rifles were produced by the end of WWII**. I assume that this encompasses the standard rifles of the time; M91/30, M38 Carbine, M44 Carbine, and the sniper variants rather than reaching back to the original M1891 “Three Line Rifle.” After all, between 1891–1965, some 37,000,000 were built in Russia/USSR. Production in the early 1930s would have been slower, before the Winter War and the Great Patriotic War as WWII is known in Russia. Back then they had hexagonal receivers, though actually octagonal if I’m not mistaken but they are colloquially referred to as hexagonal. Once they needed more production, they went with simple round receivers that were often still rough, not bothering to smooth down the external surface which would take more time and labour. They needed rifles and they needed them fast, so for the sake of quantity over quality, SVT production declined and Mosin production ramped up.
If Operation Barbarossa had not occurred, then it is entirely likely that SVT production would have reached the goal of two million per year by 1942, meaning over 3,000,000 units would have been available by New Years 1943. At that point, there would be 1,090,310 M1 Rifles, and the three millionth wouldn’t be seen until shortly after D-Day since by the end of June 1944 there were 2.98 million and by the end of July 1944 there were 3.05 million. Meanwhile, at two million rifles per year, with over one million in 1941 and two million in 1942, ’43 and finally another million for the first half of 1944, there would be over six million SVT-40 rifles at the same time that there is three million M1 Garands. At that rate, it seems to me, the SVT-40 was set to become the first ever standard-issue semi-auto infantry rifle. It appears to have taken the bloodiest theatre (Eastern Front) of the bloodiest war of human history (WWII) to keep that from happening. Ultimately, as history would show, the post-war Soviet Union would continue having trials for new firearms to replace the venerable old M91/30 Mosin. They would settle in 1949 on a one-two punch of AK-47 for SMG-style close-up engagements with the enemy while the theoretically more accurate semi-auto SKS-45 (designed by Sergei Simonov) would give supporting cover-fire. Such was the Red Army doctrine of the time, but they would find that the AK was essentially as accurate as the SKS and so they ceased SKS production around 1956. Then in 1959 they perfected the cheaper and lighter stamped receiver of the AKM thus replacing the more heavy and costly milled-receiver AK-47, and the rest is history.
One final point that can be touched on is disassembly for maintenance; stripping the M1 requires removal of the trigger/hammer assembly, the buttstock, various internal bits in the magwell, the op rod spring, the op rod, the bolt, and then a few more pieces on the barrel leaving you with the receiver, the barrel, and a piece of handguard just in front of the trunion. There are a few relatively small parts, the smallest of which likely being the pin in the receiver, perhaps an inch(2.5cm) or so long and perhaps double the width of a typical nail or screw. With the SVT-40, a basic field strip involves removing the magazine, removing the dust cover, the springs and guide rods, the bolt carrier and the bolt inside it. Then to access the gas system which also requires cleaning, you remove the cleaning rod, a couple barrel bands, the wooden and metal top handguards, the short stroke gas piston, the impinging portion of the piston underneath the rear sight along with its corresponding spring, the cap for the gas tube, then the gas tube itself along with the adjustment knob. The trigger/hammer assembly can be quite easily removed with the aid of a cartridge or some other pointed object like a pen. The videogame ‘World of Guns’ on the gaming platform Steam shows in-depth and quite realistic disassembly of the firearms in detail, though there are also a multitude of videos on the internet that show their disassembly process as well.
Which do you prefer? Do the sights and accuracy of the M1 help make up for the weight, or do you prefer the detachable magazine and the simpler tangent notch-and-post sights of the SVT? Do you find it easier to reload from empty with the insertion of an en bloc clip rather than the removal and retention of an empty mag followed by its replacement with a full mag? Personally, I love ’em both and very much enjoyed taking them out to the range with friends. Remember: Safety first! Shoot responsibly!
Norman Matchem
Canadian University Shooting Federation
Can be reached at info@cusf.ca
*Stephen Walsh’s book Stalingrad: The Infernal Cauldron
**David M Glantz’s book When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler
