The Cody Firearms Museum, at the Buffalo Bill Centre of the West, holds a number of interesting select-fire M1 Garand rifles, adapted by Winchester during the 1940s. In this article we’re going to examine one of the prototypes, the rifle is believed to date to the late 1940s, and appears to be chambered in one of the earlier iterations of the T65 .30 Light Rifle round, which would eventually be adopted as 7.62x51mm.
Very little information is available about the rifle and little has been written about it previously. It is believed to have been developed by Winchester engineer Harry H. Sefried II with former Cody Firearms Museum curator Herbert Houze crediting Sefried with the rifle, which he described as adaptation of the M1 into a ‘squad automatic rifle’. After some archival research and combing Winchester’s patents from the period we can now attempt to shed light on a little more of the rifle’s history.
Externally, the rifle has a number of instantly recognisable distinctions from the standard M1 Garand. It has a reshaped stock with an added pistol grip, a proprietary box magazine and a combined bipod and conical flash hider. If we look closer we’ll notice that the stock has a swell just ahead of the breech, flaring out in an almost triangular bulge. These changes to the stock also distinguish this rifle from Winchester’s other select-fire M1 adaptations, which retain the standard Garand stock profile.
From the patents available combined with an examination of the rifle we can learn a lot. We cannot rely on patents to tell the whole story of the rifle, however, as many of the elements that make up the weapon appear to have gone unpatented. The substantial external and internal changes made to the rifle suggest that this was not an attempt to adapt the M1 with a minimal number of component parts changes but rather an effort to generally improve the rifle, making it conducive to fully automatic fire.
In summer 1944, Winchester’s CEO Edwin Pugsley directed Sefried to begin work on a select-fire conversion for the M1, to rival those being developed at Springfield Armory and Remington. Winchester’s select-fire Garand went though a number of iterations which resulted in two patents from Sefried. The first, filed in August 1944 (US #2479419), incorporated an elongated sear actuating lever and a selector on the lower, right side of the receiver. Winchester’s first attempts at a select-fire M1 conversion resulted in rifles with extremely high, uncontrollable rates of fire of over 900 rounds per minute. Sefried filed a second patent later in January 1948 (US #2464418) which used a catch to hook the sear. The rifle we are examining appears to have yet another select-fire system, one for which I have so far been unable to find a corresponding patent for. Winchester’s work on the select-fire adaptation came to a halt with the end of the war. It appears, however, that Winchester again began to work on adapting the M1 in the late 1940s, with Sefried again working on the project, filing his second select-fire mechanism patent in 1948 (US #2464418).
The rifle’s receiver was originally a standard Winchester-made .30-06 M1 with a serial number of 1,627,456. This means its wartime production gun, dating from May 1945. It would appear that rather than the rifle being lifted from the rack finished, it seems that it was earmarked for prototype development because the receiver forging lacks the cuts/forgings needed for the en bloc clip release lever. This makes sense if it was known that the receiver was destined for use in a prototype which fed from a box magazine. However, the timeline of the rifle gets more complex when we consider that it was a late-war production rifle. There are a number of possibilities. The rifle may have been simply set aside for internal prototype work in May 1945 and not used until a T65 chambered rifle was developed later. Alternatively, it is possible that the rifle was converted during the initial attempts to create a select-fire M1 but was later rechambered from .30-06 to the new developmental T65 round.
This prototype’s trigger guard assembly, which also comprises the magazine well floorplate, is a self-contained assembly and does not interact with the weapon’s trigger mechanism or action. While Sefried had a patent for his own magazine system (US #2386722) this rifle uses a slightly different magazine release and floorplate, which is similar to one seen in Stefan Janson’s 1956 patent for a stripper clip-loading box magazine for the M1 (US #2894350). The magazine used in this prototype, however, is not the same as Janson’s. It has fixed feed-lips and a projection at its rear which appears to house an anti-tilt tab for the follower.
The rifle does not to appear to use the full-automatic system seen in either of Sefried’s patents. Similarly, the safety selector is located on the left side of the receiver, forward, in line with the breech. It has two positions with an arc of about 90 degrees. This position does not match Sefried’s patents for select-fire conversion, however, it does match the position patented by David Marshall Williams but not Williams’ selector’s orientation of travel. I have been unable to find a patent which matches this rifle’s selector or method fully-automatic conversion.
The pistol grip is an interesting addition as neither of the other Winchester select-fire prototypes nor the original select-fire Springfield prototypes incorporated one. Visually it is very similar to that seen on the later Italian Beretta BM 59 Mark II. In an effort to lighten the rifle the prototype also has an aluminium buttplate. One of ingenious internal changes is the milling of the bottom of the barrel flat, this not only has the effect of lightening the rifle but also allows a new, straight operating rod to travel rearwards under the barrel. How this impacted on the barrel’s harmonics is unclear. The rifle certainly feels lighter and handier (when unloaded) than you would expect, weight is estimated to be around 7 or 8 lbs.
The bipod, patented by Sefried in April 1945, (US #2420267) comprises a pair of tube steel legs, which have a set height, and a conical aluminium flash hider. The legs are spring-loaded and the entire assembly attaches via a latch which seats over the rifle’s bayonet lug. The bipod is the only element of this rifle that can be attributed to Sefried directly. And by the bipod’s very nature of attachment may simply have been attached later.
The best documentary source available for the prototype is the entry in the Winchester Factory Museum’s collection inventory offers some tantalising clues but no definitive answers:
#1504 U.S. Model M-1 rifle (Garand)
Cal. 30-06; experimental semi or full auto.
3rd type 20 shot box mag.
Special butt plate for shoulder rest
Bipod and aluminum flash hider attached
From H. Sefried 10-26-45
The suggestion that the rifle is chambered in .30-06 is seemingly an error given the internal changes made to the rifle. ‘3rd type’ suggests an iterative development of the rifle’s magazine while “special butt plate for shoulder rest” may allude to the aluminium butt plate but the prototype’s plate has nothing resembling a ‘shoulder rest’, instead it is a simple chequered aluminium plate about 5mm thick. While ‘From H. Sefried 10-26-45’ may refer to the whole rifle, I believe it more likely refers simply to his bipod.
The prototype appears to be chambered in an iteration of the .30 Light Rifle round, which later became known as the T65. The rechambering was achieved by installing a metal block which shortened the magazine well. Unlike earlier Winchester select-fire conversions this rifle feeds from a proprietary magazine designed to feed the T65 round. This magazine does not appear to closely follow the pattern used by Winchester on several other designs during the period. The projection from the rear of the magazine slides along a channel cut in the metal magazine well block. It has font and rear locking shelves, with the front shelf acted on by the magazine release lever.
Development of the .30 Light Rifle round, which would eventually become 7.62x51mm, began in 1944, with the round first being referred to as the T65 in 1946. It appears that the rifle is chambered in a version of the T65 cartridge, but which iteration exactly is unknown. However, its chambering does support the theory that the prototype may date from 1947-48. The T65 didn’t take on the now standard 7.62x51mm dimensions until 1949 in the form of the T65E3 round but without a chamber casting it is impossible to know the rifle’s exact chambering.
While Winchester continued to work on adapting the M1 Garand into a select-fire rifle none of their rifles were seriously considered by US Ordnance. At the same time John Garand was working on his own series of select-fire, magazine-fed prototypes (the T20 series) at Springfield while Remington had also been awarded a contract to develop a similar rifle, tested under the designation T22. These projects subsequently gave way to a number of other designs, all chambered in the T65 round, including the T25/47, T44 and T48. These were all tested before the Garand-influenced T44 was eventually selected in 1957, becoming the M14.
Addendum:
Harry Sefried II served in the US Army Air Corps during World War Two before joining Winchester as a firearms designer in 1944. In the 1950s he left Winchester to become Ruger’s chief engineer until he retired in 1979. He died in 2005, aged 84.
If you enjoyed the video and this article please consider supporting our work here. We have some great new perks available for Patreon Supporters.
Bibliography:
Patents:
‘Semiautomatic Firearm Convertible to Full Automatic’, H.H, Sefried, US Patent #2479419, 25/08/1944, (source)
‘Box Magazine Latch Mechanism for Repeating Firearms’, H.H, Sefried, US Patent #2386722, 29/09/1944, (source)
‘Support for Rifles and Other Shoulder Firearms’, H.H. Sefried, US Patent #2420267, 19/04/1945, (source)
‘Fire Control Mechanism for Automatic and Semiautomatic Firearms’, H.H, Sefried, US Patent #2464418, 02/01/1948, (source)
‘Strip Clip for Loading Box Magazines’, S.K. Janson, US Patent #2894350, 11/04/1956, (source)
Secondary Sources:
‘The Select-Fire M1 Garand’, F. Iannamico, Small Arms Review, (source)
Harry H. Sefried II Obituary, Hartford Courant, June 2005, (source)
‘Light Rifle, Part IV: The M1 Garand Learns To Rock And Roll’, TFB, Nathaniel F., (source)
Cartridge History for the Day – .30 Light Rifle, (source)
‘Winchester Proto-M14 Rifle’, Forgotten Weapons, (source)
The Armourers Bench 