Why only 8 rounds?

>>33919745
I'm guessing they wanted the magazine to be flush with the stock or some dumb shit like that.

>>33919745

They didn't want a protruding magazine most likely.

>>33919745
The M1 Garand was originally designed to hold 10 rounds when it was still chambered for .276 Pedersen. But when the caliber was forced changed to .30-06. Garand had to redesign the rifle and it could only hold 8 rounds because .30-06 was bigger than .276

>>33919745
It was originally designed to have 10 rounds, but was chambered in .276 Pedersen.

US Government, being cheap shits wanted to stay with 30-06 since they had 10 billion rounds of it, so they changed as little as necessary to get the rifle into this chambering, thus 8 rounds.

lrn2google

>>33919765
>US Government, being cheap shits
More like the army didn't have a ton of funding in the 1930's. The huge permanent standing army with essentially unlimited money for fun is a post WW2 thing

>>33919745
Saint John's divine inspiration foresaw issues with magazine capacity limitations due to gun control legislation in the future.

>>33919760
>Make M1 use 30-06 because we had so much of it after WW1.
>Make a shitload more 30-06 during WW2
>Come Vietnam still giving M1s and BARs to soldiers just to use the rest of the supply.

I'm honestly shocked we ever switched to 7.62x51 and 5.56 because our military is so cheap

>>33919892
The only reason to change to 7.62x51 would probably be cost and capacity, both of which are reasonable concerns in war

>>33919801
>US Government, being cheap shits
>More like the army didn't have a ton of funding in the 1930's.
Isn't that the same thing?
>The huge permanent standing army with essentially unlimited money for fun is a post WW2 thing
Because the army hasn't been drastically downsized with it's funding cut after every war we've been in since, right? There have always been budget battles because the branches are under funded for what they want.

All the funding for cool toys comes in spurts when legacy systems are being replaced, or -more recently- when a unit is training for a deployment and they get an injection of cash to replace their broken shit. No war, no funding.

>>33919765
Pretty much this

Not that bad though when you consider most rifles in WWII were bolt action and only held 5 rounds, gave our guys a nice advantage

>>33920000
>Because the army hasn't been drastically downsized with it's funding cut after every war we've been in since
Pre and post WW2 US Army are entirely different institutions. Sure, the US army downsized dramatically after WW2 but it still had overseas commitments, and a budget to match, in a way the interbellum army didn't

>>33919745
>Couldn't the M1 have been made to hold at least 2 more rounds, bringing it up to the Enfield's 10?
Eventually it was. They called it the M-14.