The U.S. M1 Carbine was adopted on October 22, 1941. It was used by every service branch of our United States Armed Services during World War II, the Korean War, and could even be found in some of the units during the Vietnam War. There were over six million M1 & M2 Carbines manufactured by the ten contractors in a short period of close to three years. The very first production contract once the Winchester Company won the Army’s testing requirements in September 1941 was to a Company called Inland. Inland was a division of General Motors. The first delivery was in June of 1942. Winchester was soon to follow in September with it’s first shipment. There were ten contractors in all that produced the carbine. They were as follows: Inland Division of General Motors, Winchester Arms, Underwood Elliott Fisher Co. (typewriters), Rock-Ola Corp. (jukeboxes), National Postal Meter, Saginaw Steering Gear division of General Motors, Quality Hardware Manufacturing Corp. , Standard Products Corp. , Irwin-Pedersen Arms Co. , and International Business Machines (IBM).

When the United States entered the war on December 8, 1941 the M1 carbine was still on the drawing board and under testing and design. Later in mid to late 1943 the carbines became available to the United States troops. They were issued to all branches of the Armed Services. There was never a more successful production, and by mid 1943 there were close to 11,000 carbines per day being manufactured. By the end of production in 1945 there were 6,200,000 carbines produced.

The M1 carbine is classified as a semiautomatic short rifle equipped with a 15 round magazine taking a .30 caliber cartridge.

In my personal collection I have M1 Carbines manufactured by: Inland , National Postal Meter, IBM & Rock-Ola. My next purchase is a Winchester. They are an easy rifle to work on and very fun to shoot.