Production of the M1 grenade launcher ended in May 1943, and it was declared limited standard on December 21, 1944. A suitable grenade launcher for the M1 Garand, the M7, was still in development, so the M1903 rifle was kept in the squad to provide a grenade-launching capability. The M1 grenade launcher for use with the M1903 Springfield rifle had been standardized on September 9, 1941. On 1 April 1942, the BAR was "officially" returned to the rifle squad with the deletion of the automatic weapons squad. October 1, 1940-1 April 1942: QuantityRank Each platoon had four squads, three rifle and one "automatic weapons" squad of a sergeant, corporal, and two three-man BAR teams. You will also notice the absence of the Browning Automatic Rifle. Several decidedly dead-end methods were tried in the interwar period to remedy this. copy of the World War I-era French VB, was declared obsolete in 1931, leaving the infantry squad without any man-portable antitank weapons until the introduction of the bazooka in 1942. On paper, all men were to be armed with the M1 Garand, although this often still was not the case. rifle squad was organized as follows įebruary 1, 1940-October 1, 1940: Quantity When the new M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle began to appear in 1938, there were not enough available one Browning Automatic Rifle and one pistol were authorized in the squad in place of one M1903 rifle. It had peacetime and wartime establishments, due in no small part to the interwar parsimony of Congress Per T/O&E (before 1943, each unit had a unique table of organization, T/O, and drew from a standardized table of basic allowances, T/BA, for equipment in August 1943, the T/BA was scrapped and T/O&Es were reissued) 7-17 of December 6, 1938, the U.S.
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