I voted M1 Garand, it is all around better it would be a little easier with more specific info. Maybe ask which is better in a certain scenarios.

Game scenarios?

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According to a memoir by a Marine pointman, in the Pacific the first man carried a BAR for firepower.

As for "approach fire" shot from the hip, you'd be surprised. I have read that it was the only thing a substantial number of guys had ever done with their weapons.

Even in Europe, infantry warfare during WWII was a firepower war. You shot until the other side stopped shooting, stopped moving, or stopping living.

Garand, of course...which one would you rather carry into battle.
The subject of the standard rifle of the German army came before Hitler at least once. The most famous quote on this subject from him was the bolt action Kar had been good enough for him in WW1, so therefore it was good enough for the Werhmacht. Back in the 1930's this thinking was not quite as near sighted as it seems, for all of Germany's likely opponents used bolt action rifles also. The bolt action service rifle of the Wehrmact with its slow rate of fire, meant that a German army squad was mostly used to maneuver around and protect the machine gun (mg-34 or 42, which by contrast to the Kar were state of the art).

Even after the MP-44 was available in quantity in 1943, Hitler strongly resisted it until he found his commanders on the Eastern front were all clamoring for it. Then he not only changed his mind but he also invented the name for it we all know today, assault rifle (Sturmgewehr). By war's end almost 500,000 MP-44s had been made but it was another case of the too little, too late problem that plagued the Germans throughout the war.

It seems like snuffy in the field always gets the short end when it comes to a service weapon. The big argument by the high command, of any army, against semi- and full-auto service weapons was the logistics headache of supplying alot more ammo, and the worry that ill-trained troops would fire off all their ammo too fast. Once the postwar armies of the world gradually switched to selective fire weapons though, these arguments evaporated as no way were troops going to be willing to attack an enemy equipped with assault rifles using only their little old bolt action rifle.
There have been countless types of assault rifles since the sturmgewehr, and it seems like all of them have at least one significant flaw, even today. The AK-47 is powerful, has high rate of fire, and reliable but not accurate. The M-16 is accurate, but not as reliable as the AK, and many combat troops consider its round too weak. The now-obsolete M-14, G3 and FAL fire a powerful cartridge, and are reliable, but the weapon and ammo are heavy and rate of fire is slow, because full automatic fire with these rifles is not practical. I guess it will never end!

I would go with the Mauser, longer-range.

Bull, the Mauser most certainly didn't have "longer range". It was comperable but not superior to any of its contemporary rifles, semi-auto (Garand) or other bolt actions.

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Happy Trails,
Clint.

GARAND


Effective range: 500 yd

MAUSER


Effective range: 547 yd (with iron sights)


47 yards.

Karabiner 98k - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
M1 Garand rifle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Well, I own both and IMO they are pretty even. I do my shooting at the 200 yard range and they are close when it comes to accuracy. Which ever one that has the longer range may be a moot point as I think that most fights were well under 500 yards. The rate of fire is better for the Garand, but a good Mauser operator can load a K98 pretty quick with a stripper clip. I like the M-1 sights better as well for some reason. They are both great rifles and they both look fantastic. This is just my opinion though.

I would agree.

Only 10% of all small arms casaulties were produced at ranges beyond 400 yards. In contrast, fully 50% of that casaulty were inflicted or incurred at ranges under 200 yards. That is couting marksman, snipers and machine gunners.

Rifle fire beyond 400 meters is mostly wasted.

Besides that, I have no clue how the great editors of wikipedia got their information. Both the 8mm and 30-06 was well within their "effective range" (i.e. capable of lethal fires) at 700 yards. Most modern assault rifles were optimized for combat under 300m and that says something about realistic battlefield conditions.

you have to shoot out all the bullets to reload ur magazine....which means u cannot reload in between......a big disadvantage.....

and it was too heavier also....

had somewhat bad handling.....

on the other side the K98 and K98K both had good handling, greater damage, good handling.....they were lighter than the ordinary rifles, and could be realoaded in between of a clip.....which means that they were excellent sniper rifles.....as i think....the G43 was a rifle to be provided to the ordinary riflemen and the K98K was to be provided to snipers......

and the last and most important thing, the K98 and the K98k both used the 7.92mm rounds still being used in AK-Series......and the 7.92mm rounds are known for their greater damage....

So you like Wikipedia after all, Amon?

Nazi_akash, the AK 47 series uses a short cartridge (7.62 by the way not 7.92, and 39mm long), much less propellant than the Mauser (7.92 x 57mm).

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As much as i like the M1 Garand the K98 Musser is the better of the 2 rifles it is more accurate and less prone to mechanical faliures also economicaly as it was a much simpler gun it was cheaper to mass produce where as the M1 needed to have the machines to produce it made before it could be made in any thing larger then prototype numbers. Also the M1 had the annoying habbit of telling the enemy when the user was out of ammo. Althought the M1 is a very well made rifle it doesn't stand the test of time like the K98 did having served in both world wars as Germany's main rifle, and was copied by most of the major armies of the day, with really only the british Enfeild having any signifigant differance too it and is still sold today as a high end hunting and target rifle

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The bayonet is a weapon that is out of date yet instills fear in all it is used against... fix bayonets at the onset of every battle

Everybody take a deep breath.

To reload an M1 Garand, eject the old clip and load a new one. Voila, problem solved!

Nazi Akhkash,

So, between a bolt-action and a semi-auto, you'd pick the bolt-action for better handling? How did you figure that? Is it because the bolt-action had superior at ease of use at close quarters, like being a better weapon for house to house or trench combat?

That would be incorrect. The numbers in which G43s was pultry, it was virtually insured that it was impossible to field them in any quantity; the G-43 did not appear in any TO&Es. It is safe to say that most German troops had never seen let alone touched a G-43, except for a few snipers. Most surviving samples were sniper rifles.

justdags,

As Za put it, you got your bullets all mixed up. 30-06 was an immensely powerful round. Its caliber is about 7.8mm.

Is this a fact or your opinion?

M1 Garand was as accurate as the 98K at ranges realistic for combat and more.

Dependability is a hard call, since both weapons were legendary for their toughness.

This statement's logic is so convoluted and self-contradictory I don't know where to start.

All WWII weaposns were produced in factories using machine tools. The more a weapon's design require handwork the less efficient it is at mass manufacture because skilled labor is hard to find and they consume a lot of manhours. The 98k was not as modern in its suitability to mass production.

As for being simpler to produce, the Americans built 5.4 millions of M1s. It was an easy-to-build rifle because it was tailored for machine-tool and assembly-line work.
Are you suggesting prototype weapons are hand-made? By 1940 making a rifle by hand was not something anyone had done for almost a century. The M-1 was designed arround Springfield Armoury's existing machine tools that had just been renovated and brought up to date when Garand worked on his rifle. Other factories simply needed to re-tool and re-configure. For the obvious reason that they had to make a new weapon.

The sound of M1's clip being ejected during a raging firefight is a red herring. Over rifle, machine gun and mortar fire, I think the noise of one clip being ejected is pretty insignificant!

The M1 Garand fought in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Its legacy, the M14/21/25, still lives on as a very useful sniper rifle.

The 98k along with the rest of its kind was totally obscolecent for fighting long before WWII even started. Everyone would have upgraded to a semi-autometic rifle by the thirties if there wasn't a depression. Nation on that list include France, Russia, and Germany. Weapons made in this period include the STV, MAS, G-41...

Triple C hit it right on in his answers. The Mauser is a great rifle but compared to semi-autos like the M-1 all bolts are lacking. The Mauser 98's are easily one of the finest battle rifles ever designed, but they cannot match the firepower of a Garand. I would have liked to see them adopt the t20e1 which was a Garand with a detachable 20 rd box and was the predecessor of the m-14.

LOL!

well it was just my preferance I would like to own both

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The bayonet is a weapon that is out of date yet instills fear in all it is used against... fix bayonets at the onset of every battle

That is Jack's (SouthWestPacificVet) sentiment. He mentioned in one of his good posts that the biggest drawback to the clip was dinking your knee on it when accidentally kneeling to fire the weapon.

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Best Regards,
JW

Apparently, it's catching. The .30-'06 uses a 7.62 caliber projectile. It is .308 inch in diameter. Another designation for the .30-'06 is 7.62 X 63 MM. Sixty-three MM is the length of the complete cartridge in millimeters.

The diameter of a projectile has very little to do with the power of a cartridge; that is determined by the cartridge case size and propellent charge.

It's clear Nazi doesn't have any idea what he's talking about when it comes to rifle cartridges.

Only Akash now, he dropped the prefix.

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I myself voted for the K98, maybe i have a bit of bi est because i am a bolt action fan when it comes to rifles. But for military action the M1 had a greater strength for its all around versatility compared to the K98. But the K98 is one of the best bolt action rifles ever made. The German's make damn fine weaponry to say the least and because of the other semi-automatic weapons of the war, the K98 as a bolt action rifle is not the most advanced rifle of the time it had been around for a while compared to the semi automatic rifles,but none the less the k98 stood its ground fairly well against the more advanced weaponry of the time.

The clip action was not totally unfounded in reality, but I think it was a minor defect most rifleman would be willing to suffer for a more modern weapon. Another flaw of the Garand was that it was somewhat hard to reload and unskilled men are bound to have their thumb banged up.

In fairness the Mauser was very accurate. It was a good standard infantry weapon. Its obsolescence is made more pallatable because the landser's enemies used equally antiquated pieces like the Mossin-Nagant or SMLE. When facing enemies that do possess dependable semi-automatic weapons, his superb machine gun balanced out his rifle's inferiority.

However, under 400m, the kind minor differences in percision found in WWII service rifles was not important. Most troops fired their weapons at ranges closer than that. A US infantryman in the 84th Division says in his memoir he considered shooting at anything over 200 yards away wasted effort. Usually, the effect the shooter could be expected to ahieve was to make it rain mortar shells on everybody. This seems to be representative of grunts' views on the subject.

The problem was found mostly in the assault, I think. I don't think nearly as many machine pistols would have been manufactured if there were good semi-automatics in abundence.

They credit a tech manual for the M1. Nothing for the K98. The numbers quoted were probably specs. If anything I'd expect the 30:06 to be slightly better at longer ranges as it's a little smaller and for the same weight of projectile should have slightly less wind resistance but I'm not at all sure you could measure it.

I wonder how well the M1 would have worked for indirect barrage fire like the French used pre WWII. Supposedly it was effective with the guns they had with a Garand it should have been really impressive. Provided of course you had a good ammo supply.

Triple C has it right, that is true when it comes to distances most combat was close compared to sniper combat which is like 300 yards or more, for that time. The basis of the weapons should be looked not just at the weapons but should be looked at the squad or platoon or company is in. With mortars or artillery fire for there side gives the infantry men a chance to actually sit and aim in a much more desirable manner than the ones gets hit by mortars or artillery. Now of course everyone is still under the pressure of the combat, But with machine gun fire and suppressing fire accuracy is everything. With the advantage of all this the bolt action can be a serious friend. Also due to some troops being raw recruits they can have issues with guns under firefights, and the k98 is a very basic weapon so it can easily be cleaned, loaded, and fired.