Tooling

[barretcreek]

Was all the Garand tooling destroyed?

There are no stupid questions, right?

[Major Tom]

Italy made the BM version years ago

[lyman]

Italy made the BM version years ago

Beretta and Breda made Garands in Italy, years ago, then made the BM series,

[PWC]

Don't know if destroyed or sold to Italy, but they make AWFULLY GOOD copies with detachable box mags.

We could have done that as .308 and saved all the $$ we spent on the relatively short lived M14 program. Yeah, yeah I know they are still in use, for specialities, but not widely. And I know about the need for sub caliber rounds for the type of war we were then fighting.

[Allen]

Don't know if destroyed or sold to Italy, but they make AWFULLY GOOD copies with detachable box mags.

We could have done that as .308 and saved all the $$ we spent on the relatively short lived M14 program. Yeah, yeah I know they are still in use, for specialities, but not widely. And I know about the need for sub caliber rounds for the type of war we were then fighting.

Agree. Though I like the M14 the Italians improved the Garand with a detachable mag and made full auto versions. We could have taken the BM59 and just ran with it.

[Former Cav]

Agree. Though I like the M14 the Italians improved the Garand with a detachable mag and made full auto versions. We could have taken the BM59 and just ran with it.

we didn't due to the NIH ("Not Invented Here" syndrome)
Same goes for the FAL

[LavaTech]

Was all the Garand tooling destroyed?

There are no stupid questions, right?

Yes and no. One could argue the Winchester production tooling ultimately shipped to Italy was destroyed at Winchester while stored mostly out in the open. This was a contractual no-no, but such is life. Beretta's engineers inspected and analyzed the tooling and decided to scrap it. Their Pratt & Whitney tools were decades older and not getting younger so they used the machines as inspiration and built their own production tooling in-house for the first time in centuries, possibly ever [probably mentioned in Ramchandran Jaikumar's Beretta monograph - From Filing and Fitting to Flexible Manufacturing]. All Beretta M1 parts were made on in-house production tooling. If the discarded Winchester tools afterward went to Breda.... I have no idea.