1941 Johnson

[BadBob]

And if they are such pieces of crap, why would anyone pay $5000+ to get a nice one?
Those of us that have Johnson's (the rifle, you wanker!) generally recognize certain problems with the rifles...but you'll not talk us out of them by bad-mouthing the rifle.
Right, Johnson owners?

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Gyrene]

Jim K - Melvin Maynard Johnson preferred to be called Maynard, so if you were referring to St. Maynard, then OK! hehehe USMC Reservists are generally as much Marine as any Marine, going through the same Boot Camp, and serving alongside regular Marines in battle.

I know that the M1 Garand was and still is a near perfect main battle rifle. That is what I carried!

The M1941 Johnson was manufactured in a well equipped machine shop, and required very few special tools to produce. It was also an almost finalized rifle when it first went to a shooting range.

In its first head to head competition with the M1 Garand (testing done by Springfield Armory, of course), it was almost as good as the M1 Garand. The "Gas Trap" was a problem with the M1 Garand, so the M1 Garand was redesigned to remove the gas trap and associated parts to incorporate the gas port. Then there was the 7th round stoppage, . . .

In the next head to head competition with the M1 Garand it was "almost as good" as the newly redesigned M1 Garand (the M1941 Johnson was unchanged).

Keep in mind that the USMC used the 1903 Springfield until well into 1943, (we still used a lot of M1903A4's in Korea) and the only semiauto they had was the M1941 Johnson except for the M1 Garands they traded war trophies to the US Army for. I know about not ending a sentence with a preposition, but I did it anyhow. The USMC really liked the Johnson LMG, which performed flawlessly. The same was true of the US Army's First Service Special Forces in North Italy, and they didn't want to give them up either.

The M1941 Johnson could change barrels in seconds (with my M1941 Johnson/Winfield, I can do that myself despite my age), and by changing barrels they could also change calibers (7.7mm JAP, 8 x 57 or 7x 57 Mauser, or . . . ). The M1941 Johnson could easily be manufactured in any well equipped machine shop, which meant there would have been no limit on production of rifles as there was on the M1 Garand.

My personal belief is that the War Department did the country a disservice in not at least adopting the M1941 Johnson as a secondary standard, much as they did for WWI with the M1917 Enfield.

Gyrene OFC

semper fi


`

[Jim K]

Well, a couple of points. MMJ was never in combat and never went through boot camp. He was in the ROTC in college but never completed the program. He was appointed a USMC officer and went through the officer basic training course, so I guess that was the officer equivalent of boot camp.

It was not just the rifle. Remember that Johnson had investors who stood to make a lot of money if his rifle was adopted. They used the press and Congress to unleash a torrent of abuse, directed at Garand, the Ordnance Department, and the government in general for not trashing all the work and money put into the M1 and adopting the "superior" Johnson. They called opponents traitors, and shamelessly promoted the rifle among Marines, lying about Johnson's "combat record", and exploiting both interservice rivalry and the isolationist feeling of the time. Unfortunately, even the NRA became involved, with articles about problems with the M1, some of which showed a total misunderstanding of how the rifle functioned.

I would have thought that after nearly 70 years, a rational discussion might be possible, but it seems I am wrong and you folks are just continuing the pro-Johnson, anti-Garand hate campaign.

BTW, I do own a Johnson. It is nearly new and has been both accurate and reliable. Still, on comparing the two rifles, I simply cannot escape the conclusion that the M1 is the better combat rifle.

-------

Since, I am not unwilling to discuss the Johnson in a calm and objective way, I will respond to Gyrene's points.

Gyrene, good points but they were all made at the time and most have little validity. The ability to change calibers is fine in a commercial military rifle but when did U.S. troops ever have to use enemy ammunition, and how would GIs carry spare barrels in case they wanted to? As for production, the idea of thousands of small shops making rifles really never has worked; even the British STEN gun, designed to be made that way, was actually made in only a couple of factories. (Johnson's small factory could never have made enough rifles for the US armed forces.)

The WWI experience with two standard rifles, far from inspiring emulation, made the Army determined never to do that again; the logistics was a nightmare and (unlike the Johnson and the M1) both the rifles used the same clips.

Jim

[BarryinIN]

OK, that's how you see it. I see it a little differently, although it really comes down to some small differences.

Melvin Maynard Johnson was well aware of the Garand rifle before it was even adopted, and felt it had some shortcomings (real or imagined). As a Marine officer and gun tinkerer, he just had to try another way. While we can't know what he was planning, I don't think he was planning a rifle to replace the Garand (that was a lost cause even then), but instead, to have a semiautomatic rifle that would be ready if the Garand failed.

I think that is an important thing here. I really believe he thought the Garand was not going to work out, and that would leave us with no semiauto rifle for the war we were sure to be into at any time.
Whether due to the gas trap problems, getting production going (that was an accomplishment by JCG and SA to get things up and running to crank them out), or some other stumble, AND with so many doubters of the semiauto military rifle, he might have thought it wouldn't take much of a setback to kill the whole concept.
But if there was another rifle design standing by, that could start production quickly and still do the job, there might be hope.

And I think that was what he had- a rifle that was not only easy to start production on, but also the overall equal to the Garand. The Garand is my favorite rifle, so this isn't easy for me to say. But I think there are things about the Garand that were better, and things about the Johnson that were better. Overall though, I think the users would have got the same performance with either one.

I think the Dutch order showed how quickly and easily it could be made. He was a designer and not a builder, so never really wanted to build rifles, only to sell or license the design to someone else for manufacture. But when he got the Dutch order, Johnson was forced to make the rifle since the arms factories were busy filling military contracts. Still, he managed to get rifles coming off the line in a matter of a few weeks, starting with an empty building and working against wartime priority purchasing.

Investors' influence in DC? I've heard/read that often, but as far as I've read, the only investors were Johnson, his father, his in-laws, and some officers in the company. I don't think any of them had much, if any, influence in Washington. The most influential of all was probably M.M. Johnson himself, and I'm not sure how much influence a Captain in the USMC reserves would really have. It no doubt helped greatly just by giving him the knowlege of who to talk to, but wheher that would have done any good is another question.

And the Marine Corps did like the rifle. Unlike the Army, they had not yet committed themselves to a semiauto rifle when the war (or the Johnson) arrived.
They did use it some in WWII. A few were used at Guadalcanal, and evidently they had more "diverted" from the Dutch order in time for Bougainville. The Marine Raiders used Johnson LMGs because it was the MG best suited for their airborne operations (they could jump with it broken down, yet have it in action ASAP). The Raiders wanted the Johnson rifle to go along with it. Col Merritt Edson, the Col of the Raiders seems to have showed up at most of the Johnson rifle tests in the months prior, so he must have seen something he liked.
But...Despite many in the Marines who wanted the Johnson, the USMC was, is, and maybe always will be, a small arms "customer" of the Army. Except for small orders here and there, they get what the Army gets. I'm pretty well convinced that if that were not the case, the USMC would have used Johnsons in WWII.
Maybe that wouldn't have been the best idea but I think it very well could have happened (I have visions of things like Garand rifle production held up for lack of steel, while Johnson poduction is held up waiting for wood).

Yes, the NRA was involved. F.C. Ness had written articles slamming the Garand from almost the beginning. I recently bought a copy of the American Rifleman from 1940, and the Dope Bag article is him testing the new Garand for a while. He complains about just everything except the shade of the wood, and I might have missed that. It's pretty clear that he hated the Garand, for whatever reason(s). I got the impression he would have fought for the Garand's replacement with the next rifle to appear, whether it was the Johnson or the Brown Bess.

But it all goes back to my thinking that Johnson just wanted to have a rifle design ready to go...just in case. Luckily, that never was required, and we will never know how it would have gone.
But in what little service the Johnson had, it sounds like it did just fine to me.

[Jim K]

Hi, Barry,

That is, AFAIK, all true except for maybe the point on the investors. I don't know who they were but there were some people who planned to make money if the Garand was dumped in favor of the Johnson. I have no idea why Ness hated Garand and the M1 so much. I think the article you read has the stupid statement that the Garand muzzle was tied to the receiver so the barrel bent like a bow when it got hot! Ridiculous, but some folks think lying in a good cause is OK.

The Johnson has some good points in its favor, primarily the ability to "top off" a magazine. Even that was rather theoretical, though. Ammo would have been issued in '03 clips so unless at least 5 rounds had been fired, clips would have had to be broken up to "top off." I think Johnson would have been better to promote the detachable magazine rifle, a system the U.S. eventually went with (M14, M16). Still detachable magazines have their own problems - they are not shipped loaded (M1 Carbine and M1911 magazines were not) so they consume shipping weight and space. The rifle is useless if the magazines are lost, but the same is true of M1 clips.

But ammo was shipped in M1 clips, and the shipping size and weight are not significantly greater than those of the ammo alone.

Another problem with actually adopting the Johnson would have been the need to establish a whole system of manuals, soldier and armorer training, spare parts supply and the like. That work had been done or was well underway for the M1.

As you say, we don't know how the Johnson would have worked out. I don't think we can necessarily compare it with the very limited use of the Johnson LMG. As with the Johnson rifle and the M1, the LMG may well have been better than the BAR, but the BAR existed, in quantity, and there was no real need for another LMG.

As the owners of both rifles (I own one Johnson, and five M1's), I think two areas are of interest - disassembly for cleaning, and overall handling. Have you ever really taken the Johnson down to the point needed for cleaning after a month of fighting, in other words to the point you would disassemble the M1 under the same conditions? And have you ever tried to sling one for a long march, or do the manual of arms? In my opinion, which most folks here seem to think is pretty worthless, the Johnson fails as a really usable battle rifle, no matter how many theoretical good points it might have.

Some folks have insisted that there was no reason not to adopt the Johnson; the problem as I see it was that there was no very good reason TO do so. Even if it had been better in some way, it was just not ENOUGH better.

(P.S. The current value of the Johnson as a collectible has absolutely no relationship to the question of its suitability as a battle rifle.

Another P.S. The rifle that "fixed" some of the problems of the M1 was the Japanese Type 5; it had a ten round magazine and could be loaded with loose rounds or from 5 round clips. Simpler rear sight, too.)

Jim

[BarryinIN]

Some folks have insisted that there was no reason not to adopt the Johnson; the problem as I see it was that there was no very good reason TO do so. Even if it had been better in some way, it was just not ENOUGH better.

And that, I think, sums it up very well indeed.
By the time the first Johnson test rifle existed, it was way too late for the army to have changed even if it had been superior in almost every way. I can't imagine a rifle that would have been impressive enough to have made that happen.

I think they are just about as close to being equal performance-wise as any two military rifles have been. I compare them to the M1903/M1917 in that had one been adopted as standard instead of the other, I doubt it would have made any difference in the long run.
I only posted to start with because I took (mistook?) your original post here as one basically saying the Johnson was obviously inferior to the Garand rifle, and I couldn't agree with that.
I don't necessarily think it was better than the Garand rifle either, and often say something when I hear/read that, too.

There is a lot to speculate about with military small arms. Lots of "what-ifs" wherever one looks. What if Johnson had been in Army Ordnance and Garand was a Marine reservist and the situations and dates were reversed? What if the British had started on the Pattern 13 in .276 ten years earlier and replaced the Lee-Enfield with it before WWI? What if Hiram Maxim had never gone to Europe? What if General LeMay had missed that picnic with the AR15 watermelon shoot?
All of it is fun to think about, even if it doesn't matter or change a thing.

[Jim K]

Hi, Barry,

Very good summary. I will only say that I never considered the Johnson very inferior to the M1 as a rifle. I do still say that it would not have been as good a battle rifle. In my previous post, I suggested you strip your Johnson to the same point you would strip your M1 for a thorough cleaning. When you have a chance to do that, please let us know what you think of the two rifles.

Jim

[BarryinIN]

Taking the Johnson trigger group apart isn't the worst thing to do, but isn't my favorite thing to do either! It's not something I like doing at the table, and wouldn't want to do it at all sitting in the dirt somewhere (It might be time to pick up another rifle at that point...or "confuse" my stock/trigger assembly with that of a buddy's).
In contrast, the Garand trigger is one of the best parts of the rifle, in my opinion. Maybe I'm goofy, but I'm pretty fascinated just looking at it and seeing places where a single part or two serves multiple functions.

But I can keep going back and forth naming things I like about both rifles. When I think of a thing I like better about one, I can name something I like better on the other.
I like the Garand's trigger, but I like being able to access the Johnson barrel's breech for cleaning and I'd expect to be cleaning it more often than the trigger assembly.
I like the Garand's rear sight better, but the Johnson is quicker/easier to top off.
And so it goes.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Different means to the same end.
I love the Garand, have a few, and shoot at least one of them every range trip. But I got a Johnson mostly to see for myself how they compared. I haven't had the Johnson very long, but no clear cut "winner" is jumping out at me. The more I look, the less I expect one to.

[Gyrene]

One thing that the M1 Garand did do was to force the development of the .30-06 M2 Ball ammo. The M1 Garand had difficulties using the M1 Ball that all other US Miiltary .30-06 Caliber weapon handled very well, including the M1941 Johnson. At the same time the introduction of the M2 Ball ammo reduced the maximum and effective ranges of the .30-06 caliber weapons, which could be fatal to aircraft if you get hit before you can hit your enemy.

I had several friends who were Marines in WWII, who had carried the M1941 Johnson in combat. They said to me (not as a single quote, but in much the same way) the M1941 Johnson was very good, and they felt it was better than the M1 Garand they received when they had to give up their M1941 Johnsons. {Of course, we Marines have learned to make-do with what we got, and make it work despite what others may think.) We Marines still love our 1903 Springfields, too! Don't forget our romance with the M1 Garands!

I agree that as a drill rifle, the M1941 Johnson was at least problematical, however, that in no way indicates acceptability as a main battle rifle. What counts in combat is function with hits. If the rifle has problems, it will get you dead, quickly!

I still stand by my comment:
"My personal belief is that the War Department did the country a disservice in not at least adopting the M1941 Johnson as a secondary standard, much as they did for WWI with the M1917 Enfield."

Gyrene OFC

semper fi

[Jim K]

Hi, Gyrene,

I agree that the manual of arms isn't important (though it was to the military, including the Marines), but I still think the Johnson is awkward compared to either the M1 or the M1903. The Marines reportedly went into combat at "the Canal" confident in their M1903's and proud of their marksmanship with them. It didn't take them long after they obtained M1's to realize that the M1 was better.

It is human tendency to feel that what you are familiar with is better than something new, especially if the "new" is forced upon you.

On whether failure to adopt the Johnson was a disservice, we will just have to agree to disagree, and I promise not to arouse the other folks with further comments.

Jim