Magazine Stored Loaded

[Rick H.]

Where does the "goop" come into the story? The OP said nothing about "goop" being present. Could these mags have been loaded at the factory? Perhaps, but probably not. Or maybe it was a trial or experimental program/decision to see how it worked out. 68 years after the fact who knows what may or may not have been done at times. If BAR mags were shipped loaded then why not M1 carbine mags. Seems like a pretty good idea if the mags were going into a combat A.O. Sort of like killing two birds with one stone. They not only shipped the needed magazines but shipped the ammo for them as well.

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[Patrick Chadwick]

Seems like a pretty good idea if the mags were going into a combat A.O.

It has been a commonplace of engineering knowhow for a couple of hundred years that a spring that is held for a long time under full load will tend to lose its tension and become "set". This is not a recent discovery.

So a delivery of preloaded mags would ONLY be a good logistical idea IF the magazines were expected to be used very quickly (max. weeks, not months) - i.e if they were being delivered into a combat area. If they went into storage, one would expect more and more loading/cycling problems as the springs aged under full load. I would therefore expect any supposedly factory-preloaded mags to be from a wartime period. IMOH, anything outside a wartime period would be implausible.

[USGI]

Where does the "goop" come into the story? The OP said nothing about "goop" being present.

Several members here frequent other carbine forums that have similar threads - I'm thinking the "goop" comments refer to something read on another forum. I doubt that anyone in our military was ever authorized to apply "goop" to loaded mags. Here's a link to one similar thread:
http://forums.thecmp.org/showthread.php?t=101741