User:Travis Collins

M14 Rifle

Development
The M14 was developed from a long line of experimental weapons based upon the M1 rifle. Although the M1 was among the most advanced infantry rifles of the 1940s, it was not a perfect weapon. Modifications were beginning to be made to the basic M1 rifle's design since the twilight of World War II. Changes included adding fully automatic firing capability and replacing the 8-round en bloc clips with a detachable box magazine holding 20 rounds. Winchester, Remington, and Springfield Armory's own John Garand offered different conversions. Garand's design, the T20, was the most popular, and T20 prototypes served as the basis for a number of Springfield test rifles from 1945 through the early 1950s Earle Harvey of Springfield Armory designed a completely different rifle, the T25, for the new .30 Light Rifle cartridge. The latter was based upon .30-06 cartridge case cut down to the length of the .300 Savage case. The .30 Light Rifle eventually evolved into the 7.62x51mm NATO and the commercial .308 Winchester round. Although shorter than the .30-06, the 7.62x51mm NATO round retained the same power due to the use of modern propellants.[8 ] In the background, Lloyd Corbett was tasked with developing .30 Light Rifle conversions for the M1 rifle and later the T20 prototypes. After a series of prototype designs, the T44 surfaced. The earliest T44 prototypes used the T20 receivers re-barreled for 7.62mm NATO, and replaced the long operating rod/piston of the M1 with the T25's shorter "gas expansion and cut-off" system. Later T44 prototypes used newly fabricated receivers shorter than either the M1 or T20; the new action's length was matched to the shorter 7.62mm NATO round instead of the longer .30-06.