IHC rifles

["John Hofstetter" <hofs@domain.elided>]

Harvesters,
The publication of the California Rifle and Pistol Ass'n ,"The Firing Line"
had the following reprint from "The First Shot."

"Did you ever wonder why the United States Government selected International
Harvester to produce M1 Rifles as opposed to say Remington or Marlin? The
answer is quite simple if you are old enough to remember the early days of
the Cold War. The threat of nuclear attack figured largely in the national
psyche of the early 1950's. These are the same days that prudent familes
with the means to do so, built family bomb shelters using plans supplied by
the Civil Defense folks. 

You must remember that virtually all major arms manufacturing Companies were
located within a hundred miles or so of each other. Springfield Armory,
Marlin, Winchester, Smith and Wesson, Colt and even Harrington & Richardson
were located within an easy drive on a single afternoon. A major nuclear
strike would have wiped out all of our major arms makers; not a comforting
thought to the military minds of the day!

Rather than pick another major arms maker (like Remington or Marlin) the
government chose to diversify the location of their arms production to
insure the survival of at least one source of our service rifle. They chose
a company well versed in mass manufactiring techniques, but with virtually
no experience in arms manufacturing. In June of 1951 the International
Harvester Corporation of Evansville, Indiana was awarded a contract to
produce 100,000 M1 Rifles. IHC would go on to produce 337,623 M1 Rifes
between 1953 and 1956. The saga of IHC's production problems and subsequent
delivery of their assigned rifles is one of the most interesting in the
history of the production of the M1 Rifle. It would be possible to have a
very interesting collection of M1's and never have a receiver stamped with
anything other than the IHC logo."

The article doesn't deal with some big questions such as why didn't they
assign the rifle production to the Rock Island Armory, out in the
Mississippi River, which was already in production of war materials? But on
the other hand, what do I know about politics? Nothing, apparently!

John Hofstetter