This may not have seemed important in the late 1930s or early 1940s, but the dawn of the Atomic Age put it in an entirely different perspective. All of the more than 4 million M1 rifles that had been previously made by Springfield Armory and Winchester were manufactured within a radius of about 60 miles (the distance between Springfield, Mass., and New Haven, Conn.). One of the major reasons behind the government’s seemingly unusual selection of International Harvester to produce M1 rifles was the plant’s geographic location. Although the company manufactured vehicles-including half-tracks, trucks and tractors-during World War II, the firm had never made firearms, either civilian or military. In 1945, International Harvester bought the former aircraft factory and converted it for manufacture of farm implements and refrigeration and air conditioning units. The selection of International Harvester was, to say the least, a rather interesting choice. for production of the P-47 Thunderbolt fighter. The Evansville facility was built during World War II by the Republic Aviation Corp. The rifles were to be manufactured at the firm’s Evansville, Ind., plant with deliveries scheduled to begin in December 1952. granted a contract for 100,000 M1 rifles to the International Harvester Co (IHC).
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