Lend Lease Garand data mining results

[WW2GURU]

I haven't found the following info collected in one place so here is what I have. Brian Case mentioned elsewhere he had collected info on 200 LL rifles and he was going to publish it but looks like that hasn't happened yet. I tried contacting him to solidify some of these findings but his online footprint seems to drop off December of 2017 and I haven't heard back.

Heres some info gleaned from usriflecal30m1.com so take it with a grain of salt. As I'm sure most of you are aware the data on here certainly has issues as it's user submitted. I would say that instead of the submissions being 90% lies I would say that its more likely 90% honest reports. The point was to look for high probability instead of hard truths and for the most part is limited to this particular site. I haven't added up the total number of reported rifles and I've only generally overlayed the serial ranges on production dates. This is what I found after some tedious searching:

Between serial blocks 300000 and 750000, which Scott Duff identifies as the lend lease range, there are high concentrations of reported serials and a noticeable drop off of serials after pearl harbour which is to be expected. Overall there are no serials reported as British proofed from 200000 up to number 310801. There are no British proofed serials reported from 719700 up to 900000 (I stopped looking after that). The first batch with many British proofed rifles appear in the 320xxx range. Then from 37xxxx-39xxxx. 406762 appears by itself and then only a half dozen appear in the 437xxx-470xxx range before hitting another batch in the 520xxxx-54xxxx range. After this there are maybe another half dozen. There are 3 serials (296824,293916,731946) reported as import marked but the country isn't reported so I've left them out. I know full well that there are rifles that exist out of this particular list but thats for the owners to add them to the site.

Mixed in with these are most, if not all, of the five .280 cal British conversion trials rifles from 1949. 4 of 5 of these are Lend lease serial range rifles. Serial 384273 is in the inventory of the Royal military college of sciences in the UK. Serial 670888 is in the inventory of the MOD Pattern Room in the UK. Serial 719700 and 2963441 (1944 rifle) are both in the inventory of the Springfield armoury museum. The last rifle serial 527568 is in private hands via auction as of Dec 2013. All 5 of these have documents and pictures supporting their existence. After reading several documents from Springfield archives and the MOD pattern room,
'I feel" that when the testing was done in the US in 1951, serial 2963441 was sourced and assembled at Springfield with a barrel supplied by the British and the other 4 were all modified in Britain.

I hope my highly speculative info is helpful and at least interesting.

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.

[Col. Colt]

Fascinating study - thanks for all that effort! Within the limitations of owner supplied data, you can still arrive at some good conclusions. For history to be known and preserved, it must be studied - usually by those who love it!
My oldest Garand is a 234,xxx rifle that, due to no overhaul and mostly correct parts may have been brought home from the US Army with service in Alaska. It is important to gather this info while there are still sources and interest - and put it into some form that will be preserved. Again, thank you for your efforts! CC

[RCS]

Some advanced Lend Lease M1 Rifle collectors only consider the later 1941 and early 1942 BNP proofed (at the rear of barrel under the operating rod) to be true Lend Lease early
rifles from the first group of 38K rifles. Also interesting is that you can find rifles in this same group with BNP proofs between the gas cylinder rings on the front of the barrel too.

[Bob Seijas]

Just a reminder that you are researching only the portion that came from new production. There were a lot of rebuilt rifles with earlier serials, of course.

[mrclark303]

Was there any issue of these rifles here in the UK?

Or did they just remain in store?

[RCS]

Attachment 95482I bought this Lend Lease rifle directly from Milt Klein many years ago. I may have fired around 2500 rounds over the years and kept this rifle original except for the removal of the red paint. The gas cylinder was always dark. Notice how Attachment 95478Attachment 95479Attachment 95480Attachment 95481the right side of the bolt and receiver ring also have the Lend lease stamp

[browningautorifle]

Was there any issue of these rifles here in the UK

There are actually pics of Commando carrying M1 rifles...

[Bob Seijas]

The lore says that some were issued to air base guards, but I have never seen any documentation. There are several references to Commando use.

[mrclark303]

Iv'e done a search for Commando use of the Garand, all the images I can find appear to be Korean War related, nothing WW2?

I would think that these Garands probably came from US stocks in country, as the RM's were working closely with US forces at the time. It would make sense that they had common weapons and ammunition supply.

[Gil Boyd]

I watched a very interesting programme about the Garand rifle yesterday on Quest and a compnay called Vulcan Engineering in the U.S bring a beaten rifle back to brand new, right through the whole sand beading and wood revitalised bit.
Fascinating. Anybody heard of Vulcan before in the States?