Canadian Arsenals Spike bayonet

Afternoon all,

The one piece of standard issue kit omitted from my completed Maltby No4 rebuild was a Spike bayonet .... finally got round to ordering one the other day for £15 and to my delight and surprise I was sent an unissued absolutely mint Canadian Arsenals Mk2 Spike bayonet and scabbard still covered in cosmoline, RESULT!

I know they are still not worth a great deal in financial terms (who cares), but how very nice to have an example of the rarest of the breed to go on my Maltby:D

Has someone in Canada recently stumbled on a consignment of these I wonder??

You'll have to tell us where you bought it - we all want one! ;)

No problem, I bought it from the good people over at Chelmsford Militaria, I ordered a British coded WW2 Mk2, but this arrived instead, very happy indeed!

I bought a large ammo can of bayonets, scabbards and frogs from a Surplus guy nearby for about $3 each last year. The bayonets were directly from Canadian stock. Sure enough, I got my CA bayonet out of the bunch along with a mix of different scabbards.

This gentleman has some CA marked bayonets for sale.

bayonetsa_f

Is it true the only made 5k of them?

Apparently so, a very limited run of 5,000. I don't really see the requirement for it though, Canada must have had more than enough LB examples in store for the Korean war, or was it more a case of better do a trial production run, in case the war gets out of hand and we need to go into mass production again??

I suppose that must have been in the back of their minds as a possibility, especially when you take into account the rapidly escalating cold war at that time.

I must admit, I didn't know much about them until I cleaned off the cosmoline and checked the CA marking and read up, my initial "a little miffed" attitude, suddenly turned round when I realised..