Inland RRA Rebuild, DCM Or Not?

I have a Inland Div. Carbine with a Inland barrel dated 8-43 with mixed parts but all USGI. It is almost as nice as any carbine I have seen. It has RRA inscribed on the left side of the stock. It is my understanding that Red River Arsenal ceased rebuilds in the 1960's. Could this be a DCM carbine? I am familiar with DCM carbines because I ordered one in the early 1960's. I had to sell it shortly after I bought it due to lack of funds. Any input that you all have inregard to the history on my carbine would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your help.

tspence35,

Welcome to the carbine forum. Can you post a little more information about your carbine. Serial number range. I'm guessing between 750,000-999,999. Do you have any pictures you can post. There is a picture posting tutorial up in the sticky section How do I show pics from Photobucket, Flickr, ImageShack etc. on milsurps.com?

Pictures might help tell us a bit more. Both sides and the sling well of the stock. Front end, internal parts. Trigger housing sides. Things like that.

We also have a search feature. You might find information regarding a topic using it. Look through old posts, we even have a classified section.

Look forward to some pictures and enjoy the forum.

Jim

Jim, Thanks for your reply. The serial # on my Inland is 2941xxx. The reason I haven't posted pictures is my computer crashed in August and my new computer uses windows 8 and I haven't been able to find a floppy disk drive thats compatible with windows 8. My camera is a Sony Mavica and uses the floppy disk to record pictures. Sorry for the long explanation and I know that pictures are important. All of the parts are good to excellent. Following is a list of parts.
rear sight, JAO
bayonet band and lug, KI
hammer, IP
slide, standard products
stock, springfield armory
trigger housing, inland
front sight, RIA
bolt, UN
Really a mixmaster but in fantastic shape.

About the same time frame Oct to Dec 1943. Barrels were made a few months sooner then used.

Maybe a mix of parts, but your IP hammer is worth some $$$.$$ Yep, three digits to the left of zero.

tspence35,

I have a Sony Mavica. I've had it probably 13 years or so. Do you have the floppy disk adapter and memory sticks? I use a card reader to get the images from the memory sticks to the computer. I also have an external USB floppy drive that I can use to read the disks. My computer is WinXP though, and I don't know if you can use the USB floppy drive with Windows 8. You've probably already tried all that, but just thought I would mention a possibility. Too bad you had to sell that old DCM carbine, but that "new" one sounds like a winner! - Bob

Bob & Jim
Thanks for the info. I bought a floppy disk driver from walmart and it was not compatible with windows 8 so I returned it. I've never used a memory stick, but will explore that possibility. I have had my camera for about 13 years. It takes great pictures. Tom

Try Staples.

Jim,
I checked most of the major retailers on the internet and they don't have a new external floppy disk drive that works with windows 8. I will keep checking. Again, Thanks

DCM or not? Who knows? The only way that I know of to find out is by contacting CMP and having them research their records. There is a fee for the service. They can confirm only if they have a record of it, but their records are incomplete. So if they find it, then the answer is yes. If they don't, it still could be but they don't have any info. Contact the customer service folks for further info.

Really not worth pursuing the DCM angle. If you have the original paperwork (typed in triplicate), &/or the original shipping carton, that would prove your theory (& increase the sale price). Lacking that, & being sure that there's no indication it's an import, value will be judged based on what it is.

Replace the Mavica like I did. (Broke my heart, it's a great camera.) When your computer moves beyond Win XP, the Sony software won't work, & no one else's will work either. You are out of options.

Neal

My older Mavica didn't have the card slot, so couldn't use "memory sticks" when Sony came out with them. The work-around was to use the "floppy disk adapter" that would accept the memory sticks. At that time, the adapter and memory sticks cost as much as a good camera does now. If you are a "die-hard" you might still be able to find the adapter and memory sticks, but they are fragile and slow. Back to the DCM/CMP carbines: I found out that one of my carbines was from CMP by "googling" the S/N. Google came back with a link to an auction that pictured my carbine! Not quite like having the papers, but I saved images of the auction hoping that it might give me an advantage when time comes to sell it. I doubt that this method works very often, though! - Bob

Thanks for all you folks help and information. I will post some pictures when I get another camera. Thanks again

The DCM carbines of the early sixties were sold off because they were deemed" unserviceable". This was because they had never been through an arsenal rebuild. I have observed many carbines that don't make "sense". They have a mixture of early and late features. Type one band and safety, but a late adjustable rear sight is common. Many with highwood stocks. The rear sights were often replaced at the unit level I am told. If you carbine has a rebuild mark then at the very least the stock has been though and arsenal rebuild. I have bought some primo highwood stocks from people who said the carbine it came from was a DCM. They just changed because they wanted a different stock at the time. The possibilities are endless. You carbine might be a DCM but will probably never be proven to be so. Anything is possible in the world of the M1 Carbine. I guess I should just say in my opinion you carbine is not a DCM. Others can disagree with everything I said but that's ok by me.

At the time there were still hundreds of thousands of them in storage, the units still using them like the Air Force and Coast Guard had all they needed and the racks were still full. The DCM sales are a major source for the late built Inlands and Winchesters which went to the racks brand new with adjustable sights but no type 3 band from the factory.

That is NOT why they were deemed unserviceable. It was because the Government no longer stocked parts for repair and maintenece. The firarm was no longer a fist or even a second line weapon at that time so armorers no longer had access to parts to service the carbine.

Mine is just like that one. My dad got it with a subscription to the American Rifleman NRA membership. Inland Rec and barrel, everything else from someone else. Well, front sight and recoil lug are "I"'s. Unfortunately it got "Bubbed" by me in the 1970's and the original stock and III barrel band are gone, plus the hole for the scope mount :banghead:. It is now back in 1960's trim with an M2 stock.

Dave

My recollection is that the carbines were sold as "Unclassified/Unserviceable", all sales final. DCM never bothered explaining the meaning of the terms, but I have no reason to doubt jimb16's definition of unserviceable; I'm guessing that unclassified meant "we never took the time to look at them, so you take your chances on condition". I have seen many that I would call "unissued since rebuild", & some that were "well used after rebuild". I'd be interested in hearing if anyone has actually seen a documented DCM carbine in "new" condition, as I never have.

I wouldn't say that carbines were obsolete in the '60s; my Army Reserve unit (92nd Field Hospital) had > 200 carbines beyond 1970, when I left. If there was a problem with one, we just tagged it, as we had been told they couldn't be repaired. We cleaned & oiled them after shooting them for qualification, generally every 3- 4 years.

The reason the DCM sales was cut short in the '60s is because some our command in Viet Nam was asked to supply them to the ARVN, as M1's & M14's were just too big & heavy for the South Vietnamese, the war was heating up. We were committed to arming all of our troops with M16's first, & the ARVN couldn't wait for them. I would guess that carbines were maintained by cannibalizing parts; tons of receivers were demilled by being cut in half.

DCM didn't have racks ---- of anything. DCM was just an office in Washington DC, with clerks, desks, & file cabinets. I know, I was there. After collecting paperwork & payment, they would send multiple copies of paperwork to a US arsenal for release (direct shipment) of a gun to the buyer.

Although a huge number of carbines were rebuilt after Korea, there's really no way to tell if a carbine was worked on then, or later.

Neal

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Originally Posted by GeorgeP

I have observed many carbines that don't make "sense". They have a mixture of early and late features. Type one band and safety, but a late adjustable rear sight is common.

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Might want to acquaint yourself with MWO ORD B28-3?

SUGGESTION: Don't worry about "Windows compatible hardware". Boot a live Linux CD. I'm pretty sure something like Knoppix will detect your "floppy". Then just copy the files to your hard drive for use by Windows 8 if you aren't willing to replace it permanently by a real operating system

I'm curious, what's a real operating system?

They had to have had parts available then as they were still used by the Army. The DCM Garand sales were for sure just issued out of whatever armory had them. Some I know of were just beat up NG guns issued out of RRA. Mine was a new white sack out of Rock Island.
Some guys in our club got NM rifles.

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Originally Posted by firstflabn

Might want to acquaint yourself with MWO ORD B28-3?

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Thank you for that. The way I read it , that supports my statement that rear sights were sometimes replaced with type three outside of arsenal rebuild where stamps would have been place on the stock.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GeorgeP

The DCM carbines of the early sixties were sold off because they were deemed" unserviceable". This was because they had never been through an arsenal rebuild. I have observed many carbines that don't make "sense". They have a mixture of early and late features. Type one band and safety, but a late adjustable rear sight is common. Many with highwood stocks. The rear sights were often replaced at the unit level I am told. If you carbine has a rebuild mark then at the very least the stock has been though and arsenal rebuild. I have bought some primo highwood stocks from people who said the carbine it came from was a DCM. They just changed because they wanted a different stock at the time. The possibilities are endless. You carbine might be a DCM but will probably never be proven to be so. Anything is possible in the world of the M1 Carbine. I guess I should just say in my opinion you carbine is not a DCM. Others can disagree with everything I said but that's ok by me.

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I'm quite sure that very many rebuilds/updated carbines were included in the sale. With very few exceptions, they had been used in WWII, updated/rebuilt, then used in Korea, possibly being redone again. These were simply carbines from long-term storage that were deemed 'surplus'. The use of the term 'unserviceable' was simply a means by which to surplus-out the carbines while satisfying the 'bean-counters'. They definitely were 'serviceable' in every respect. The same term was used to surplus-out thousands of U.S. pistols during the same period, some of which had never even been issued (the perfect late Remington Rands for example), along with the majority which were rebuilds.
So the term 'unserviceable' on these invoices has no meaning in the technical sense relative to suitability for use.

I read several decades ago that the "unserviceable" meant, the government was not going to order any future replacement parts to keep them serviceable at that time. Of course a few years later, Nam changed that and replacement parts were again ordered. Don't equate unserviceable with un-useable. I know we would but not in government-ease, as 44 said.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GeorgeP

Thank you for that. The way I read it , that supports my statement that rear sights were sometimes replaced with type three outside of arsenal rebuild where stamps would have been place on the stock.

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My intention was to buy time and follow up with an image of the first page of the MWO - but my 'piling' system has thwarted me yet again. Though nobody has turned up any sort of report tracking WWII progress on MWO-3, anecdotes from ETO unit histories (usually in Feb-Mar 45) establish that the process was initiated. With MWO-4 and -5 not coming until after VE-Day, there's room for carbines manufactured with flip sights to have adjustables - but retain their original mag catches and front bands (and not necessarily limited to the ETO).

With the early postwar chaos involved in the rush to peacetime normalcy and the massive budget cuts, I don't find it hard to accept the possibility that large quantities of carbines remained in the crates they rode back home in. Claims that almost all carbines were rebuilt post-WWII universally fail to include any support. Would be nice to find the hidey hole with the progress reports.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by INLAND44

The use of the term 'unserviceable' was simply a means by which to surplus-out the carbines while satisfying the 'bean-counters'. They definitely were 'serviceable' in every respect.

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Not according to Jerry Kuhnhausen (p. 147). Go read the part where he says: "Although many DCM carbines appeared to be in as-new condition, all were shipped with components that did not pass ordnance gauge inspection..."

Superseded parts were included in the 'other' category, fair enough. But the other three sections detail physical deficiencies. As an example he presents a photo of an as-new appearing trigger housing with a mislocated trigger pin hole that could present a safety issue (several other TG problems omitted for brevity).

Would a carbine with the potential for accidental hammer release fit your 'serviceable in every respect' assertion?

to the citizens with no warning thereof ? The original shipment tags state that the shipping division "weapon must be inspected prior to shipment" "Extreme care must be exercised that no unsafe or hazardous weapon is shipped".

How did DOD define 'unsafe' or 'hazardous' for these purposes?

Your label must be defaced, else you would have also quoted the part where it says 'as-is condition.'

Those magic words constitute a disclaimer as to fitness for a particular purpose, or at least it did in the 1960s before the lawyers invented product liability litigation.

I have it on a word document format and can't download to my photo server.
I says that the pistol: "This sale is final and the US Govt retains no obligation or responsibility for malfunction, repair, replacement or exchange"

Re Mavica and floppy. Try these links:

File Explorer doesnt recognise floppy disk drive. - Microsoft Community

USB Floppy Drives

Dave

The issue is that Flicker will only take JPG files this is on a Word doc.

I was doing some CC research and came across an issue from 2010 #359. The carbine of the month is a proven DCM sale carbine, a Winchester. Marty Black says it is new as built, it has a flip sight and type 2 band. Apparently they did sell some carbines that were new off the shelf and not rebuilt.

This carbine interested me because it was made the same day as my Winchester.

Not sure of the date, but Red River Arsenal (RRA) became Red River Army Depot (RRAD), and during the NRA/DCM Carbine sale in the 1960's you could arrange to pick your Carbine up at Red River Arsenal. They were still in the trapezoid shaped box when they brought it out to you.

As to the "UNSERVICEABLE" designation, the Model 1911 and 1911A1 pistols sold through the NRA/DCM in the 1960's were also classified as UNSERVICEABLE, but they were being maintained, and parts were being ordered for them. A small number of Remington Rand 1911A1's that were new in the original factory shipping boxes were sold during this time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DaveHH

I have it on a word document format and can't download to my photo server.
I says that the pistol: "This sale is final and the US Govt retains no obligation or responsibility for malfunction, repair, replacement or exchange"

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That wording is identical to that shown on a shipping document dated 1957 in Brophy's '03 book. And on the next page is a 1961 dated invoice with the same wording. For us non-lawyers, the different phrasing is equivalent and in both cases was probably enough to satisfy that era's government lawyers.

Would be interesting to find the 'unserviceable' definition in the document Kuhnhausen excerpted, but even that wouldn't mean that the standard was consistently applied.

In the TH example Kuhnhausen used, even his experienced eye didn't spot the misaligned hole until he looked down from the top and saw the sear wasn't laying where he knew it should. Would everyone doing these inspections have noticed that? Inspecting for four or five attributes really requires focus - doing a general checkout of a complex system is very difficult without a detailed checklist. Pretty sure that didn't happen here. Might even have heard the phrase 'good enough for government work' uttered a time or two.

Quite a few of the NRA/DCM pistols sold in the early 1960's were the Model 1911, and all that I saw were fresh from rebuild. They may have been in storage for a few years, but they had not been issued since rebuild.