"The Last of the American Enfields"
I recently acquired a Remington model 720, supposedly the last attempt by Remington to build a sporting rifle on the American Enfield action. Only a few thousand of these rifles were built before the war and I have been looking for one in original guise for quite a while. As most here know, most of these rifles were in "SPRINGFIELD, 30 CAL. 1906" (AKA .30/06), with a hand full in .257 Roberts and a few dozen in .270. As the story goes, at the start of the war, the Navy Dept. bought up all the unsold .30/06 720's, amounting to 1,000 rifles +/-. Mine is apparently one of those, with the crossed cannons and the FJA acceptance stamp. We know that, after the war, the Navy awarded some of these rifles, still in the box with sling, etc., as shooting match trophies. I have always been curious as to what was the original intent the Navy had for procuring these rifles. Certainly there must have been thousands of model 1917's in government storage that would have been more useful for any military purpose than the 720. Has anyone ever heard of 720's being issued anywhere?
