Red Star pics

[Terry Hawker]

[QUOTE=Rick the Librarian;114407]One thing that surprised us when we opened the two crates was that the rifles were not totally engulfed in straw, as we had been led to believe. As best I can figure, the rifles when they were packed in "bigger numbers in the UK, must have been packed in straw and grease. There were just the few flecks and pieces of straw (no wood shavings) on the rifles when we opened the crates.

Rick,

It appears that different types and quantities of packing materials were used in packing these rifles. Some of the first crates I saw open at Loren's were quite stuffed with this filler, but, never enough to prevent stock dings, unfortunately. I thought it was straw too, until I looked at it more closely and discovered it to be finely cut wood shavings. You can see some wood chips stuck to the rifle in the beginning of this thread. Not to say there wasn't any straw in the crates you opened, but, I think you'll find those thin strands of material stuck to the rifles in the photos you graciously posted are really very fine strips of wood. Not that it really matters.

Thanks much for posting the photo of the markings with the shipping address on top of one of the crates. This confirms the information I gave a very sceptical John in November of 2008, that these crates of rifles, had indeed, gone to Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

Best regards,

Terry

[John Beard]

Just out of curiosity does anyone know for a fact how Remington packed newly produced rifles?

TM 9-1270 indicates 03's, A1'a, A3'a and A4's were packed in "containers" of 10 rifles. The same manual speaks of three grades preservatives - Oil for short term, Light preservative compound for longer term storage and Heavy preservative compound (cosmolene ?) for dead storage.

Its always seemed to me to be sort of pointless to have put rifles in cosmolene if they would be shipped right to Camp Swampy and put in the hands of new recruits who would then have to take the godawful stuff off!

On the other hand I can see that some of the crates may have gone on an ocean voyage and even been stored outside until issued. Certainly all of the rifles surplus from WW1 would have been put up in cosmo or something like it.

Also wouldn't the factory shipping crates have contained brackets or braces inside to prevent adjacent rifles from banging into each other in transit?

Any rate if anyone knows it would be another piece of the puzzle.

Regards,

Jim

Remington rifles were packed 10 rifles/crate. The crates were made from wood and obtained from an outside supplier. The crate design had to be approved by the Army Ordnance Dept.

Although I have not knowingly examined a Remington crate, I very seriously doubt that Army Ordnance would have allowed the rifles to bang together.

J.B.

[John Beard]

Rick,

Thanks much for posting the photo of the markings with the shipping address on top of one of the crates. This confirms the information I gave a very sceptical John in November of 2008, that these crates of rifles, had indeed, gone to Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

Best regards,

Terry

Terry,

I have no recollection of having expressed skepticism that the rifles had gone to Wright-Patterson AFB. When the rifles arrived in the U.S., Capt. Willard Levin was stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB, which is in Dayton, OH. I clearly stated in a message on or about 12 November 2008 that the rifles arrived and remained in Dayton, OH.

You stated that the rifles followed Maj. Levin from duty station to duty station. I disagreed and stated that the rifles remained in Dayton for the duration of Lt. Col. Levin's military career.

The shipping label you cite confirms my statement. Look closely. The stenciled addressing ships the rifles via Wright-Patterson AFB from Dayton, OH, to Lt. Col. Willard Levin's retirement home in California. The rifles had been sitting in his brother's basement in Dayton all those years.

J.B.

[Texag45]

The rifles DID NOT follow Maj. Levin from duty station to duty station. John is correct that they were stored in a basement in Dayton, Ohio. Will Levin's next duty station was Eglin AFB in Florida and from there he was stationed in Los Angeles, CA where he ultimately retired from the Air Force. The rifles were shipped from Dayton to Los Angeles. Only one minor correction, the basement was the basement of his cousin, not brother, who was in the wine business in Dayton. As for wood shavings, I have never seen any. I'm not saying that some crates opened previously didn't have wood shavings. The two crates that I've seen opened, and quite a few rifles that I've seen that still had cosmoline and "straw" on them from crates that had been opened in previous years, certainly had no wood shavings.

[Garandrew]

TexaG45...I have a feeling he would know what hes talking about! :-)
Andy in CT :-) :-)

[Terry Hawker]

Terry,

I have no recollection of having expressed skepticism that the rifles had gone to Wright-Patterson AFB. When the rifles arrived in the U.S., Capt. Willard Levin was stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB, which is in Dayton, OH. I clearly stated in a message on or about 12 November 2008 that the rifles arrived and remained in Dayton, OH.

You stated that the rifles followed Maj. Levin from duty station to duty station. I disagreed and stated that the rifles remained in Dayton for the duration of Lt. Col. Levin's military career.

The shipping label you cite confirms my statement. Look closely. The stenciled addressing ships the rifles via Wright-Patterson AFB from Dayton, OH, to Lt. Col. Willard Levin's retirement home in California. The rifles had been sitting in his brother's basement in Dayton all those years.

J.B.

John,

It appears you and I have different recollections. Personally, I find as I get older my memory gets worse, so I do keep any e-mails that are interesting, as I did our past correspondence. I have no intention of getting into a silly, "I said, you said,..." spitting contest that would only demean us both. In that vein, when I made that comment in Rick's post, I purposely referred to you only by your first name, as I knew Rick would know what I was talking about, while the majority of readers probably would not.

If my remark offended you, that certainly wasn't my intention and I apologize.

Now that someone else has gotten into the fray though, I feel a clarification is in order. I made the remark I did because of your complete dismissal of the information I gave you, regarding the crate I saw at Loren's, plainly addressed to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. "Very sceptical...", was the most polite way I could think of to describe your attitude at the time - "complete denial", probably would have been more accurate.

As far as the infamous, "...followed him from duty station to duty station." statement you credit me with, my MKL article, as well as our private correspondence, plainly shows that this is something I was told by the selling agent.

Going from Wright-Patterson AFB, to the Dayton basement, is something that makes much more sense, now that I know you accept the fact that they did, indeed, go to W-P first. Now I can correct that statement in my article.

I do hope this resolves any lingering unpleasantness John.

Thanks for a fascinating, but, very educational, article, that so well fills in the backgound history of these interesting rifles and what they went through on their long journey to Red Star.

Best Regards,

Terry

[Terry Hawker]

The rifles DID NOT follow Maj. Levin from duty station to duty station. John is correct that they were stored in a basement in Dayton, Ohio. Will Levin's next duty station was Eglin AFB in Florida and from there he was stationed in Los Angeles, CA where he ultimately retired from the Air Force. The rifles were shipped from Dayton to Los Angeles. Only one minor correction, the basement was the basement of his cousin, not brother, who was in the wine business in Dayton. As for wood shavings, I have never seen any. I'm not saying that some crates opened previously didn't have wood shavings. The two crates that I've seen opened, and quite a few rifles that I've seen that still had cosmoline and "straw" on them from crates that had been opened in previous years, certainly had no wood shavings.

Texag45,

As far as the "duty station to duty station" comment is concerned, please see my reply to John.

"Wood shavings" and "straw" - Perhaps we are only discussing semantics here. "Wood shavings" does conjure up a picture of nice, wide, curling strips, rising up from a woodplane, I admit, so it probably isn't the correct term to describe what was in the five crates at Loren's. "Straw" is that hollow-tubed, dry plant product fed to animals - also not was in those five crates. If you are using "straw" as a generic term for that old packing material, much like we now use "peanuts" to describe the styrofoam packing material we use today, then you are quite correct.

It was mentioned that the latest two crates opened had very little "straw" in them, and, perhaps, that is part of the problem...Just not enough material to notice the difference. Some of the open crates I saw at Red Star were full of the stuff. As can be seen in the photos where it is stuck on the rifles, it consisted of bits and pieces of various sizes and fibers. The handfuls of stuff I saw in the crates were rather odd, usually white, rounded bundles of extremely thin fibers, strange enough to prompt, "What the heck is this stuff?" It was much too thin to be straw, wasn't hollow inside as straw is, and when I broke several strands in half, discovered it was a wood product of some sort. How it was made, I don't know, but I would guess it may have been produced through some shredding process of lumber scraps.

Whether this same stuff was used in all the crates, I couldn't say, but it is what was inside the Red Star crates, and, I see lots of it stuck to the rifles in the photos. Yes, some straw could easily have been mixed in with it in some of the crates, but I didn't see any in the crates at Loren's.

Regards,

Terry

[Rick the Librarian]

As Terry said, the material used to pack the rifles could have been a variety of things - to us, it looked like straw, but as he also said, it may be a matter of semantics. Here are two detailed pictures of a Remington from the collection in the 3,021,000 range, which shows the material we found.

The only thing I will say is that both crates we opened did not have any of this packing material around the rifles, just some of this stuff stuck to the rifles, themselves. Obviously, I cannot say what was in the 6 crates that made up the "Red Star" rifles.

[Jim Tarleton]

Looks like wood shavings to me.

Jim

[Texag45]

Terry, thanks for the response.

With regard to the rifles being "shipped from duty station to duty station," I certainly understand that you were told that and there should be no reflection on you whatsoever. My purpose in posting was simply to correct that notion, because it didn't happen. There have been things said and written about Willard Levin and about his importation of the Remington 1903 rifles that are incorrect. Some of these things are trivial and don't matter and I would put this "duty station shipping" stuff into the trivial column. Having said this, I obviously hate to see some of these things perpetuated, even though trivial.

Re: the "straw." I have never been real comforatble with the use of the word "straw" because, like you, I envision straw material being long straight stems that are hollow. I felt that the use of "straw" in the "Man At Arms" article was about the best description of the material that we saw without going into a long winded discussion of what it looked like. While I agree with Jim Tarleton that the photos posted by Rick seem to show wood shavings, what I saw mostly was dried grass that looked like it came from my Coastal Bermuda field. Coastal Bermuda is a grass that has long runners with branches of leaves and stems coming off the runners. Jim will certainly know what Coastal looks like.

While I'm picking around with corrections, as I recall, the sale though Red Star was 5 crates, not 6, and Will Levin held a few rifles back out of those 5 crates.

I find it strange that the crates at Red Star were packed full of "straw" when the crates that I have seen opened show only remnants of "straw" on the cosmoline of the rifles. The rifles were crated at the same time for shipment to Will Levin. They were shipped in two shipments, but the second bunch was simply held in storage at Pall Mall Depositories, London, until Will Levin directed them to ship. Why would the crates be packed differently? You could speculate that they may have been packed at two separarte depots, but I think that unlikely with an order of 200 rifles.