Paul has it in one. I had a brainstorm, (a rare occurrence here!), this morning and went to my storage area to check a box of surplus of chamber sticks I have. Low and behold, they are Israeli and all marked with the same marking that's stamped on the breech of the OP's rifle. That answers that question.

I think the same answer applies that I use for many unanswered questions Roger. There was a war on and many formalities were overlooked in the name of expediency, practicality and probably experimentation. The strange thing is that I've seen more "less telescope" Savage No.4T conversions than ones that were legitimately scoped and issued so maybe they were leery about putting them out in the hands of the troops in quantity. It appears most were sat in a rack someplace for the duration and they certainly aren't that rare. Their use or lack of may be for the reasons you state. It's hard to say. Peter Laidlericon told me that he'd never seen a Savage No.4Mk.1*T while working them in service. His book relays that and he admitted it needed to be rewritten with all of the new information gleaned in the past 20+ years. I think H&H were probably happy to receive rifles from everyone initially and as we know, the ROF Maltby, ROF Fazakerley and Savages more or less fell by the wayside because they wanted bodies that were consistently the same. BSA were the only ones accepted after the early years of diverse conversions, ('41-'42). It must have been quite a learning experience when they found that jigging up all of the different bodies with their respective machining differences became a production nightmare. It had to be simplified to meet the high quantities of rifles needed for the war effort and that's why BSA ruled the roost! Just my personal observation but I think it makes sense.