African Carbines

[ssgross]

not hijacked at all. Did yours have a mismatched stock too? Barrel and receiver are about all the underwood I got.

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[arcamm]

Mine has a M2 stock with both pieces stamped "IO". No cartouche, a "P" stamped on the hand grip and a "MR" refurb stamp on the left side. It looks like it was cleaned by beating it on a sharp rock. No cracks that I've found so far.

[DaveHH]

I think that a lot of this stuff has to do with war time production. They were slamming these things out maybe 1,000 a day in some instances. Barrels were the big hang up. Inland was asking Ordnance if it was OK to use barrels that weren't perfect and they said "Yes". My Inland is an almost new example 8/44 barrel. It looks like a Colt 45 barrel, very shallow rifling. Looks like it was shot a lot and it was shot very little. NPM was using anything they could get until IBM sent them a bunch of really nice barrels in spring of 44.

If you read "The River and the Gauntlet" by SLA Marshall at the end he spends some time with Ethiopian soldiers and they were probably the best, most well trained and effective troops in Korea. It goes without saying that they probably had excellent rifle care, Marine Corp quality rifle care. I had a friend who was stationed in Ethiopia for several years in the Army. He told me that if you deserted from their army, they cut one of your legs off. Ethiopian air marshals would respond to hijackers by gathering towels and slitting the throats of the terrorists right on the airplane. They didn't have any hijacked airliners after that. Historically: Read "The Blue Nile" by Alan Moorehead, a fabulous read.