Deactivated Czech Brno Bren

[Flying10uk]

I noticed this EU/UK deactivated Czech Brno Bren for sale on the Saracen Exports website. Interesting as it would appear to be ex Irish army and it has the "FF" marking. I'm assuming that originally this would have been UK army and in .303 calibre?

BRNO ZGB (Bren) 1937 S/N 222 - Saracen Exports

[Surpmil]

At least one Enfield examiner's mark there.

I see they can't ship bayonets out of the UK; I would have thought Nanny would be keen to have them leave.

[Peter Laidler]

It looks to me as though the barrel, numbered to gun 222 was from a trials CZ gun supplied for the Bren trials. The FF mark..... Is that an Irish Free State marking? Interesting to see the rest of it, in particular the flash eliminator part as originally, these were made so as to be unscrewable and replaced with a BFA via an ingenious but complicated method.

They also had the ill fated and farcical oil bottle in the pistol grip screw thing! Waste of time........

[peregrinvs]

I see they can't ship bayonets out of the UK; I would have thought Nanny would be keen to have them leave.

The laws on buying and selling blades within the UK are becoming increasingly Byzantine, but I’m not aware of any law that explicitly forbids exporting a bayonet. What happens at the receiving country is another matter. It’s probably their own self-imposed rule for administrative convenience.

---------- Post added at 08:28 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:23 AM ----------

EU/UK deactivated

What a shame. (Note the blob of weld on the left hand side of the receiver immobilising the receiver locking pin) In that state it’s not worth anything like £1K of my money, but other people’s mileage may differ.

[desperatedan]

These guns have been around a while. A batch (all of them?) surfaced about 8 years ago on the deact market. I've got number 198 (deact but not latest EU welded solid thankfully). Each gun originally also had a spare barrel numbered to it and these were sold separately - a different dealer from the guns had a batch of the barrels but sadly I missed the one for my gun, so if anyone has spare barrel number 198 I'd love to hear from you!

The story seems to be that they are ex-Irish (hence the FF markings) that were originally supplied ex the UK to Ireland (possibly following trials and the subsequent UK adoption of the Bren). When the Irish subsequently adopted the Mk3 Bren they then used these Czech guns for DP purposes. This site has more on the alleged history of these. The Trials Gun Dunkirk 1940 - The Before, The Reality, The Aftermath

Here's one of the milsurps threads from 2017 about these deacts https://www.milsurps.com/showthread.php?t=59837

[Peter Laidler]

The Trials Gun Dunkirk address is now extinct. Would be interested to see/read t.

[desperatedan]

Hi Peter, that address link seems to be working again. If not I’ll try and get the text from it to post here once I get back to a desktop pc.

[MGMike]

Given the critical shortage of Brens in 1940, one has to imagine that any transfer to Ireland occurred much later, or even after, the war.

M

[Flying10uk]

I took the article to imply that the transfer occurred pre WW2 in the late 1930's before the fall of France in 1940.

[MGMike]

That may be what the article says, but to me it seems doubtful.

M