Q on Brit/Canada use of M1917's

[Too Much Coffee]

Does anyone have an answer as to why it was done...documented, not what some might think it was for? There has to be a documented answer???

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[PeterN]

My M1917 has the notch. I would like an answer also. I was told it was for a longer round used in Greenland, but that may or not be true.
Regards
Peter.

[Melanie_Daniels]

Does anyone have an answer as to why it was done...documented, not what some might think it was for? There has to be a documented answer???

Difficult, because it is privatly made. I bought the rifle from a Norwegian ex-wale hunter and he told me, that this was necessary for a special ammunition for wale hunting.

And most of the M1917, that were used in Norway, came from Canada.

[purple]

This is an old chestnut going back to the early CSP days. The Danes used the M1917 as a post-WW2 reserve weapon. It appears that some of these may have come from Canadian stocks which were aquired to arm reserve troops in Canada during the war. This is where the question arises about whether the receiver notch was a Canadian or Danish mod.

About 18 yrs ago I bought 3 ex-Danish M1917s,2 Rems and a Win. 2 of them had the notch modification while the other did not and none showed signs of previous Canadian ownership. I have also examined quite a few Canadian surplus M1917s over the years and none had the notch modification. I also have seen a WW2 Canadian training film on the M1917 and none of the rifles featured in the film had this mod. My conclusion is that this was a Danish modification which was done to some,but not all,of their M1917s.

It's hard to understand why this mod was done as clip feeding of the standard M2 ball round works just fine in the M1917. Remember that the rifle was designed to use the earlier WW1 standard .30-06 round which was even longer than the M2. If clearance on clip loading was found to be a problem then the millions of rifles in US service would no doubt have been modified to solve this problem.

[Melanie_Daniels]

I saw hundrets of Danish rifles without the notch. And most of Danish rifles came from Canada.