Another M1 Garand Question
I know we all have had the wish, "If only this gun could talk." In my collection is a Winchester that my research indicates was made in 1944. A lot of things happened in 1944-45 and later that involved these rifles. Are there any records still available as to where/who this rifle was issued? I remember reading a human interest story in an aviation magazine that described the closure of a WWII MIA P47 pilot. Near the end of the war, this pilot was flying tail-end Charlie with a 4-plane air support mission. When the group returned, there were only two planes with the last two guys gone and the other two guys didn't know where/when since they were concentrating on their own problems. Things in the ETO were pretty hectic at the time and looking for lost pilots in enemy territory was evidently not a high priority. Sometime in the 1990's, a couple of young German guys were messing around with a metal detector and it lit up. Scratching around, they turned up the remains of a couple of Browning .50's! They contacted the "Powers That Be" and they were able to come up with the serial numbers of the guns. It seems that very careful records were kept of where the .50's went. These particular guns had been installed in such and such P47 that went missing on such and such date with our young green pilot at the controls. His next of kin was notified and status was changed to KIA. That's a long sad story to ask if any such records were kept of Garands.
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I would expect the records might exist somewhere to tell whether the M-1 was issued to the Army or the Corps and possibly the division, but to get down to individual would be a very detailed search through a paper data base. 0 -
There is a company called Springfield Research Service that has in the past published books of serial numbers of various military individual weapons. It is not unusual on another forum to have someone post a serial number and ask for a SRS search. Several of us who have the SRS books will do searches at no charge. SRS will do searches, even involving research in the National Archives but it is quite expensive to go that route. Post or email me the serial number and I will check the books I have for you. The most you can hope for is a listing of when the rifle was sent to certain military organization or when it was received at Springfield Armory. As far as I know there is no place to go to get a chronological record of where the rifle has been. 0 -
Actual records are spotty at best and non existent in most cases. In addition to the SRS that Herschel has already mentioned, some folks ahve tried the freedom of In Formation Act to gain some insight into their M1's history. In nearly all cases the FIA records dealing with surplus firearms seem to go back only to the 1970s and mostly deal with weapons that were loaned to foreign governments and they returned to the US military or CMP. 0 -
I think you answered your own question in regards to the 50's there aren't nearly as many of those as there were Garands as well as the cost factor between the two. 0 -
Ambrose, I ran the number on my SRS book four and got no hit. There is a slim chance that the number might appear in books one, two or three but I don't have them. I tried to respond to your private message but the email would not go through. 0 -
Thanks for the try, Herschel. There's doubtless no way to tell, anyway, where this rifle has been. But with campaigns like Overlord, Market Garden, Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima, the war in Korea, to name a few, occurring after this rifle was built it's intoxicating to wonder what was its part in history. Of course it's just as likely it stayed stateside in a training camp. I inheirited this rifle from a friend. He bought it from his shooting club. I think the club got it from the CMP.
Thanks again.0
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