Awesome man... Any details....?! Is it a Springfield...Did you run the serial number to find the Month/Year it was made ? did he get it through the CMP...private sale ? Details man...we need details !!
IDK...I just got it. It is a Springfield. At some point Dad re-stained the stock, but you can still see the Springfield crossed cannons logo in the wood, and stamped on the reciever. Dad fired one while he was in military school as a youth, and decided to buy one for himself years later. He's had it since the fifties. He bought it at a gun shop in TN, and it was still "caked with grease". I just recently moved back closer to home after a seven years of service in the AF. That's when he gifted it to me. Pretty cool, huh? Any tips on running the serial number?
This just in! According to these sites: http://oldguns.net/sn_php/mildateslookup.php?file=us_m1grndsp.dat The year of manufacture for serial number 5XX1XX is 1942! http://parallaxscurioandrelicfirearmsforums.yuku.com/topic/31905 This one says between Feb. & March of 1942! Cool.
Same thing on this site. February/March 1942. Would not it have been issued since that was WWII? Did they not issue all Garands that were made?
As far as I know, a vast majority of the Garands made around the start of WW2 were issued, and at the end (if they weren't left in depots in/around the battlefield) they were repacked for issue to Korea. Sliding into Vietnam brought the M16 and rising demand for the M14, so a lot that were packed stayed that way. I recall having been (several times) into a nondescript warehouse building a Camp Emilio Aguinaldo, the headquarters post of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and in this building, literally dumped on the concrete floor, were thousands upon thousands of M1 Garands and BARs and other weapons left over from Liberation (1945), and all were eventually (officially) sold for scrap iron, literally just melted down, depot maintenance kits and all. Unofficially, I am certain (but cannot prove) that some of them escaped destruction....wish I had one of those.
Are there other places to look for stampings/serial numbers? Could mine have been re-barreled or something like that? Should it have matching serials on the barrel, or bolt? I used the serial number on the back of the upper receiver to determine that date. Just curious.
Drop in here and say hello: http://www.surplusrifleforum.com/viewforum.php?f=194 Congrats my Garand is a Dec 43 build.
beast mode You mean that beast in the photo? No, he's been around a long time. I wanted to post a pic of beauty and the beast. He's quite a handsome beast though, if I may say so myself.
Thanks Thanks, I figured GlockForum guys would get a kick out of it, I'm glad that I was able to share. I probably hang on to it another forty or fifty years, and do the same thing for my son or daughter.
