M1 Carbine ID?

D

dbuffington

New member
Hi Folks!

Today, in the latest episode of "What the Heck Did I Buy?" we have an M1 Carbine I purchased at auction yesterday.

I'm a novice at military arms of all kinds, but here (I think) are the essentials ...

M1 Carbine
General Motors Inland Division
Serial 5380103
Rear sight marked "H.I."
Stock has no arsenal rebuild stamps
Round bolt
Side-by-side mag release and safety

You'll find a few images below. Any thoughts?

Thanks!
Dave

M1C1.jpg


M1C2.jpg


M1C3.jpg


M1C4.jpg


M1C5.jpg


M1C6.jpg
 
Looks nice!! The carbine is my favorite just for fun gun of all time. You can probably find an aproximate date block on the CMP site.
Take it out and shoot it.
 
Thanks! It's cleaning up very nicely. (Much of what I feared was corrosion was actually old, caked lubricant.) I haven't torn it down completely to check all of the parts, but it all appears to be USGI WWII original, dating to mid-1944.

And better yet, we have already taken it out to shoot, and it functions perfectly and groups nicely. I can see why this is your favorite :D

Thanks again!
Dave
 
It is not uncommon for a GI gun to have mis-matched parts. Armorers didn't care about collectibility. Their priority was to service and return a working gun to the gun on the front line. Even at the arsenal level, no nicety was practiced in matching parts. That wasn't even a consideration to them. Your M-1 Carbine is one such critter.
 
The rear sight and round bolt are upgrades but otherwise it looks pretty original, including the early sling.

The oiler is upside down.

Jim
 
The Germans and Austrians also removed the bayonet lugs prior to issue of M1 Carbines to the police forces in occupied Germany/Austria. So typically those guns were refinished with a glossy varnish, and have unit markings on them.
 
Yeah, it looks pretty "original" (that is, it has parts that are consistent with an earlish production gun - stock, barrel, push-button safety, lack of bayo lug - but no way to tell if they are original to the gun).
The overall condition is about like my Carbine, which has more of the "late" features, and came out of a government arsenal in the early '60s.
 
On those few carbines I have seen with the bayonet lug "demilled", the little rails were simply ground off. They didn't remove the type 3 band and replace it with a Type 1 or 2 band (where would they have gotten them?).

Jim
 
Respectfully I feel you'll find that bayonet lug barrel bands and also adjustable rear sights could be found as original equipment on very late WWII issued M1 carbines- it's just that it is rarely found and not really easy to prove on a carbine by carbine basis

If the receiver is Inland, there's a chance that the s/n had to be re-struck just behind the bolt, as the adjustable sight obscured many Inland s/ns.

The presence of a re-struck s/n on an Inland is a fairly good indicator that the rifle received arsenal overhaul

Four rivet handguard is 'late'. Stock shows signs of sanding, very long ago. WWII type 'straight belly' stock

It is a fairly late s/n but has a push-button safety, which is kind of odd. That s/n would be summer 1944, I believe. By this date, the push-button safety should have been changed to rotary type

Looks like round bolt, which would also be odd for a 'WWII' carbine, but the USGI carbine was only made during years in which WWII was fought, so in other words, that could be an M2 bolt potentially. I'm no expert, just knowledgeable but the classic 'WWII' bolt is the 'flat top' type

Nice carbine, I would own it in a heartbeat. May be put together from different parts from different carbines, which is not unusual nor "bad". US military rifles and carbines like this had parts mixed during their service life

Do you know how to field strip it?
 
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