MAS 36/51

Oui, c'est cela.

However, I have to admit it's one of many things I've never seen in person, gun-wise. I suspect the reason is there simply weren't all that many made. It was presumably for airborne use, although American weapons were widely used by the French during that period, particularly M1 carbines, which in fact, other armies used as well. I'll bet the MAS-36 folding stock carbine was easily as pleasant to shoot as a Model 38 Mosin-Nagant.

Someone said they didn't think the rear sight was adjustable. I had one for a while and I'm pretty sure it was adjustable, although my memory of it is not particularly vivid. I do remember the peep sight being on the very small side.

Another form of rifle that, in theory, should be around in greater numbers is a Mauser cavalry carbine. Not the short rifle but the carbine. But I think they're all of WWI or earlier manufacture, since that sort of weapons kind of went out of fashion around that time, being replaced by the all-purpose short rifle. In any case, I think I've seen a grand total of one.
 
I saw a folding stock MAS 1936 at Sarco years ago. Interesting concept, I wonder how practical and if like the M1A1 Carbine was it was regularly issued.
IIRC the the windage on the MAS1936 is adusted by substituting a peep with the desired amount of offset.
 
That folder has some amazing engineering behind it. Lot of work in that, right down to the shorter bayonet. That would be something to find.

Thanks for that link Mike.
 
While I have no definate information on the subject of the folding stock MAS-36, they were issued and used in combat. Some things do get produced, issued but sit out most of their lives in a box somewhere, only I don't think that was one of them. I doubt they were produced in great numbers. But for that matter, how many M1A1 carbines were made out of the total number of carbines?

Another similiar weapon was the Mosin-Nagant cavalry carbine produced for the Finnish Army. They manufactured it only for the use of mounted units, so not very many were made but they were "regularly" issued. They would be rare.
 
To throw in a little additional info on those rare Finnish cavalry carbines, which were actually short rifles, here's what I got from a site called "Jaeger Platoon."

There were only 2,200 M/27 cavalry rifles manufactured. I guess that's all they thought they needed. Of those that were still around after the war, 304 were sold in 1960 through Interarms. The remaining that had not been lost in battle were destroyed (as not worth saving) in 1944 but the metal parts were sold as scrap metal, to who, it didn't say. Behold, some of those parts ended up in new stocks and being sold as genuine M/27 rifles, which in part, they were, but in part, were not. Buyer beware.

Another interesting carbine was the Swedish Mauser carbine, which may have been a M/95 (and I'm not going to look it up). I've seen all of one, though they were in a lot of magazine ads back in the early 1960s. As they were made, they were a shade under the legal limit. So rather than throw them back, the importers added a barrel extension of a half-inch or so.
 
I remember when Numrich Arms had the stocks (Aluminum) for sale. They must have made quite a few if they got a hold of a supply separate from the rifles ?
 
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