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Post Reply - Winchester, Not for Purists


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Topic - Winchester, Not for Purists
Posted: Sep 09 2020 at 11:34pm By JW6789
Backstory - My dad was in the Navy in the late stages of WWII. He sailed on the Landing Ship Dock USS Casa Grande on its last excursion, Sept. '45 to April '46. He was a Carpenter's Mate, worked in the wood shop. The Casa Grande had seen combat, but on its last voyage of WWII was behind the action, gathering up damaged landing craft and PT boats in the dry dock after the battles and ferrying them to the next port. It was a well stocked vessel and carried a lot of supplies, and a lot of time just sailing.

The wood shop did numerous projects - teak shower clogs, a box to slice up gun camera film into sizes to run in the cameras they weren't allowed to have (I have a lot of those pics - they could develop but not enlarge so all the prints are the same size as the negatives), fishing lures, etc.

But dad was into stock customizing. He did a bunch of M1 carbines, traded them to junior officers for favors. The war was basically over, everybody was glad, and they could shoot anything on the boat with no problems - use it up! By the time they were heading to San Francisco for the end of their tour, he had several M1 carbines customized. Just cleaning up the stocks and doing inlays of lighter colored wood, in '46 nobody was thinking of the collector value decades away. 

But he couldn't get them off the boat. So he bribed the guy in charge of the mail boat -  a boat met them in the harbor to offload stuff that was shipping off - to take his crates. He had 4 crates, loaded with M1s, ammo, tools from the wood shop (my grandfather, his dad, was a carpenter, too), you name it. I still have one of the crates and many of the tools, too.

The crates were loaded on a train and shipped home to my grandparent's house, beat my dad home. I don't know how many M1s were in there, but I know he gave a few away after he got home. He said he gave one to granddad but I never saw that one. I saw the one he gave my great uncle who lived in AZ - he died when I was maybe 12 and I don't know what happened to that one, either. But he had enough ammo to plink through the last of the 40's, the 50's, and I shot it up until the 80's. Still have some.

I know that real "bring home" M1 stories are rare, but I don't think dad was BSing me - he wasn't that way- and he would have had to get my granddad and great uncle in on the lie if it weren't true. No paper - face it, he stole the stuff.

That brings us to the lone M1 left that I have now. I doubt that he replaced any parts on it, he was proud of the story but the gun was just a gun and he was...frugal. The stock has no markings left on it that I can find, but the action appears to be mostly what a late Winchester would be except a couple of things that don't add up.

Serial Number on the receiver is 65742XX, clear Winchester stamp with TM above - both partially obscured by the adjustable peep sight (H in shield). Barrel has the PW stamp on it, flaming bomb on the gas port area. W stamps on hammer (type III), has a 7161843 slide - late production? But it has the little hole in the trigger housing by the mag release - late production? OK, but the mag well doesn't have the full length slots, just short slots that line up with the mag release, and that seems to be an earlier version design.  

Anybody ever seen a trigger group with short mag well slots and the little hole in the side? I guess it wouldn't be unheard of for him to have shot the life out of the original and stuffed another action in the stock, or maybe just replaced the trigger group with a re-pop short groove/hole added. The trigger housing has CWA stamped in it on the right rear side, the letters aren't aligned - the C and A aren't aligned with each other or the W.

It's late tonight, I'll get pics of the parts tomorrow. I don't really care about the verdict, I'll never sell it, but it's a mystery to be unraveled regardless. 

It's a great shooting gun. I remember shooting over a frozen reserve pit next to a drilling rig I was working on, guys were slinging bottles across the ice and I was picking them off one after another.

Thanks for any thoughts and I'll get some pics up shortly.

Here's a test pic, miserable pic my dad took on a film cam for insurance, the only pic I have right now.




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