Those early LA Stocks

IS IT REALLY AN “LA” MARKING ON THOSE EARLY OVERTON STOCKS ?

 By Dan Pinto and Marty Black

Overton was the earliest supplier of stocks for the M1 carbine.  Any serious collector knows about the coveted "LA" marked stocks. Some of the earliest of the Overton stocks have 4 markings - ALL in the sling well, referred to by some collectors as the “Grand Slam”.

 

1. There is an "O" for Overton, the manufacturer.

2. An ordnance bomb, presumably the result of an inspection.

3. Once the assembled carbine was accepted by in-house ordnance inspectors or their representatives, the crossed cannon and belt logo (“cartouche”) was stamped.

4. The 4th item is what people commonly report as the letters "LA" or some variation thereof.

 

CCNLs 232-8 and 240-10 from October 1996 had a report from one of the members that was thought to shed some light on the mystery of LA.

The information that was reported was that Overton went out of business in 1993 and all stock-making machinery (carbine and Garand) was sold at auction.

It was also reported at the time of the auction that the stock-making machinery was still in place to include a "7,---" serial number inland receiver.

The author went on to say "In analyzing all the information obtained from the Overton sale.... it was determined that the chief Overton carbine stock inspector was a man named Lawrence Appleyard."

The author reported that he phoned Mr. Appleyard, and according to Mr. Appleyard, Overton did not know at first or was not informed, how to mark their stocks. So, Overton marked them with the Ordnance bomb and the letters LA (Lawrence Appleyard) signifying the stock had been inspected and passed by Overton.

 

Unfortunately, neither the CC’s Editor nor his staff vetted this article nor sought to corroborate this information before we published it. Although more than 25 years have passed, the Carbine Club now retracts that article as unverifiable.

 

The only verifiable statement in the article is that early on the Overton stocks went through several marking variations. This was probably due to Inland making marking adjustments due to changes in Ordnance Department requirements.

 

If an ordnance bomb was placed on the stocks at Overton, then it would have been done by an ordnance inspector at that plant.

 

Overton closed its doors in June 1991. The Herald-Palladium Newspaper of 05 April 1992 has a picture of Dan Mezak (VP) and Frank Overton (President) among the few remaining items. The article explains the demise of the company and the controlled liquidation to pay the creditors.

 

The sale of furniture it was making ended around August 31, 1991

The auction of the machinery took place on September 12, 1991.

 

According to the book by Grafton H. and Barbara W. Cook titled “The M1 Carbine, A Revolution in Gun Stocking" about the S.E. Overton Company, Inland Div. of General Motors, and the J.S. Richardson Company, the authors' state:

 

Edwin R. Appleyard was part of Overton’s office staff as Assistant Manager and Assistant Superintendent. He handled personnel work, war bond drives, arranged production and material schedules, and computed manufacturing costs. He is famously known to carbine enthusiasts as the guy who wrote all of the employees’ names on the 1,000,000th M1 carbine gun stock made by Overton, which is photographed on the cover of Cook’s book.

 

This book lists the names of all Overton employees and what they did. There is no other Appleyard to be found.

 

The person in charge of inspecting every stock was Howard J. Berkins. He would check every stock on a master gauge, designed and furnished by Ordnance, and visually inspected stocks for color, smoothness, and hardware assembly.

 

The surname Appleyard was quite uncommon in the United States from the wartime production years. Looking into Edwin's family tree, he had twin sons, neither named Lawrence. He had one brother, who had one son, none had a name beginning with “L”

 

Checking city directories around South Haven, Michigan, Edwin was easy to find, and he is the only Appleyard to be found.

Reaching out to our resident Private Investigator, the results were the same, no Lawrence or variation of the name to be found in the area. He added there were a couple of Lawrence Appleyards living in the US during WWII, but neither were involved with Ordnance nor living in Michigan.

 

Edwin R. Appleyard passed away on 10 October 1994. Assuming the author of the newsletter article did reach "Mr. Appleyard” in 1996, it was likely one of his sons that was still living in the area at that time.

 

We knew going in that a search for a Lawrence Appleyard might have been futile, as the stocks in question may not actually be marked "LA." In most observed examples, the cross-bar of the A is non-existent or very weak, leaving us to question whether that marking is a A with a damaged die, or if it is some other figure. The marking appears to be more of an L Λ. That mystery will continue until someone finds documentation on its meaning.

 

CCNL 333 discusses the Inland stock markings. We see that the L Λ marking first shows up after the first thousand or so stocks.

This marking group soon changed where the "O" became "OVERTON" for a very short period of time.

Next came the addition of the letter "I" which is now obviously for Inland.

This too was short lived as "Overton" became "I  O" (space emphasized)

We have no reliable data when the next change occurs, but the L Λ mark is gone and the spacing of "I  O" becomes "IO" for the rest of Overton production.

 

Ordnance realized that the new carbine would have many manufacturers and directed that parts that were big enough to be marked would be marked to show which contractor was responsible for that part. This way if there were failures, it would be easy to find the source.

 

Ordnance later made it clear that the prime contractors should assign a marking to their subcontractors for accountability, even though the financial responsibility lay directly on the prime contractors’ shoulders.

 

Looking at other early parts, the only other part that had just a subcontractor marking would be the first hammers used by Inland, type one H in a shield. This quickly became HI signifying the subcontractor and the prime contractor.

 

It is our contention, at this time, that the L Λ marking identifies Inland in some manner. It is unclear if this marking was applied by Overton or Inland.

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Edited by New2brass - Jul 02 2023 at 8:10pm

Dan awesome article! You gave me a good reason to pull my Inland 3446 out of the Gun Cabinet and look closer at its "Grand Slam" stockwell (shown below).  I've always thought it was an LA because that's what others had said and I really appreciate your continued education and now see that its actually an L Λ .

Edited by New2brass - Jul 13 2023 at 11:36am

I have 2 early stocks like this, one you already know, my #2676 here

My I cut - Hi wood - Inland stock is marked in the sling well:

HARLEY08 wrote: My I cut - Hi wood - Inland stock also has a boxed  NPM  FJA

Carbine Kid,

Those numbers in the sling well are 8711. Those are "European 1's." They are most likely the last 4 numbers of the receiver that was in that stock, previously.   See CCNL 353 page 21, in Jim's series of articles on the "Bavarian" carbines.

The Germans in general, specifically the post-war Bavarian Rural Police, loved to put the serial number or the last 2-4 numerals on the various parts of the USGI carbines they used. Even sling swivels, recoil plates and mag catches! This served no purpose, except to keep all these fully-interchangeble carbine parts together on the same gun :-)

This was probably a carryover from WW1 and/or WWII, when the parts of German weapons may not have been fully interchangeable. But I'm no expert on foreign weapons.

That's a really cool stock! If it could only talk and tell us it's story! Thanks for the great photo!

Regards, mb

Edited by sleeplessnashadow - Dec 21 2023 at 6:13pm

Can’t see the L, Dan! 

Yep, I just got it like that last month, it needs some more work actually, the owner had a stupid idea…