Presentation M1A1 ?

[Rabbit57]

Cool gun, interesting story. It could go either way, but I still think you are lucky.

 

Mark

[Doug Quaid]

That is a nice gun, thanks for posting the pictures.

Sometimes gun collectors and dealers will mark guns with "special" stuff in order to pump up the value.  

Some of it is very clever and well done, and some of it is pretty silly.  The more "interesting" and noteworthy these markings are, the less I tend to believe them.

For example, if this gun just had a rack number banged into the stock with hand stamps, I would have no reason to suspect that it's fake.  If it had someone's initials scratched onto it with an engraving pencil, same thing - 99% chance of it being authentic.

But the fact that the engraving is about the rangers and D-Day makes it very very suspect to me.  

There is ZERO chance of that engraving being done at the factory.  During the war, the factory would have been working 3 shifts and staffed by a pack of screaming maniacs who are trying to meet impossible production quotas.  

During 1944, every factory in the USA was running at full capacity, 24 hours a day, and half the men in the USA were in uniform, so they scraped the bottom of the barrel for factory workers.   When they set up the factory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee to refine uranium for the atom bomb, every Saturday morning the garbage cans around the factory would be full of dead bodies, because the workers got paid on Friday and they all gambled and fought and knifed each other.

My grandmother ran a sewing machine at a wartime factory, she said everyone got sick as a dog with some flu, so all the women just stuffed tissues up their nostrils and worked the machines with tissues hanging out of their nose.

You think that in the middle of this crazy 24/7 mayhem, that the factory is going to do custom engraving job on a gun that was sent home by a soldier?

The fact that the engraving is old doesn't mean anything.  They have been faking gun markings since the 1950s.  It's very easy for someone with a machine shop to take an Old West rifle and turn it into a rare cavalry carbine, and that kind of fakery became a cottage industry.

Also, they didn't give the guns to the US soldiers to keep.  Just because you got issued a gun didn't make it your property.   If you found an enemy weapon, there was a paperwork process to take it home as a souvenir, but as far as I know there was nothing like that for US issued weapons.

My vote is that the engraving is some past owner's not-so-clever idea to make the gun more interesting.




 

Edited May 28, 2023 by Doug Quaid

[TSMGguy]

To my mind, OMAHA 6th JUNE 1944 is not quite the syntax an American would have chosen. It would have been 6 JUNE. Also, OMAHA and OMAHA BEACH are two different things.

There is no chance that these additional markings were done at the Savage factory.

[Rob442]

On 5/28/2023 at 3:22 PM, TSMGguy said:

To my mind, OMAHA 6th JUNE 1944 is not quite the syntax an American would have chosen. It would have been 6 JUNE. Also, OMAHA and OMAHA BEACH are two different things.

There is no chance that these additional markings were done at the Savage factory.

I hear what you are saying but it is nothing more than your personal opinion, I do not believe it is possible to say  for sure that there is no chance these markings were done at the factory.

Unless someone has personal knowledge of this particular gun together with proof that these engravings were added recently then anything is possible. 

 

[Rob442]

On 5/28/2023 at 5:18 AM, Doug Quaid said:

That is a nice gun, thanks for posting the pictures.

Sometimes gun collectors and dealers will mark guns with "special" stuff in order to pump up the value.  

Some of it is very clever and well done, and some of it is pretty silly.  The more "interesting" and noteworthy these markings are, the less I tend to believe them.

For example, if this gun just had a rack number banged into the stock with hand stamps, I would have no reason to suspect that it's fake.  If it had someone's initials scratched onto it with an engraving pencil, same thing - 99% chance of it being authentic.

But the fact that the engraving is about the rangers and D-Day makes it very very suspect to me.  

There is ZERO chance of that engraving being done at the factory.  During the war, the factory would have been working 3 shifts and staffed by a pack of screaming maniacs who are trying to meet impossible production quotas.  

During 1944, every factory in the USA was running at full capacity, 24 hours a day, and half the men in the USA were in uniform, so they scraped the bottom of the barrel for factory workers.   When they set up the factory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee to refine uranium for the atom bomb, every Saturday morning the garbage cans around the factory would be full of dead bodies, because the workers got paid on Friday and they all gambled and fought and knifed each other.

My grandmother ran a sewing machine at a wartime factory, she said everyone got sick as a dog with some flu, so all the women just stuffed tissues up their nostrils and worked the machines with tissues hanging out of their nose.

You think that in the middle of this crazy 24/7 mayhem, that the factory is going to do custom engraving job on a gun that was sent home by a soldier?

The fact that the engraving is old doesn't mean anything.  They have been faking gun markings since the 1950s.  It's very easy for someone with a machine shop to take an Old West rifle and turn it into a rare cavalry carbine, and that kind of fakery became a cottage industry.

Also, they didn't give the guns to the US soldiers to keep.  Just because you got issued a gun didn't make it your property.   If you found an enemy weapon, there was a paperwork process to take it home as a souvenir, but as far as I know there was nothing like that for US issued weapons.

My vote is that the engraving is some past owner's not-so-clever idea to make the gun more interesting.




 

I don't believe I ever suggested that these markings were done at the factory during the war but soon after.

The title of my post suggests that it could be a presentation gun, possibly to some town, dignitary or similar so not necessarily an individuals personal weapon.

Nobody can know for sure unless further information turns up, until then, anything is possible. 

 

[M40scoutsniper]

Ahhh… Rangers… So I recently just left the 75th Ranger Regiment for my next duty station and more specifically I left 3rd Ranger Battalion. I love to collect WWII Ranger goodies, OSS things, learning about their training and so on. Through my skulking around unit histories and such I have found that “Rangers” were not just limited to the traditional Ranger Battalions that we think of during WWII. Funny enough I am now assigned to the 1st Infantry Division out at Fort Riley, KS. 

Units love nicknames and people love being associated with anything that will set them apart from the pack. We still do it today. Whether it be the Earth Pigs, The Walking Dead, or so on. The Army in general looks at anything with the word “Ranger” in it as different or better than other organizations. I won’t get into the whole Ranger School vs Ranger Regiment thing 🤣🤷🏻‍♂️. But it is… “of MY Ranger Regiment!” If you know you know.

Any who! Sorry I was getting sidetracked. So multiple Divisions had “Ranger” courses. For example… 2nd Infantry Division had a “Ranger Battle Course” and graduates wore a black circle patch with a skull in it on the sleeve of their Field Jacket.

They weren’t in a Ranger Battalion, but I would be willing to bet that many of those fellas called themselves Rangers. Just like Ranger School graduates today call themselves Rangers even though they may have nothing to do with the 75th Ranger Regiment or special operations. Now, in regards to 1st Infantry Division Rangers… here is a little cut out from some 1st ID history…

It very well may be that the 16th Infantry Regiment decided to adopt the nickname of “Rangers”. Now as far as the Thompson… Who knows? It could be a thank you gesture from 2nd Ranger Batt. It could be something the 16th Regiment had made up post D-Day. Or it could’ve been a One-Of-One sorta deals where someone from the 16th Regiment had their Thompson engraved in Theatre? Regardless! Super cool and unique! Forgive me everyone for such a long winded post. Happy New Year by the way!

Respectfully- Chris

[StrangeRanger]

So there were Rangers and there were "Rangers."

I'm a little confused.  2/16 would have landed on the eastern end of Omaha Beach near Colleville.  Pointe du Hoc is on the western end.  The Rangers who assaulted it and those who landed next to them on Charlie would have had their eastern flank held by units of the 116th on Dog Green at Vierville.  I know a lot of units landed on the wrong beach but the currents and wind generally pushed units eastward from their assigned zones.  A good number of 116th units landed in the 16th's sector as a result.  It seems extremely unlikely that 2/16 would have missed their assigned beach a mile or so to the west and nothing that I could find showed 16th units in the 116th's sector.

Found a better map

2/16 landed in their assigned sector Easy Red, roughly in the middle of Omaha and drove deeply inland circling behind and trapping the German forces in Colleville and therefore securing the eastern end of the entire Omaha Beach position. So they pretty much saved everyone's ass including the Rangers by preventing the Germans from collapsing that flank.

https://de-academic.com/pictures/dewiki/79/Omaha_beachhead_6_June_1944.jpg

Edited January 2 by StrangeRanger
Found more info