Lend Lease Garands, Whats out there?

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WW2GURU

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How many Lend Lease Garands might be floating around in Canada? Very few threads on them here. I scored one a few years ago for a song even compared to todays Italian Garand prices. Looking back i don't think the seller knew what it was. I read that back when Garands were for sale in Hardware stores these were rejected by buyers because of the red band and British marks. Nowadays its flipped and these are commanding some big premiums as a hard to find variant with rare parts and originality. Curious how rare they are here.
 
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Tough to say, but they do exist. It's hard to ID them because many people believe that the application of British export proofs means its a LL rifle, when the Brit proofs may only indicate that it is one of many Garands which were re-proofed IAW British export laws prior to export sales.

Indicators of a LL Garand include lower s/ns, original/unmodified parts (the Brits didn't overhaul theirs), Brit export sale proofs and the tell-tale red paint bands which may or may not still be there. IDing LL Garands is a bit of an arcane art to say the least.
 
It's difficult to say exactly how many examples are in Canada, but I can tell you that I've personally observed perhaps half a dozen over the last five years? They certainly aren't easy to find, that's for sure. I think this is partially due to the fact that the majority of these rifles were exported back to the United States in the 1950s. Purple likely knows better than I, but I'm not sure that these were formally brought in by a Canadian importer, so it's very possible that the examples that do exist up here are simply one-offs that have somehow made their way across the boarder since the time that they were exported from England to the United States in the early 1950s.

Seeing this thread motivated me to go back and repair all of the dead photobucket links in a thread I posted back in 2016 which features my sole example of a Lend Lease.

https://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php/1368342-The-Crapiest-Garand

Cheers,
Chris
 
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Thanks for fixing those pictures. It’s good to see several examples of the markings. The more I research, the more detail about how these came back and through what companies sheds light on what might be more likely to be a lend lease. Interesting that the British proofs on the barrel chamber end were returned several years earlier than the ones with proofs near the gas cylinder. Another thing that has been mentioned is how the barrels should be close to new. My lend lease measures a 1 on both the throat and muzzle. There’s also talk about them having a small number or letter stamped into the sight cover which I’ve seen on several confirmed lend lease rifles either a "7" or a "P". I haven’t found the reason for that particular stamp and I haven't found any other original 6 digit British proofed rifles with such a cover. If someone could figure out the origin and dates of when certain batches returned through England you could eliminate which rifles are definitely not lend lease. Scott Duff spent years researching and going through files at Springfield Armory. You have to wonder what he came across or could have found with a little more time.
 
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Found a guy in the states that’s been compiling lendlease rifle data for years. He’s about to release the info to the GCA shortly. My own digging revealed several trials rifles and some examples in the MOD pattern room. Also found some info digging around the Springfield armory archives.
 
Another idea would be to find out what happened to the Canadian issue M1 Garand rifles and M1 carbines.
 
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