Where did all the enfields go?

I bought a stone mint No5 JC for $18.00 back in 1962. I installed a Bishop buttstock, Weaver T01 scope mount and away we went. It has gotten me a few truckloads of deer, incl my best Whitetail, a moose, and a bear over the years. Money well spent. See, it pays to be old after all.
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Just bought a No1 mk3* with the same set up!!, Ready to go deer hunting this fall.

Also,There are a lot of enfields still out there, Military ones just cost more than they used to. Both my grandpas had them. One sportered a No.4 for hunting, and the other kept a Military one for self defence up north.
 
Many years ago, I had a patient in the hospital who was a retired Canadian naval diver. He told me that when the war was over, the Canadian gov't had a large amount of surplus equipment they wanted to dispose of (including many new Longbranches & other makes of Enfields), so they were "dumped" as fill in Lake Ontario close to Toronto. The story goes that a buddy of his was a gun efficiando and couldn't bear to see these pieces go to waste, so at the end of a "days dumping", he scuba-dived into the area and rescued a dozen or so pieces......where are they today???? Who knows, but at least they're not at the bottom of Lake Ontario !
 
Frontier Has a lot of No.4 Enfields on there website, most of them look a bit rough, but there's a few good ones. They say there the last from the importer,

Anyone know where these No4 Enfields came from?
 
When you see the ramp lowering at Juno and those young Canadians rushing forward into the water and crack of supersonice 7.92 rounds, with their No4s, this is why I have to have at least one! And people who don't even understand who they are right now let alone where they came from, might tell me I can't own one, but I think not!

Sorry off topic but yesterday was June6th and the stories of the Battles of the summer of 1944 for Canadians in Normandy, I never tire of.:canadaFlag:
 
JP said:
India, Pakistan, Turkey.
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The Turks used just about any kind of "hand me downs" from the various NATO militaries. When I visited the Army Museum in Istanbul 21 yrs ago the gate guards were carrying No4s. I did some travelling up along the Russian and Iranian borders in NW Turkey in 1989 and was amazed to see a re-incarnated 1945 vintage US Army-old wartime deuce and a halfs, 155mm Long Tom guns, and M1A1 Thompsons.:eek: They were even the recipients of our largesse in terms of Canadair Sabres and CF104s (saw them at Diyarbakir). The story goes that our 9.2 inch coast artillery guns from Albert Head (Esquimalt) were "gifted" to the Turks in the 1950s. My father would have been interested in seeing where the guns that he crewed at a point in WW2 finally wound up.:eek:
 
Just to rub it in a bit, I bought a really nice Savage No. 4 at the Regina 2010 gun show for $80. It came with a magazine, stock was cut, but the barrel was original. Matching bolt. :)
 
Where did all the Lee-Enfields go?

Well, the Army released some at the end of the Second Boer War (1899 - 1902) and Bubba has been hacking the poor things up ever since. That was back when all Bubba had was a hammer and a hacksaw.

Today, Bubba has air tools and side-grinders, so he can wreck them just as fast as they hit the market. Over the years, I have seen his work on Sniders, Martinis, Mausers, Mannlichers, Vetterlis, Werndls, Beaumonts, Springfields, Carcanos, Vergueiros, Schmitts, Lees, Rosses, Spencers, Sharpses and just about anything else you can think of. His latest efforts seem to be in the line of Moisins and Simonovs, so, if you want one, better grab it now. I even saw the rarest of them all - an Armaguerra 39 - after he got done with it.

I just wish someone would show him the wonderful opportunities for home gunsmithing which the C7 and C8 afford!
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falaisegap44 said:
Many years ago, I had a patient in the hospital who was a retired Canadian naval diver. He told me that when the war was over, the Canadian gov't had a large amount of surplus equipment they wanted to dispose of (including many new Longbranches & other makes of Enfields), so they were "dumped" as fill in Lake Ontario close to Toronto. The story goes that a buddy of his was a gun efficiando and couldn't bear to see these pieces go to waste, so at the end of a "days dumping", he scuba-dived into the area and rescued a dozen or so pieces......where are they today???? Who knows, but at least they're not at the bottom of Lake Ontario !
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Yes, same thing happened elsewhere at a Canadian government facility; everything left over after a refurbishment plan ended was dumped in the harbour. The guy who told me fished some out; parts only that is.
 
RRCo. said:
Yes, same thing happened elsewhere at a Canadian government facility; everything left over after a refurbishment plan ended was dumped in the harbour. The guy who told me fished some out; parts only that is.
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The same thing happened to a lot of ammo. Don't know what's happening nowadays, but 20 yrs ago we were still getting EOD calls on PIAT bombs washing up on the shores of Georgian Bay or getting caught in fishing nets. Over the years the original cases deteriorated and broke up causing the bombs to float up due to buoyancy from the void in the shaped charge heads.
 
Notwithstanding rifles and ammo, it's a shame to see how we value articles over time. When WW2 was over, planes were being scrapped, buried, pushed into the sea, used as chicken coops and storage sheds, anything to get the massive quantities of them out of the way. Fast forward 60 years, and Spitfires and Lancs are very popular draws at airshows. Sherman tanks wound up as farm tow-tractors, army range targets, etc, but are collectible again. More recently, the CUCV, Iltis and now the MLVW trucks I used to drive are being sold off. Folks won't really appreciate them until 50 years from now.

It doesn't surprise me that so many firearms were destroyed, not to keep the public from getting them (as they WERE for sale to the public), but just because the perceived demand at the time was not nearly equal to the stockpiles.

A shame, but without this reality, we'd never throw anything away (and I don't mean the fellows with their own private junkyard of every car they've owned, at the back of the far field :)
 
At the end of WW2 American troops coming back on aircraft carriers were told to pile their rifles on deck, they were then pushed overboard.
Jeeps on the Islands were driven into the sea.
I remember seeing a pic of lines of P-40's at a smelter in Arizona with the engines removed, standing on their noses, ready to be melted down.
 
Turkish Artillery

A lot of the 25 Pounder Gun-Howitzers ended up in Turkey after the Canadian Field Artillery Regiments changed over to the American 105 mm Howitzer somewhere around 1960.

When I first moved to Alberta in 1974, there were all kinds of Ansons parked in fields. They are gone now.

A man I worked with had been the Commanding Officer at an Alberta training base. After the war, the farmers (if they were smart) would buy the surplus Ansons, (after leaving a bottle or two of booze,) and their aircraft would arrive with full fuel tanks. They mixed the avgas with water and ran their tractors on it.

These aircraft had all the instruments removed, except the airspeed and altimeter, and after landing a truck with some mechanics would appear, take the remaining instruments and propellors off, collect the pilot, and away they would go.

In some cases, it was written into the Contract that any surplus aircraft would be destroyed after the war. This was done with the AVRO Tiger Moths that were used for training, as cheap aircraft would have been a glut on the aviation market.

During the FLQ Crisis, I personally saw five railway Gondola cars full of cut up Brens, Stens, and other equipment at the Dofasco smelter in Hamilton, Ontario. However, it was dark at the time, (about 4:30 in the morning,) and the half ton truck we had was rather full and loaded, so we were a bit more concerned for bursting the tires, rather than doing a lot of exploring.

And speaking of Dofasco, many of the Canadian Corvettes ended up as steel products. HMSC Brandon was one of them.
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The policy on disposal of DND small arms for the past number of years has been by smelting. Each lot had to be accompanied to the smelter by an officer who is required to sign an inventory sheet to certify by type and serial number that he had actually witnessed the weapons being smelted.
 
woodchopper said:
lots of them siting there but unregistered so they don't get sold

at the time the registry came out it cost $25 to register each rifle and bubba enfileds were selling for $25. So why register?

I suspect when the LGR goes away there will be a whole lot more showing up again
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Do you really think that people don't buy and sell unregistered guns? There are more unregistered guns than registered in this country and at best half of all gun owners have bothered to get licenses. That is a huge underground of owners and guns outside the system.

Mark
 
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