Yesterday's Weapons Forums

The .303? thread brought to mind several official short barreled experimental models of the Lee Enfields and the P-14 and M1917 rifles.
I then ran across this PDF of an article on the P-14 with photos of Experimental P-14 light rifles some shortened to Carbine length and with a Folding Bayonet similar to the Italian moschettos.
http://www.sasc-comrades.org/Journal_do ... e_best.pdf

Similar Shortened M1917 rifles were made at Infantry Training Schools in the CBI theatre for use by short statured Chinese recruits, the Chinese troops were often dwarfed by the standard issue M1917 they got from the US.
The photo here
http://www.pbase.com/mrclark/image/73369217
From the Springfield Armory Museum shows an ultra short Carbine labeled a P-17 but since there are British rifles in the collection its possible the cut down rifles in the photo could be P-14 prototypes.
Those with shortened fore ends resemble drawings of a US M1917 based Sniper rifle but its always been assumed that none of those prototypes survive in collections.

ineresting read , i generaly bristle when they incist that remington owned eddystone , but the technicalities of it arent all that important in this picture of things ,

ive never seen that cruciform bayonet fitted with the muzzle ring/hilt to fit the P14/M17 type rifle , i know of one similar to this made in 1937 by soley to 'experimentaly' fit the no1 rifle
and an experimental folding/locking[similar to the SKS] made by soley for the no1 rifle

this was modified to fit the no3 rifle by BSA , and i found an experimental they refer to as 'like' the carcano for the no3 rifle , but they state these were experimental "lightened infantry" that coincided with developement of the no4 rifle and they dont mention the CBI theater connection

the eddystone plant was not run by the same 'remington' [delawre] as the remington plant[illion] was - there were no interconnection of these two plants , some executive ownership crossover but not the actual management ,
needless to say eddystone was highly efficient and remington plant had nearly as many issues as winchester did , it was autonomous


thanks for the great links - im learning a bunch about the CBI theater i did not know ,

" materials almost all of which had been improved and built by local means. A small wood and metal working shop was developed for this purpose. "

that explains why i didnt know much of these , theater revisions often get overlooked in referance books , and i have a limited number of referance books ,

also , ive avoided[divested] the indian/pakistani enfields for the most part

Oddly the Remington Company history states that remington was not Incorporated in Delaware until 1920, at which time they shifted from firearms manufacture to manufacture of other types of machinery and appliances, cash Registers, hunting knifes, cutlery , and kitchen utensils.
The earlier Remington of Delaware may have been a temporary holding company of some sort.
Could be its merely a difference between "company" and "corporation".

Apparently the machinery for producing the P-14 was owned by the British Government. When they cancelled their contracts for P-14 rifles the British transfered ownership of the machinery to the United States Government.
So while the plant facilities, buildings, powerhouses, etc. belonged to one US civilian owned company or another, the actual machinery belonged to the Governments who contracted for the production of the rifles themselves.
Since Remington ended up with at least some of this machinery they may have received it from the US Government as partial payment for the M1917 rifles, or simply bought it as war surplus.

my understanding is that the eddystone management was set up by some remington management as an investment [i could have this wrong technicaly] and that was the remington connection , remington established the rifle plant but it was a seperate entity from the rest of remington .

baldwin locamotive built the buildings on their property and leased it to 'remington delaware' [seperat from remington-illion] samual m vauclain , a vice pres for baldwin was in charge of manufacturing the rifles as well as plant construction and equipping the operations , remington delaware was actualy aquired by midvale steel and ordinance company ,

due to 'labor' issues at the illion plant which plagued that production facility and severly handicaped their production they had the worst production record , but winchestrer had their share of issues , between the P1914 & M1917 rifle contracts eddystone produced nearly 2 1/4 million rifles far outstripping the others ,

production contracts were autonomous for the three producers and no parts exchanges occured , both winchester and eddystone outproduced their rifle quotas [eddystone by a vast margin] but remington didnt , they used their parts/component production to offset their rifle production requirements ,

since remington had the equipment in their plant im thinking thats the equipment they ended up with and went on to produce the '1934' rifles on ?

thats interesting info i was unaware of with reguard to the contract rifles for south america , id been under the impression that they were suposed to be a modified M17 ,

so you think these were a diferant rifle ? since the mod 30 was a direct development of modified M17 ?

cool , ive learned something , this was presented elsewhere a bit diferently , but i see your logic , and as that other discussion was somewhat equal in speculation it was not anything id hold up as 'true' , i see where your thinking is founded

Remembering the similarity of the Bannerman rifles to the Remington 7mm rifles I looked into the Bannermans.
The Bannerman did use a Springfield low number receiver re-heatedtreated by Sedgley. The bolts were a rewelded hash up, the front of the bolt with locking lugs was cut from a Springfield bolt and fitted to the rear half of a M1917 bolt. the barrels were said to be reworked used Springfield barrels with good rifling, possibly set back and rechambered to eliminate eroded throats. The rear sight was a Krag mounted on a modified Springfield base.
Bannerman sold these easily enough due to the Government freezing sales of Springfield and M1917 rifles at the time, the Bannermans were then the only military style .30/06 that could be bought commercially in the US.