Yesterday's Weapons Forums

My grandfather owns an Italian Carcano carbine 6.5x52 but would like some more info on it. A lot of carcanos have several markings however there are very few on this rifle. As I understand the "RA" stands for royal army and the "RE" stands for Regio Esercito also means royal army. The following numbers are a mystery and there is also a "CA" i think on the bolt handle. Pics below....I realize the top handguard and metal clamp/brace is missing but that's because we were looking for more marks. There is also an "L" on top of the breach.

You have a very late war 6.5 caliber M38TS. RA is just the letter block serial number prefix FNA used during this period. It was followed by the RB serial number letter prefix.

Some of the last TS made were not issued, and this could very well be one of them. I suspect it barely avoided being converted to 8mm by post-war speculators.

After the Italian king surrendered to the Allies in 1943, there was no sense of urgency in the various arsenals to apply some of the markings ( like the Fascist date in Roman numerals) so they were simply omitted.

Most of the marks you describe are armorer's marks or inspector's stamps. The "CA" bolt was probably laying around in a parts bin & was used when it was near the top. It was made earlier in the war.

This model takes the standard long rifle bayonet, and a web sling is correct.

Welcome to the site!! SW

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Slava Ukraini!!

Thanks for the info! This site has been very useful and look forward to to more questions as I will be collecting a few of my own.