Had an opportunity to take some pics of my Pop's gear today and this beauty is among the coolest of his collection. It belonged to his dad before him... Inland mfg./GM M1 Carbine, .30 carbine Did some diggin and the serial number on my Pop's M1 Carbine tracks its manufacture date to somewhere between the months of August and November, 1944.
Real nice Inland... A total of over 6.5 million M1 carbines of various models were manufactured, making it the most produced small arm for the American military during World War II (compared with about 6 million M1 rifles and under 2 million Thompson submachine guns). Despite being designed by Winchester, the great majority of these were made by other companies. The largest producer was the Inland division of General Motors, but many others were made by contractors as diverse as IBM, the Underwood Typewriter Company, and the Rock-Ola jukebox company. Few contractors made all the parts for carbines bearing their name: some makers bought parts from other major contractors or sub-contracted minor parts to companies like Marlin Firearms or Auto-Ordnance. Parts by all makers were required to be interchangeable. Irwin-Pedersen models were the fewest produced, at a little over 4,000. Many carbines were refurbished at several arsenals after the war, with many parts interchanged from original maker carbines.
I've got a postal machine M1 carbine that will black out a bulls eye at 50 yards. Wasn't really into it at first, but pretty nice little gun for coyotes, etc
