Replies

Ping.

At first the archaeologists thought the guns had been used by Arab soldiers in the battles of 1948.

Was there a reverse gear on the guns?
.

I can explain this find easily: Bob Brenner didn't buy them.

In the April 2009 edition of Small Arms Review magazine, the biography of Burton "Bob" Brenner chronicles his role as a world traveling surplus military arms buyer for various firearms dealers in the United States.

On one of his ventures, he visited Israel shortly after the 1954 war and travelled to the Sinai where the Israelis had captured enormous amounts of Egyptian war material. Lined up on the side of a road were miles of collected Egyptian ordnance: Seven million rounds of British .303 cartridges; literally miles of ammunition covered with tarps. There were also thousands of FN (Fabrique Nationale) FN M49 rifles chambered in 8mm Mauser.

Buying this trove for Golden State Arms based in California, Brenner took home a package of 35,000 rifles, several thousand miscellaneous pistols, substantial lots of Carcano ammunition left over from the Italian campaign in North Africa, and the previously mentioned seven million rounds of .303 ammo.

Brenner returned in 1967 after Israel took over the West Bank and Jerusalem where they'd captured Jordanian arms depots. Because the United States had years earlier armed Jordan to prevent an attack from Syria, a tremendous cache of US-made weaponry was seized by the Israeli troops. This uncovered 4,000 pristine M1 Garands and several million rounds of USGI .30-06 ammunition. Also sold by the Israelis were several million rounds of 9mm ammo, and some 30,000 M1 carbines.

So, to answer Ha'aretz' question about "What are 50-year-old Egyptian guns doing roadside in Israel?", the answer is that they obviously hadn't been revealed to Bob Brenner in his gun buying travels to Israel or they'd already have been long gone. These weapons were captured by the Israeli Army, left by the side of the road in crates, and the Israelis never sent trucks back to get them. Time, wind, and sand covered them up like the antiquities of Egypt.

Too bad, actually. There would be lots and lots more transferable Port Said/Swedish K submachineguns in the NFA registry today had Bob Brenner come across them.

so what operation were they involved in?

BUMP for later read