IRA with G43?
- Thread starter rimfire51
- Start date
Cyrano4747
Well-known member
Looks like it. Probably someone's dad's war trophy that got stolen or sold.
UK armed forces personnel were not allowed to bring back firearms as war trophies, only knives/daggers/medals/flags etc. All returning troopships were carefully searched by large numbers of MP's and all contraband items were confiscated and thrown over board by the MP's. My late father tried bringing back a Luger from Germany in late 1945 which got found and thrown overboard, as did the dismantled MP40 one of the other guys tried to smuggle back home in his kit bag. My Dad told me that what must have been hundreds of P.08's and P.38's got thrown from his troopship into the North Sea by the MP's
The G.43 was most likely provided by Soviet Bloc supply to Libya, and then came to IRA from there when Gadaffi sent lots of stuff to the IRA.
Most of the post 1970 shipments that came in to NI via Southampton on QE2 etc. were AR-15 and more modern stuff, which was largely to replace all the older WW2 era stuff they had in arms dump from pre-WW2 days, or the WW2 era stuff they had acquired in the 1950's via an Irish-American who's name escapes me now, and had used USA gathered funds to get stuff shipped from a Scicilian or Italian(?) arms dealer from old WW2 arms cache's. I recall these included lots of Garands, M1 carbines, Lee-Enfields, Webley revolvers, 1911's, BREN's and a fair number of MP40's, so there's a higher chance the G-43's came from the same source as the MP-40's at the same time in the 50's, if it didn't come from Libya in the 70's.
Cyrano4747
Well-known member
Interesting, thanks.
