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MP-40 from Vietnam


Mitch
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Hi,

The post of the luft sword reminded me of an item I own. My brother was an Airforce rescue pilot early in the Vietnam war. When he was on R&R in Thailand he traded a US pilots .45 for a captured from a VC , WW2 German MP-40. It was military de-watted and sent home in 1965. My dad registered it with the amnesty act of 1967 just by a fluke as he was a collector and knew about the amnesty. It was displayed by my Dad for many years as my brother stayed in the service. After my Dad passed I kept it for my brother. Going through dads papers found all the paperwork from TF&A . About 10 years ago , I bought it from my brother still de-activated. 5 years ago I took it with the papers to a local gunsmith to see if was all in order and he said yes and he activated it back to full auto. It is now a full auto registered machine gun and fires real good and the 9mm pistol ammo is not as expensive as the other ammo I use. This is the only picture I have now and it is an old one as the gun is locked up in a safe right now. I'll try and get a better picture this spring when I get it out.

Regards, Mitch

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How times have changed. My dad was a barber in a small town in Wisconsin. He was an avid gun collector. All his collection was on display in his barbershop. You could have broke in there with a jack knife. You could see all it throught the front window . The attached picture shows the MP-40 described above as it was when sent home in 1965, He had 3 old china cabinets in the back of the photo full of pistols. He had weird animals and taxidermed animals. It was a mini museum. It was the silver dollar barbershop. He had hundreds of silver dollars glued all over . There were probabaly 40 to 50 knives in there . Nothing was ever stolen and nobody complained to bring there little kid in there to get a haircut.

Thanks, Mitch

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Very cool collection, there were all kinds of weapons from the WW2 found on the battle fields of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is pretty safe to assume that the Soviets by way of the Chinese sent a lot of German weapons to be used by the North Vietnamese to supply the VietCong. Thanks for sharing

Regards,

John

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Thank you all for the great comments.

Amazing collection. Is it still in the family?

As far as the fate of my Dads collection. That does not go as well as I would have hoped. My Dad never retired and as his mind started to go real bad , some unscrupulous poeple pretty much stole (cost wise) some key pieces . After my Dad passed, some of the collection was sold to help my Mom out to get through . The remaining pieces were equally divided between me and my two brothers. One brother who was not in to guns sold all of his without asking me (and we got along). One example of his gun value knowledge was he traded a early 1894 Winchester in a odd caliber for a new one (The $99 one at that time). My other brother lives in Ca. and he was a little scared of there gun laws and has few left. I kept the great condition and rarer ones and traded the wall hangers for various things. At one time I had over 200 guns. I'm now down to about 50.

Regards, Mitch

 

Owen,

Thanks, I appreciate your comment .

On a side note Owen, I really do rock. I have been to over 50 Rock concerts since 1966 (Sonny & Cher and the Turtles), 1969 at a nearby High school (Eric Burdon & The Animals) , 1970 I visited my cousin in Atlanta (It was hot there for a yankee) and went to the Atlanta pop festival (18 years old finally and I can drink beer and go to war) The line up(Hendrix,Jethro Tull , B.B. King,Procul Harum, Ten years after, Grand Funk, Johnny Winter, Allman brothers etc.)1974 at my Tech school for my class dance (REO Speedwagon) and the rest is history from what little of the history after that I remember !!!

Mitch

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There's a photo of Special Forces NCOs issuing weapons to the Montagnards in the early 1960s, and the table has two neatly arranged rows of M1A1 carbines and MP-40s on it. Think the photo was in the Associated Press Vietnam book - anyone remember this?

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Wow, that must have been the coolest barber shop of all time! Awesome!

 

As for the rest of the guns, you're

 

down to 50 and still have a fully auto MP-40.... you'll be fine, ha!

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Corpsmancollector

Mitch,

 

This is beyond cool. What an amazing story, and one hell of a barbers shop!

 

Thanks for sharing this with us,

 

Will

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ww2relichunter

wow awsome story if i went into a barber shop like that i think i would end up being thier a while examining the guns

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