Weapons You Have Seen In Locations You Did Not Expect To See Them

[Haggis]

Well, were the C7s even in the ResF at that point in time? I know in Cornwallis for my basic trg we were still using FNs 20 years ago when I went through. Lahr had just gotten C7s switched out from FNs over there --- and they were the priority pers then before all the other RegF units. IIRC, the ResF waited quite awhile after that for their allotments.

I'm going to go with the "if they had 'em, they certainly weren't CF mil issued C7s" too, unless someone can confirm any ResF unit managed to get them issued prior to the RegF roll-outs being completed (or even begun at some RegF bases).

When I did my 6B in 1988, Atlantic area units and schools, both Reg and Res already had the C7.  I, being from LFCA, was a bit behind the curve and, in fact three of us "westerners" had arrived for our 6B packing amazingly polished C1A1 gas plugs and pistons for inspection, only to be issued C7's on the first day.

After the 6B course I found myself as the RQMS for a Res F Infantry unit in Ontario.  We received our C7's in 1989.  They were distributed based on regions, not Reg/Res.  So, yes, 20 years ago, I, too would wager that this was an AR15 (or .22 cal AP-74 lookalike) in the dorms.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

Well, were the C7s even in the ResF at that point in time? I know in Cornwallis for my basic trg we were still using FNs 20 years ago when I went through. Lahr had just gotten C7s switched out from FNs over there --- and they were the priority pers then before all the other RegF units. IIRC, the ResF waited quite awhile after that for their allotments.

I'm going to go with the "if they had 'em, they certainly weren't CF mil issued C7s" too, unless someone can confirm any ResF unit managed to get them issued prior to the RegF roll-outs being completed (or even begun at some RegF bases).

I was 12 Platoon, 8930 and we used the FN.  They had C7s in the lockup IIRC, and started using them shortly after our grad in Oct 89 if my memory of it all is...well, not totally destroyed by c/s Alpine.

 

[daftandbarmy]

After 20 years going by I do know the idiocy of the following events that took place. However. I was a kid, and kids do some really silly things.

Before my time in uniform, whilst scuba diving in Okanogan Lake under the floating bridge in Kelowna, I found a WWII 60mm mortor round at 110ft. At those depths I thought it was an odd shaped pop bottle so I surfaced with it. After dumping the contents of my collection bag on the rocky beach I soon discovered it to be what it was. I mulled over what to do with it. Walking it to the police station seemed a bad idea, so I loaded it in my mustang with my gear and took it home, across town to where I lived in Rutland. Arriving home, I called for my father to see my "treasure." He looked, gave me a few choice words of rebuke and discreetly called a RCMP officer he knew to come and check it out. Subsequently the EOD team from Chilliwack came out, took it to a gravel pit and destroyed it. For anyone who cares to call bunk, I have the pictures and subsequent magazine article from Okanogan Life magazine. My partner was a bit of a chatty cathy and told his buddies at the scuba shop about our "adventure" and the word got out.

I now know better.

Oh man, this just reminded me of the time I went scuba diving with the local dive club in Harstad, Norway. They have dozens of old ships sunk fairly close to land during the battles for Narvik in 1940. The day I went with them, they were visiting the wreck of an British AA cruiser, approximately 300ft long, that had apparently placed 2nd in a duel with the dive bombers.

It was early May with about a foot of fresh snow on the ground, and the water temperature was 42F - ice cream headache cold - but it was gin clear and I had my good ol' Nanaimo made SeaTux drysuit on. It was a short surface swim out to the wreck site, which was only at about 80ft I think. So there's me, thinking it will be a pretty boring wreck, picked over and made safe by 'the authorities' over the past 60 years, drifting down to this wreck. Then the first thing I see is a medium sized pile of what look like short logs. I think 'gee, these ships weren't wood fired were they?'. Of course, the pile of logs turns out to be 3.7inch AA shells. These things were everywhere, like pick up sticks, stewn amongst a farily well preserved wreck site. The ship looked like it pretty much blew into pieces, unless there had been some kind of salvage work done on it after the war. Jagged steel was everywhere, kind of like the 9/11 WTC 'after' photos.

Needless to say I stayed well away and observed, horrifed as only a cotton-wool wrapped Canadian can be, from a semi-repsectable distance while the Norgies rummaged around in the wreckage in an unconcerned manner. Some of them were Norwegian navy clearance divers, out mucking around on their weekend off, so I expect they were used to this kind of thing. They even brought back a few smaller calibre 'empties' in their lift bags, which I wouldn't go near. How long do AA ammo primers last anyways? Egads... I've tried to find a reference to this ship since, but haven't turned up anything.

The next day they were headed off to dive on a German cruiser, at about 100+ft, somewhere near Narvik. They were especially keen about this wreck as the currents were strong. It had also apparently been colonized by a family of 'Wolf fish', described to me as being very large and aggressive and having long sharp teeth - said description accompanied by appropriate hand gestures simulating a punctured throat. I gracefully declined the offer to go along citing a rapidly developing lung infection, and naked fear, and handed them 3/4 of a bottle of Glenmorangie (sherry wood cask) single malt in thanks for having me along that day. This they gleefully accepted and drained before my eyes, passing it from hand to hand in approved 16 year old high school student fashion.

Never let anyone tell you that Norwegians are boring.

 

[AmmoTech90]

I was 12 Platoon, 8930 and we used the FN.  They had C7s in the lockup IIRC, and started using them shortly after our grad in Oct 89 if my memory of it all is...well, not totally destroyed by c/s Alpine.

10 Pl, 8945 was the last course in Cornwallis to use FNs, we started on 9 Nov.  Last time I fired one in the CF was in May of 91 in Dundurn along with the SMG.  Last time I fired one anywhere was Oct 07 at Llyd doing predeployment training.

The most pleasant time I unexpectedly found weapons was during an EOD call to a little podunk town west of Highway 2, sort of opposite Red Deer.  The owner of the general store had passed away and the family was cleaning out the store and found some stuff.  The RCMP showed up, called us and we showed up to pick up used aircraft practice bomb that was sitting behind the cash.  Seeing as we didn't particularly want to do that drive from Wainwright again a day latter we asked if we could look around.

After coming out of the crawl space under the building where some boxes had been spotted the conversation went like this:
Anon EOD guy- "You cops had better go"
Cop- "Why, what did you find?"
EOD guy- "Nothing...really"
Cop- "Come on, give"
EOD guy- "Well, can we share?"
Cop- "Why?"

EOD guy proceeds to pull out boxes of brand new Lee Enfields, boxes of them!  Around 20-30!!
There was also dozens of mint air craft practice bombs, and two steamer trunks of cut up Very pistols.  Apparently the old fellow had been quite active buying government surplus in the 50s.

The family wanted none of them.  The cops let us dispose of the Very pistols as scrap metal...  Lee Enfields...?

 

[NavyShooter]

The MP-5K under the jacket of the security guy on our bus during a bus-tour in Cairo.  Wish he'd been along that night at the pub/bar when we had to pay the locals $500 US to walk out.  They only had pistols under their jackets....

Other than that, well, the 2" mortar bombs I got called by a buddy to look at in his neighbour's attic (old gent who'd passed away) and I got passed between RCMP, MP, RCMP, MP and finally called a buddy of mine who works EOD directly out at Shearwater.

Fun times!

NS

 

[daftandbarmy]

Wish he'd been along that night at the pub/bar when we had to pay the locals $500 US to walk out.  They only had pistols under their jackets....

We need to know more about this one... or is it in your new book? ;D

 

[NavyShooter]

Long story short, we were in Cairo on a bus tour, left the hotel in a small group (3 of us) to sample the local night life.  Got to a bar, we walked in, it suddenly got busy.  A couple of beer later, there were females around, and food at our table...the females were nothing more than presence and conversation...it wasn't a "house of ill repute" but I think the guy who brought the girls was expecting more of us...it cost some $$ to get out.  I don't recall the type of pistol, but it was nickel plated, or brushed chrome finish in a shoulder-rig.

NS

 

[TCBF]

Well, I wasn't expecting to find anything but when I was younger I was in a warehouse with a friend and this warehouse is currently used for steel storage but in the 60's it made refrigerators and in the 40's it made Sherman tanks.

Needless to say we found catabombs in the warehouse and we found some interesting parts there like a 75mm shell, the Sherman gunner's scope and a few other goodies.

It was extremely interesting especially since I am a WW2 buff.

;D

- Sorry Dean, but I ain't buyin' it.

 

[Danjanou]

Well it wasn’t that I wasn’t expecting it after all it was Colombia in the 1990’s and I had to transit a VCP in the taxi going from my beach hotel to the Casino/Bar strip.

Santa Marta is a lovely spot on the north ( Caribbean) coast of Colombia, Pablo Escobar had nice beach house there ( it was next door to my hotel and yes I have a picture of me standing in front of it D&B).

One night myself and  a couple of others went to this Disco in the Marina in El Rodero. The Disco was actually on a small island in the middle of the Marina with a long wooden bridge as the only entrance. At the street end of the Bridge was a massive bouncer with a .357 shoved down the front of his jeans. He was of course patting down all the people entering, guys only this being a macho Latin American Country. At least I think he was the bouncer, maybe he was just a local looking for a good time on a Saturday night.  :

Thinking myself really smart, I slipped around the corner into an alley and slipped the dive knife I’d brought with me from my belt and shoved it down my cowboy boots (hand made earlier that week great deal BTW). Passed the bouncer, entered the bar and headed to the men’s room to make the necessary room for a couple of beers.

One inside I noticed all the Pablo wannabes were in the John holding purses? I began to think I’d wandered into the wrong sort of bar (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Nope they all had their girlfriends purses and were extracting enough assorted pistols to make Colin P, Wes, and I6 drool, and returning them to pockets, holsters etc. like I said one male bouncer and no checking the senoritas.

I decided that maybe it wasn’t the safest place to spend the night drinking and found a much quieter beach bar.

 

[Smity199]

Well it wasn’t that I wasn’t expecting it after all it was Colombia in the 1990’s and I had to transit a VCP in the taxi going from my beach hotel to the Casino/Bar strip.

Santa Marta is a lovely spot on the north ( Caribbean) coast of Colombia, Pablo Escobar had nice beach house there ( it was next door to my hotel and yes I have a picture of me standing in front of it D&B).

One night myself and  a couple of others went to this Disco in the Marina in El Rodero. The Disco was actually on a small island in the middle of the Marina with a long wooden bridge as the only entrance. At the street end of the Bridge was a massive bouncer with a .357 shoved down the front of his jeans. He was of course patting down all the people entering, guys only this being a macho Latin American Country. At least I think he was the bouncer, maybe he was just a local looking for a good time on a Saturday night.  :

Thinking myself really smart, I slipped around the corner into an alley and slipped the dive knife I’d brought with me from my belt and shoved it down my cowboy boots (hand made earlier that week great deal BTW). Passed the bouncer, entered the bar and headed to the men’s room to make the necessary room for a couple of beers.

One inside I noticed all the Pablo wannabes were in the John holding purses? I began to think I’d wandered into the wrong sort of bar (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Nope they all had their girlfriends purses and were extracting enough assorted pistols to make Colin P, Wes, and I6 drool, and returning them to pockets, holsters etc. like I said one male bouncer and no checking the senoritas.

I decided that maybe it wasn’t the safest place to spend the night drinking and found a much quieter beach bar.

lol thats hilarious, but it is columbia right what can you expect..
anyways when I was younger living in langford (outside of victoria) me and a couple friends were making our way to the nearby race track where they had stock races and demo derbies etc. it was about a 7 k walk, we knew all the short cuts though of course and our favourite was cutting through 4 or 5 acres of forest in between a pub and an old wrecking yard.. there was a deer trail we took and it took us to a road leading where we wanted to go, along the deer trail there was a small cabin that looked more like a shed than anything.. and after a few times taking the trail we decided to go have a look inside and after discovering the door was locked we climbed through one of the broken windows and at first glance thought that we wasted our times there was nothing cool in there except a few scary spiders and some odd trinkets.. we thought that untill one of my friends opened up a box made out of plywood and found 3 old .22's and a sawed off 12 guage plus an assortment of ammo. we all took a couple bigger shells prob .38's and continued on but we couldnt resist going back a couple days later partly out of curiosity and partly cause none of the other guys believed us, so we went back and got some more souvenirs but didnt touch the guns, one of the guys ended up telling his older sister who told their mom and the RCMP got called and at the end of it all it turns out that the guy who owned that land was involved in an armed robbery 25 years earlier and all those goodies were taken away by the cops.. except our souvenirs of course which we forgot to mention

 

[GAP]

This took place in the early 70's...can't remember what year, but I was working my way up through the bureaucracy  of the city parks & rec dept....on one beery night a fairly new friend (who was constantly on with the "what was it like" routine) offered to sell me a Thompson Machine gun....thinking he was talking out his ass, I bargained him down to $100.00 (a lot of money at that time). Well, he wasn't talking sh*t...he delivered it the next day with two boxes of shells.

We loaded it up, went to the gravel pits north of the city, and had lots of fun....did it for a few weekends after that until another friend (a cop) suggested that I lose said weapon, cuz if they ever caught me with it all hell would pay....

so I did....lose it that is.... ;D

 

[FormerHorseGuard]

i was out for a walk the other day  and ended up walking down memory  lane.
When I was young 10 or 12, a friend of  a friends asked if I would help deliver door to door flyers for Big Brothers and their up coming auction.
I was putting the flyers in a door way at a triplex apartment building and I opened the door at one of the houses and there a long gun in the door way. It was the biggest gun I had seen at that  point in time. Large scope , most likely just a 22 left between the doors. Only  time I delivered things door to door and found a gun in between the doors.  Cannot imagine finding one today  like that....the hell it would cause for the owner.

 

[Trooper Hale]

While out on a dismounted ex, my brick were stomping through some pretty thick bush, out in the middle of shoalwater bay, nothing for miles and miles around. We decided to have a break and jumped into a tight harbour. At this point, one of the boys looks up and notices 200rounds of 7.62 link hanging in a tree in front of him, old and rusty as hell. We thought it was hilarious.

On an Officer's crew commanders course i drove in Puckapunyal, an old and very rusty F1 SMG in a bit of bush was found while one of the boys was talking a piss. It'd been run over by a vehicle and was stuffed.

A couple of years ago now (2006/07 ish), a certain Artillery SSgt's house was raided by the MP's. They found 4 square metres of small arms ammunition, 36 grenades (old types and new) over 10000 rounds of .50cal, an M60, two F1 SMG's, an L1A1 SLR, most of a Steyr plus lots of other goodies. He had a couple of shipping containers full of kit and it took 12 Mog loads to get the stuff. That was big news for quite a while.

 

[NavyShooter]

Actually, in retrospect, probably the neatest spot to find unexpected guns was that bar in Malta I went to...they had a Vickers in the corner, and a wall of display guns behind glass!

There was a similar spot in Florida that I came across once....they had an old dusty STG-44 behind the bar along with various other "acoutrements".

NS

 

[daftandbarmy]

Well it wasn’t that I wasn’t expecting it after all it was Colombia in the 1990’s and I had to transit a VCP in the taxi going from my beach hotel to the Casino/Bar strip.

Santa Marta is a lovely spot on the north ( Caribbean) coast of Colombia, Pablo Escobar had nice beach house there ( it was next door to my hotel and yes I have a picture of me standing in front of it D&B).

Thank goodness, for a second there I thought you were slipping!

 

[daftandbarmy]

Just thought of another one while pulling Danjanou's tail...

In Norway we had a liaison officer attached to us from the local home guard battalion. The Home Guard, at that time anyways, had a front line war role in case of Soviet invasion, which was usually to fight like hell to defend their local bridge, or whatever, until squashed like bugs, or relieved by we gallant NATO troops (more likely the former given the 7 x Sov Abn Divs just across the border).

Anyways, this officer invited us over for dinner one night and we went to his house in the Narvik area. Very nice little modern Norwegian house, right out of an Ikea poster. We were let in the door and I gathered up all our coatsand took them to the hall closet. When I opened the closet there, leaning in the corner, was a fully greased and ready to go MG3 and a G3. Each with a couple of boxes of ammo neatly tucked beside them.

We knew that these guys kept their weapons ready in their houses, I just wasn't sure HOW ready until that moment.

They seldom had any criminally related problems with these thousands of weapons kept at home either, apparently. There was a story that a local champion MG shot once took his MG3 and ammo out for some target practise at a local quarry. When his CO found out about it he was angry that he had used up his 'ready' ammo, and the guy had to pay for a replacement liner. But that was it as the guy was too good a shot to punish further!

 

[Fishbone Jones]

i was out for a walk the other day  and ended up walking down memory  lane.
When I was young 10 or 12, a friend of  a friends asked if I would help deliver door to door flyers for Big Brothers and their up coming auction.
I was putting the flyers in a door way at a triplex apartment building and I opened the door at one of the houses and there a long gun in the door way. It was the biggest gun I had seen at that  point in time. Large scope , most likely just a 22 left between the doors. Only  time I delivered things door to door and found a gun in between the doors.  Cannot imagine finding one today  like that....the hell it would cause for the owner.

It still happens I had a shotgun delivered the other day. Normally the smallest package I get nets me a notice to go to the Post Office for pickup, if I'm not home. Not last week. Opened my storm door, and stashed between it and the main door was a typical long gun box with the Browning logo and name across the whole thing. This is not a one off either. I've found them on my porch and next door at my neighbours, even though it's marked 'Do Not Safe Drop'. Gotta love Canada Post.

 

[Danjanou]

Just thought of another one while pulling Danjanou's tail...

All these years and he still mocks me 8)

Careful or I will tell the zebra mussel about this site.

Anyway quiet day recovering from the inlaws over for a small BBQ ( 40+ persons) so I dug out my old photo album and booted up the scanner and voila me standing in front of Pablo Escobars House, not sure if the dog was his.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

C'mon! That's you? Sure doesn't look like the James I know. You're kidding us right? Oh wait, maybe it is you. Looks like you're wearing socks. Yup, probably you after all.