airbornetrooper
Active Member
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Here's one of the favorite pieces in my collection. Like its American cousin, the Yemen contract rifle is also a full-size, 30.06 version. The handful of examples that have surfaced all bear numbers with an E prefix. According to everything I've found, these specific rifles (all those with a CAI import stamp) were captured by Egypt in the 1960's during the North Yemen Civil War. This was a completely different conflict than the current Yemen Civil War (side note, Yemen has fought three civil wars in the last half-century, at least they're good at something). This particular civil war was a particularly bloody affair which saw Egypt intervene on the side of the nascent Yemen Republic, while Saudi Arabia aided the Kingdom of Yemen. Egypt suffered over 26,000 fatalities fighting there for the better part of a decade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Yemen_Civil_War
As for the rifle itself, it was almost certainly captured by Egypt, because all of the known Yemeni M1 Garand's in the United States were imported by Century Arms International in the 1980's. Around a dozen of them were brought in at the time and sold for the then princely sum of $400 a piece (I paid a bit more than that unfortunately). All of these rifles were built under contract by Beretta during the mid-1950's, and apparently financed by Saudi-Arabia. Contrary to popular thought, Beretta did not simply inherit and reuse the Winchester tooling after WWII. They did receive Winchester's old tooling, but it was far too worn to be of use. They rebuilt nearly all the components and subsequently produced rifles for the following contracts:
Indonesia: 50,000
Italian Army: 30,000 (Breda built another 30,000)
Denmark: 10,000 (Breda built another 10,000)
Cuba: 5,054
Yemen: 1,152
Libya: 180
(source: "Il garand in Italia 1951-1996" by Ruggero F. Pettinelli)
This particular example shows all Beretta parts on it and has a barrel date of 1957. The Italians had a pernicious habit of marking EVERY piece with the manufacturer abbreviation... I took four years of Arabic in college, but the calligraphy on the stock proved to be quite a challenge. Thankfully I found an old GCA article on this type of rifle that stated it translated as follows:
"Property of the Mutwakil kingdom of Yemen. Prince of the believers HR. IMAM AHMED BIN YAHYA HAMID AL DEEN"
https://www.thegca.org/pdfs/2-05_all.pdf
This shows the rifle was built for the last king of Yemen, Imam Ahmed, who died during the fighting.
On a side note, I am still looking for an Indonesian contract M1 Garand!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Yemen_Civil_War
As for the rifle itself, it was almost certainly captured by Egypt, because all of the known Yemeni M1 Garand's in the United States were imported by Century Arms International in the 1980's. Around a dozen of them were brought in at the time and sold for the then princely sum of $400 a piece (I paid a bit more than that unfortunately). All of these rifles were built under contract by Beretta during the mid-1950's, and apparently financed by Saudi-Arabia. Contrary to popular thought, Beretta did not simply inherit and reuse the Winchester tooling after WWII. They did receive Winchester's old tooling, but it was far too worn to be of use. They rebuilt nearly all the components and subsequently produced rifles for the following contracts:
Indonesia: 50,000
Italian Army: 30,000 (Breda built another 30,000)
Denmark: 10,000 (Breda built another 10,000)
Cuba: 5,054
Yemen: 1,152
Libya: 180
(source: "Il garand in Italia 1951-1996" by Ruggero F. Pettinelli)
This particular example shows all Beretta parts on it and has a barrel date of 1957. The Italians had a pernicious habit of marking EVERY piece with the manufacturer abbreviation... I took four years of Arabic in college, but the calligraphy on the stock proved to be quite a challenge. Thankfully I found an old GCA article on this type of rifle that stated it translated as follows:
"Property of the Mutwakil kingdom of Yemen. Prince of the believers HR. IMAM AHMED BIN YAHYA HAMID AL DEEN"
https://www.thegca.org/pdfs/2-05_all.pdf
This shows the rifle was built for the last king of Yemen, Imam Ahmed, who died during the fighting.
On a side note, I am still looking for an Indonesian contract M1 Garand!
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