Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten Weapons.
I'm Ian McCollum, and this is Uli Wiegand. Did I pronounce that right?
- Yeah, ... that's perfect. - I'm getting a little better at various languages.
Anyway, Uli owns and runs Inter Ordnance, aka Royal Tiger Imports,
and has been importing a whole bunch of guns from Ethiopia.
And we have here a crate of guns from Ethiopia,
and I figured it'd be cool to show you guys like what actually comes into the country.
So this is hot off the truck, from the freight depot, from the airport,
where it was flown in by Ethiopian Air, right?
- That's correct, Ethiopian Airlines, straight from the warehouses where I packed it actually two weeks ago
and it just arrived a couple of days ago here.
And let's break it open, show you guys what's in it.
- So what do we have in here? - Ah, there should be some Mannlichers in it,
some M95s, and there should be also some M1888s in it.
- OK. So I've already taken out all the screws except the ones on this side.
This crate has about 200 rifles in it.
If I can figure out how to use a screwdriver.
And now.
- I'll get you a crowbar. - We need the crowbar.
- Or a cleaning rod, hold on.
- There you go.
- Ah, I missed a screw, that's the issue.
- ... So it should pop open now.
- There's something incredibly satisfying and cool about using
a crowbar to open a crate of guns.
Alright.
- There we go, you got it?
- You want to see inside? - Come and look inside.
- So that is the very careful, very deliberate,
padded packing that was done by the warehouse.
So now it's a matter of we're going to pull these all out, and put them on pallets.
I should say: I make this sound like this is my deal. This isn't my deal.
I'm here because there are some crates of French rifles that came in,
and I really wanted to get a close look at those.
And I am told that amongst all of these Mannlichers, because they're all made by Steyr,
is a Steyr Kropatschek French Navy rifle.
So that's what I'm looking for in here.
- And I think you will be very successful finding it right here.
- Yes, ... that does look like the one.
And I can maybe even get it out.
So that is a Steyr Model of ... take a look at that up close right there,
a Model of 1878 French Navy rifle.
They contracted ... with Steyr to manufacture these.
So they bought a commercial rifle that was being sold by Steyr.
This is what replaced the Chassepot in French Navy service.
You can see over here we have an 1881 manufacture date.
So this is an antique, which is pretty cool.
It is matching, we've got our serial number right down there.
They made 25,000 of these, they're all "A" prefix.
So this is 23,000 and change, this is towards the very end of production.
And it is interesting to note that it has a pair of sets of Ethiopian markings, either Amharic or Ge’ez.
There are a number of different written languages that are used in Ethiopia, so.
This is just an example of how this cache of guns that Uli has been bringing out of Ethiopia
literally has a little bit of everything in it. So Mausers, Steyrs, Carcanos, Enfields.
American stuff, M1 carbines, M1 Garands, what else?
- You name it. ... In this shipment we got in Berthiers, Lebels.
And you're the expert, you looked at all the different stuff, so.
And I don't know much about French stuff, so I'm so glad that Ian came by
and educated me about the French guns.
But you know in this shipment there is so much stuff.
Some Enfield Jungle Carbines, Number 5 Mark Is, again Lebels, Berthiers, German Nazi Mausers,
Mannlicher 88s, Mannlicher 95s, various Carcanos, Vetterlis, and so on and so forth.
So we're going to list all these guns in the next coming days on our website,
but we just wanted to let you know how it looks when we open a crate together.
- Yeah. Alright so let's pull these out and then we can probably give people a view
of what they look like all stacked up on a pallet.
- Sounds good. - Alright. - Let's get going.
[ Some time later... ]
- Alright, and now they are all out of the crate and the beginning of sorted.
So we have M95 long rifles there, which are the bulk. I think that's 100.
And then we have M88 patterns.
And so there are some 88s which have the original sight graduations,
and also 88/90s which have updated sight graduations
for the more modern M90 cartridge that they used.
So that of course is that big old pattern.
These are distinctive because you've got this visible gap
between the trigger guard and the magazine well.
And they have this big, sort of triangular looking, rear sight.
And there was also, it looks like 13, of the M88 actions
that were updated to a flat style of ladder sight, very much like the M95s would use.
And I'm going to go out on a limb, if I remember my Mannlichers correctly, that's the [M88/95].
Hopefully I got that right, otherwise it will be embarrassing.
But that is pretty much what comes out of one of these crates from Ethiopia.
So, I do want to point out I don't actually have any stake in this. This isn't my import.
But when Uli mentioned to me crates of French rifles,
I couldn't help but show up here to take a look
because I really wanted to see what came out of those crates of French rifles.
And so you can get my interest, apparently,
by having 199 Steyr-Mannlichers with one French rifle mixed in.
Anyway, I thought it'd be kind of cool for you guys to see what was actually coming out.
This will get cleaned up a bit, and then eventually transformed into product available for sale.
Hopefully you enjoyed the little brief look.
Thanks for watching.