WWII Weapons Available in 1990s

[.45cultist]

Originally Posted by aspqrz

There was a news article recently (within the last 12 months) that mentioned ISIS had captured a Syrian Government Armoury ... somewhere ... which contained thousands of StG-44s (MP-44s) and ammo for them, and had issued them for use.

And why not? A perfectly serviceable weapon.

The Australian Government had thousands of Vickers MGs and millions of SMLEs from WW2, many in their original cosmoline packing, stored around the country at least until the mid to late 1980s. The SMLEs, so I was told much later, were eventually scrapped at some point thereafter, but my informant wasn't sure about the Vickers'.

The Russians allegedly keep everything. I fully expect that there are Russian Armouries full of millions of Moison-Nagant Rifles still around. I suspect the Chinese are much the same.

Phil

The Russians did indeed, a lot of Thompson parts kits plus Mitchell's Mausers.

[Olefin]

From what I remember reading several recent Russian WWII films used weapons, uniforms, vehicles,etc.. that were from those depots - i.e. you arent looking at reproductions you are looking at the real weapons and equipment that have been held in storage the whole time

and there was a lot of WWII armor around as well into the 90's - the Yugoslav's had operational Hellcats and Shermans (they fought in the civil war in the 90's), the Mexicans and Paraguayans have Stuarts and Shermans (Mexican Shermans were engineer vehicles only, not tanks), Chile had Shermans in service into the 90's, the Uruguayan Army still has M24's in service, the Albanians had T-34/85's, lots of countries still had Greyhounds, let alone all the guys who bought and preserved equipment in the US, UK, France, etc.

[.45cultist]

M1911's and M1911A1's still soldier on.