Camelot’s Carcano Curse

by Jerry Organ

About the time Lee Harvey Oswald was away in the Soviet Union from October 1959 to June 1962, an unique event occurred which would eventually unite two "poor shots" (one man, one object) on a sunny November day in Texas to make both famous. Towards the end of the 1950s, the Italian Ministry of Defense (Ministero della Difesa) sought to liquidate its stock of all variants of the M91 Carcano, some 570,745 weapons usable and otherwise.(1) An American company, Adam Consolidated, won the bidding in 1959 with a total of $1,776,659.54, presenting a third in advance in the form of guarantees of $592,000 from the Banco di Roma.(2)

Italy to America

Prior to the Ministero’s final liquidation, hundreds of thousands of earlier-surplused Carcanos had been bought by the pound by the International Firearms Company of Montreal.(3) The Adam deal was more specific, paying $1.12/unit for older models, and $3.60/unit for newer models, like the Oswald rifle, a Carcano M91/38 that came off the line in Terni in 1940.(4) Even new, the Carcano of 1940 was roughly assembled with ill-fitting brackets and plain wood stocks, but the bolt-assembly was a gem of precision, featuring "a split bridge Mannlicher design that is well machined from a special high quality Czech steel."(5)

To recondition the rifles--or shorten the barrel of the long rifles--for the American market, Adam contracted with Italian gunsmith Luciano Riva at a flat unit price of $1.72.(6) Operating out of a factory in Storo, near Brescia (home of arms manufacturers Beretta and Breda), Riva would pick up quantities of rifles from the military warehouse in Terni (about 65 mi/100 km north of Rome) and truck them under police escort 280 mi/460 km north to Storo. By the end of October, 1960, Riva had completed 12 bulk shipments, for a total of 44,490 reconditioned guns sent to America.(7)

C2766 was among the rifles refurbished by Riva, ending up among the last of the shipments Riva sent to Adam. 520 crates--each of which contained 10 rifles each sealed in Cosmoline gel--left his factory for Genoa on Sept. 28, 1960.(8) By Oct. 24, the Riva shipment was signed into a bonded warehouse, Harborside Terminal in New Jersey.(9)

Like the Carcano he was to order, Oswald and his Russian-born family undertook a similar ocean voyage to the New World. On June 2, 1962, the Dutch ship SS Maadam sailed from Rotterdam bound for New York. As the ship proceeded to dock at Hoboken, New Jersey on June 13th, Lee Oswald may have passed within a mile of C2766.(10) Nine months and half a continent separated the two cast-offs.

New York to Chicago

To handle domestic distribution of the rifles, Adam Consolidated set up a separate firm, Crescent Firearms.(11) Crescent handled wholesale distribution of the Carcanos and the preparatory work needed to recondition the rifles. Fred Rupp was one of Crescent’s restorers, picking up quantities of Carcanos at the Harborside Terminal against the account of Adam Consolidated. Rupp unwrapped the rifles, removed the film of Cosmoline from each, inspected and test-fired them.(12) Rupp would then ship restored Carcanos from his shop in Perkasie, Pennsylvania to customers designated by Crescent. C2766 was among the 100 rifles in ten cases sent by Rupp to Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago on Feb. 12, 1963.(13)

Klein’s Sporting Goods, established in 1885, operated six retail outlets in the Chicago area and maintained a substantial mail-order business.(14) In January, 1962, Klein’s ordered 400 Carcano 91TS carbines (these are 36") from Crescent Firearms.(15) Their ads for such carbines (order no. C20-T749 for $11.88) began running in the American Rifleman from March to June 1962. A version (cat. no. C20-T750) with a 4-power scope could be had for $19.95. Apparently, Klein’s didn’t bother to photograph the 36" TS rifle, instead retaining the image of the "Suprema" rifle it had previously sold through mail-order. So basically, the only indication in the ad that they're selling a specific Carcano (the TS) is the 36" and the term "carbine".(16)

Klein’s Ads in the American Rifleman

The "Suprema" rifle was a shortened version of the war-surplused M91 50" Long Rifle for resell to the sporting market outside of Italy. The "Suprema" was sold as a "Custom Sporterized Model" by Klein’s from late 1960 to early 1962. It would seem the illustration used in Klein’s American Rifleman "Carcano" ads from 1960 to 1963 showed the "Suprema" M91-mod rifle.

By time Oswald sent for his rifle using a Klein’s ad in the February 1963 issue of American Rifleman, Klein’s had exhausted its supply of 400 Carcano 36" 91TS carbines (order no. C20-T749 for $11.88). They were selling their new "Carcano" stock of M91/38 40" Short Rifles which the wholesaler now sold to them for a dollar more per unit. The new order no. (C20-T1196) and higher price ($12.88) had been running in Klein’s American Rifleman ads since August, 1962.