Bruce Canfield

I just heard from Mowbray Publishing that the Johnson Rifles & Machine Guns book is almost sold out and they will not be doing a reprint. If anyone is interested in a copy, this would be the time to pick it up. Once it's out of print, I suspect the prices will be ridiculously high on the secondary market.

A M1941 JLMG sold at the December 2023 Rock Island Auction for $141,000 shattering the previous record of the September 2023 auction of a M1941 LMG of $68,400. Of course, one auction doesn't set the prevailing market price but it is indicative of the very strong demand for genuine transferable Johnson LMGs.

Condolences and prayers for your family.

I've seen a couple of fully transferable genuine M1941 LMGs bring upwards of $75K at auction several years ago. The Morphy estimate seems low but, like anything else, it is worth what something is willing to pay.

Very good video with the exception of a factual error as to the number of Johnson rifles actually issued to the Paramarines.

It is true that the bayonets were not numbered at the JAMCO factory. The numbers were most likely applied by the Dutch to correspond with the rifles to which the bayonets were intended to be mated. A typical European practice.

This is another fake using some LMG parts. As can be easily ascertained from the attached photo, the stock of the Auto-Carbine was quite different in configuration from the LMG stock. Also JAMCO did not use "X" prefixes for their prototypes but used a :"S" (Sample) instead.

Interesting list. The only thing that needs to be changed is that the 1st Special Service Force did not have any Johnson rifles...only Johnson LMGs.

Nice looking grain in the stock.

Looks like a nice rifle.

Joe, So glad you're doing better and are on the mend. Take care.

Hi Joe, Please PM me. Thanks, Bruce

It's very important to record any recollections that WWII veterans have regarding their experiences during the war to help preserve history. My late father was a decorated WWII U.S. Army combat veteran I have the utmost respect for "The Greatest Generation." That being said, seventy- or eighty-year-old memories can be very fragile, and we cannot take everything that is said as gospel. This is not to suggest that the gentlemen are lying but it is not uncommon for some to remember things that never happened. As a case point, when I was researching my first book on U.S. Military Combat Shotguns, I interviewed a member of our church who was a WWII Marine Raider and saw combat in several Pacific campaigns. When I asked him about the use of shotguns by the Marines during the war, he flatly stated that "the Marines never used shotguns." I had reams of USMC memos, after-action reports and other documentation as well as numerous vintage photos refuting his assertion. He was a fine gentleman and I certainly wasn't going to argue with him so I politely thanked him for his time. There was another instance at a gun show years ago when a young man came to my table and asked if I'd like to see the M1 Carbine that his father carried ashore on D-Day. I said "sure," and he departed and came back with a gun case and took out a Universal Carbine made in the 1980s by a firm in Florida. I tried to gently tell him that this was certainly similar to the carbine his father had but it definitely wasn't around in 1944. He became quite upset and said that his dad would never have lied to him and I didn't know what I was talking about. After giving it some thought, I am sure that years before his father probably purchased the gun and remarked to his young son that "that this was the gun I carried ashore on D-Day," meaning simply it was a carbine and didn't intend to convey that this was the exact carbine he had. The same is true with a number of Vietnam vets who insist they had a M16 rifle made by the Mattel Toy Company even though Mattel never made guns or even parts for guns. Psychologists are very familiar with the "False Memory Syndrome" where people vividly remember things that didn't, or couldn't, happen. When dealing with recollections, remember Ronald Reagan's admonition of "Trust but Verify."

I suppose it's possible that the Germans developed the FG-42 without being aware of the Johnson LMG, but I think it's more likely that they copied it.