Gentleman. All this talk about the M3 has inspired me to dig out my own small collection. I don’t have the room to display them so they have been living in my gun closet for a while. Amongst them is my first M3. A blade stamped M3 Utica. I suspect that it is the only variant of its kind in the world. As a foolish young man I used to throw it and in doing so I broke off the cross guard. I have since replaced the guard with one cannibalized from a very broken M3 Imperial. As a result it has UTICA on the blade and IMPERIAL on the guard. No doubt this will one day confuse a future collector.
The blades could do with another clean but up all of the M3s were bright metal when I got them. I’ve also pictured an M3 repro and an M4 bayonet. I got the bayonet from Ravel and co in Chicago when I was there 40 years ago. Bottom washer had been replaced with some resin. The M3 knife was the father of all U.S. bayonets that followed until the space age one they use now.
Not sure how authentic the scabbards matched to the knives are. Over the years they could have got swapped around.
Barry
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