Much-modded Garand: The Italian BM-59E (VIDEO)
Picking and choosing the best parts of John Garand’s rifle and adding a 20-round detachable magazine was a good starting point for the BM-59E.
While the standard Beretta-made BM-59 was built from scratch in Italy, the BM-59E is an actual Garand conversion that took existing rifles and converted them from .30-06 to 7.62x51mm NATO and ditched the internal en bloc-fed eight-shot magazine for a detachable 20-round box. To this was added a muzzle device and a few other tweaks.
As covered in the above video by American Rifleman TV, the conversions and their curious 1982 Falkland Islands War connection, is delved into.
Also, did we mention they were select-fire?
The Argentine military used Italian-converted M1 Garands, BM59Es, well in to the 1980s. (Photo: WWII after WWII)
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