Ethiopian Imports: A time capsule of firearm history

 

Ethiopian Imports: A time capsule of firearm history

By Randy Chamberlain

About 13 years ago, one man started a long journey, researching and securing the latest large cache of military surplus guns to be imported into the USA.  In 2014, Uli Wiegand incorporated Royal Tiger Imports (RTI), with the sole intention of completing this mission.  A long-time firearms collector, with a passion for traveling the world to hunt down weapons with significant military history, it would be another 6 long years before Wiegand would meet his goal.  In 2020, Royal Tiger Imports brought nearly 20,000 surplus weapons to the United States from Ethiopia, an important military power in Africa. 

Before RTI made this discovery, it was very difficult to find any Ethiopian firearms from the First or Second Italo-Ethiopian wars, their involvement with the Korean War, or the 1971 communist take-over of the emperor.  The weapons had been amassed in the last 1900’s throughout the early 20^th century by Emperor Menelik II, who modernized the Ethiopian army to hold off European colonization.  The emperor knew that to keep his people safe and culture alive, that he would need more than primitive weapons.  He began working with different foreign entities to build his countries fire power. 

Russia knew of Italy’s plans to colonize Ethiopia and being another Orthodox Christian Country like Ethiopia, Russia did not want Ethiopia to fall under Catholic Roman rule.  In 1895, during the first Italo-Ethiopian War, Russia armed the Ethiopian Government with 30,000 Berdan II rifles, 5,000,000 cartridges and 5,000 sabres and provided Russian advisers, who helped the Ethiopian army to become victorious.  

France was also a rival of Italy at the time so they provided 1866 Chaspot Rifles converted to metallic cartridges in Gras pattern, as well as a variety of 1880’s vintage Gras rifles and Carbines to Ethiopia.  Germany also contributed to the collection by supplying a lot of model 1888 commission rifles and carbines. 

For 40 years, Menelik II collected firearms from various nations.  He also organized and trained a large army equipped with a diverse array of metal cartridge repeating firearms, making Ethiopia the best, most equipped army in Africa at that time.  The weapons were considered obsolete by European standards but what technology they lacked was made up in volume. 
In 1935, Italy attacked Ethiopia again, starting the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.  Italy defeated Ethiopia, but only because Italy had advance weapons such as airplanes, tanks and poisonous gas, which didn’t put the Ethiopian army on fair fighting grounds.  Menelik was forced into exile until the British forces liberated them in 1941.

In the 1960’s, there were plenty of surplus military weapons as western armies modernized their firepower.  Many of these surplus weapons made their way to third-world countries, including Ethiopia, to fight off the advancement of communist parties.  In 1971, the communist party defeated Ethiopia.  The communist party proceeded to collected all of the Ethiopian weapons and put them storage.  After many years of civil war, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front finally defeated the communist party.

Wiegand had heard of the surplus weapons in Ethiopia but he didn’t know the number of weapons, the types, or condition of the weapons.  After long slow negotiations, Wiegand was able to buy a large group of surplus weapons.  When Wiegand arrived at the Ethiopian army base, where the firearms had been stored for years, he saw that the weapons had been stored out in the weather.  Only some were the piles of rifles were covered with a tarp.  Luckily, the weather in Ethiopia is very dry and although the rifles were very dirty, not many of the guns were damaged.

The collection had almost every type of firearm used by the Ethiopian army throughout the past 100 years of fighting.  The oldest guns were flintlock muzzleloaders from the mid-1800’s and the newest rifles were German G3 Assault Rifles.  M1880, M1890, M1895 Austrian Mannlicher rifles were some of the other guns found stacked in piles.  The M95 was used by Austria-Hungary during WWI and are quite rare in an unaltered 8x50 caliber, full length configuration.  Some sniper models even have scope bases and bayonets for them.

One rare gun found in the collection was an engraved and gold inlaid Carcano Carbine, of which only 200 were made for the personal guards of the Duke of Aosta.  More Carcano’s, ranging from pre-WWI M1891 rifles through almost every variation used up to WWII were also stacked up.  Many used when the British forced Italy out of Ethiopia in 1941.

There were also a lot of WWI Italian Vetterli rifles (the Model 1870/87/15) from the second Italo-Ethiopian war as well.  Some had “AOI” stamped on the buttstocks, which stood for Italian East Africa.

A custom Mauser, engraved with Emperor Haile’s name, which may have been his personal hunting rifle, was also found in a stash of personal weapons that were seized by the communist dreg when they overthrew the emperor in 1974.

Hidden in the stacks were extremely rare 1930’s vintage FN-made Mausers with the Ethiopian Lion of Judah crest.  

Other guns found were Czech VZ 52 rifles, SKS, PPs43, VZ24, 26, DP Machine Guns and Goryunors.  There were also Yogoslavia-supplied Mausers, M24/47’s and Yugoslaian remarked German Kar 98’s.  From after WWII, there were many No.5 Jungle Carbines in good shape, as well as British Enfield, No.1 Mk. III Rifles and No.4 rifles from British, Canada and US Makers.

Wiegand decided instead of cutting up the machine guns for parts to import them into the US, he would import those into Europe instead.  The remaining weapons he would import to the US to be sold in the collector’s market.  This cache was a time capsule of the most unaltered firearms, aged 140 to 75 years old.   Will this be the last of the “as-issued” WWII carbines released?

Sources:

American Shooting Journal: The Guns of an Emperor, Oct 2020, Frank Jardin

Youtube: Rifles of Emperor Menelik II: Ethiopian Gewehr88 and Karabiner88, ForgottenWeapons.com

American Rifleman: Emperor Selassie's Treasure: The Guns of Royal Tiger Imports, July 2020, Mark A. Keefe

About the author:

Randy has been a decades long member of the NRA and the Civilian Marksmanship Program; he began collecting weapons in the 70's and has owned more than 500 weapons. He will be contributing his vast knowledge of surplus and collector weapons.