My "Honorary Grand-Dad" told me he killed his first moose with a Winchester 54 in 9X57. He was in the Navy and was flying a converted B26 (made to be a photo-recon plane) after the war and he and his co-pilot "smuggled" the moose back to a base (in Iceland I think) from Canada in the bomb-bay, which gave them a lot of different problems and the story about dealing with the dead moose was a comedy all by itself. The story sounded like a funny movie when he told us.
The post about the Winchester in 9X57 caught my attention because of the story my Grand-Dad told me.
He bought the Winchester in 9mm New York from some family friend in the WW2 years (42 I think) and never could come get it until the war was over. Ammo was hard to get in the USA. He said the gun came with almost a full box of Winchester ammo, and he used one of those to kill the moose in Newfoundland Canada. He had a picture on the wall of himself and 3 of his Navy friends with that moose, with him holding the old M54. When I asked him about it, he told me the whole story. It was hilarious. He said that he and his buddies "just knew they were going to get caught" and that a court marshal and jail time was in their future for them as soon as things started to go wrong and the moose "fell out of the bomb-bay on the tarmac in front of the hanger". He was very well liked by the ground crew, but bribes and promises of coming bribes kept about 15 mouths shut instead of the original 3 other mouths that started the adventure with him in the 1st place. He told me he and his 3 buddies spent a LOT more money on liquor from France to keep others quiet then the rest of the "hunt' cost by itself. He said he had prayed in earnest a few times in the war when "holes appeared in his wings", but "also that time when the moose fell out of the bomber in broad daylight". It was NOT something you wanted the higher-ups to know about.
In WW2 he was one of the pilots that flew the observation float planes off the catapults on the battleship USS California. After the war he was transferred from the Pacific fleet to the Atlantic, to the office of Navel Intelligence/ North Atlantic. He was based in either Greenland or Iceland and would fly to Canada, Britain and sometimes into France. He said he got 4 boxes of ammo in France after the war. Sometime in the late 50s or 60s he traded the old Winchester 54 for a M70 in 30-06 because he could not get ammo for the 9MM easily.
It was not until about 10 years later someone told him how bad he's screwed up, and he never knew what he had until it was gone.
Last edited by szihn; 03/29/21.
