Ries:
I am aware of the organized effort to get arms into Israel despite the embargo of 1948. As a matter of fact, a distant cousin on my mother's side of the family was involved in it. He was a union boilermaker. As such, he wangled things so he got assigned to go weld cleats to secure deck cargoes on merchant vessels tied up at the Brooklyn piers. More specifically, he got the call when there were cleats to be burned off and welded on decks of vessels heading to ports such as Naples, Italy, or Trieste or similarly located ports. My cousin had a Ford touring car which was his "gun delivery" car. He had all the seats removed, and just a small jumpseat to sit on when he drove it. He had repowered it with a Lincoln engine. The front springs were beefed up, and the rear axle was blocked solid to the frame rails. Being a touring car, he had curtains on the side and rear windows.
My cousin had a brother who was a Captain on the NYPD. The Captain was in the chain of things. The way my cousin explained it to me was that when NYPD police rousted a punk or raided some illegal enterprise, they might confiscate weapons. If not tied directly to the commission of a crime, the weapons were turned over to the "property office", supposedly to be logged in and stored until such time as a disposal was ordered. The police in the property office looked over what was turning up in the way of weapons, and if it was anything usable and good, it was "lost". Stuff like the usual "pimp guns" (nickel plated .32 auto pistols with mother of pearl grips) was kept in the property office as was anything that was an odd caliber, shot out, worn, or just un-usable. A lot of war souveneirs such as Walthers and Lugers were turning up, and these were diverted.
The diverted firearms were taken to an automotive machine shop. There, the mechanics cleaned and inspected each gun. Each gun was test fired accross a nearby railroad cut, into the opposite side's slope. No one noticed the gunfire or reported it, even within NYC limits. If the guns were found to be sound, they were cleaned, preserved in cosmoline, and tagged with make, model, caliber. The guns were wrapped in preservative paper and placed in wooden crates. The crates piled up in the automotive machine shop. When word came in of a ship docking in Brooklyn, heading for one of the ports en route to Israel, the next phase began. My cousin got the call, and he drove his gun running car to the shop. The car was packed with crated guns. My cousin drove to the Brooklyn pier where the vessel was docked. His orders were to leave the keys in the car, get set up to do his work on the deck of the vessel, and not look over the side or stop working until done. My cousin told me he had a pass to get on the pier, and the cops would wave him in. He'd park the Ford and get his shield and his other tools- a welding "whip" with his "stinger", can of electrode, grinder, slag pick and wire brush. He'd get his stuff handlined up to the deck and there would be a Lincoln gas driven welder and cutting outfit on the pier, hoses and leads already strung up to the deck for him. My cousin said he'd just go to work, "washing" off old deck cleats or chocks, welding new pad eyes or cleats to secure some deck cargo. He took his time. All the while, the longshoremen were working cargo. When he was done, he'd get his stuff back down onto the pier, and get into his Ford. It had been unloaded and was right where he'd left it.
The crates of guns were loaded aboard the vessel by the longshoremen. The vessel made port somewhere like Naples, Italy, and the crates were transferred by longshoremen there to other vessels heading to Israel. All the crates got through.
Years later as an engineer, I had occasion to run into a boilermaker who was a Yugoslavian immigrant. He was originally a merchant marine engineer. He and I got to talking, and he told me he had been an engineer on ships running from Trieste to Haifa in 1947-48. He told me about getting the crated guns aboard. He recalled one night, being offered a good new suit of clothes for cooperating. He told me that the trans shipping of the crates was a regular occurance, and the crews were "taken care of" for their help. He got a kick out of hearing that I had a cousin, also a boilermaker, who had helped get the crates aboard at Brooklyn.
As a follow up: I met a gunsmith a few years after meeting that boilermaker. We got to talking, and he told me his own connection to the whole crazy business. He was working as a foreman for a firearms manufacturer and sometime dealer/trader in small arms. This dealer/trader sold a substantial load of small arms to the Israelis, who arrived in civilian clothes to do the transaction. The Israelis brought a contract which bound this dealer/trader from selling to any Arab block nation or anyone connected with them. A few months later, a delegation of Egyptian officers, in uniform, bought a load of small arms from the same dealer/trader. He deftly "sold" the load to an employee, and the employee "made the sale" to the Egyptians. There is a saying that "no good deed goes unpunished", and this dealer trader got his for what he had done.
The dealer/trader got wind of the fact that NYPD was disposing of confiscated firearms by placing them in drums and filling the drums with concrete. Since this was very soon after WWII, the dealer/trader had visions of Lugers and Walters and Mauser machine pistols encased in concrete, dancing in his head. He saw a way to make a fortune from the war souveneirs. These drums were then dumped off a barge into waters not far off NYC. The dealer managed to get some idea of the position where the barrels were dumped, and hired a vessel with a couple of salvage divers to recover the barrels. He had the barrels trucked to his shop, and told his foreman (the gunsmith I met years later) to take a couple of guys and put them to busting the guns out of the concrete. Two guys started chipping away at the concrete, and soon enough, began extricating guns. All they found were guns no one would want: basic pimp guns, old strap top revolvers, sawed off shotguns. After busting concrete in several barrels, not one gun worth anything was found. The dealer/trader was out the cost of obtaining the information as to the dumping site, out the cost of hiring a vessel and crew, out the cost of trucking the barrels to his shop, and out the cost of labor to see what was in the barrels.
When I told that gunsmith about my cousin's involvement, he laughed long and hard. It had been about 50 years between the time the dealer/trader had recovered those barrels and had the worthless guns chipped out, to the time I told the gunsmith the story of my cousin. The pieces fit together handily.
My cousin has been dead a good few years. When he died, his family put a bottle of his favorite whisky and a box of his favorite cigars in his casket. He and his brother, the NYPD Captain, and some other members of NYPD were recognized by the Israelis for their help. It was one of those things no one spoke of. When it became apparent I was interested in welding and boilermaking work, and was riding motorcycles, my cousin (who had ridden an ex NYPD Indian) started to tell me the stories of his part in the gun running.
I tend to be highly suspicious when I see things that look like another layer of restrictions. I figure that if the regulatory agencies have tightened or closed every imaginable loophole in the sale or transfer of firearms, the next step is to crack down on the means to make them. I like the saying (and song) "die Gendanken sind frei" (a song sung by Allied POW's and concentration camp inmates, meaning: Your thoughts are free). As long as people's minds work, there is no regulation which will ever be all inclusive or totally effective.
