At a recent amnesty program held by the Israeli Defense Forces, a first model Dror in .303 British turned up along with a number of other small arms that had been surrendered as part of a drive to return historical small arms from IDF veterans or otherwise. In this particular case, the Dror that was handed in is of special importance because of how rare it is. We talked about this on TFB TV a while back and Ian has an excellent post on Forgotten Weapons about it as well. The early variants of the light machine gun that was illegally manufactured in Canada, sent as contraband to Israel where it was assembled, were in .303 British and had a side mounted magazine slot that could fit a 20-round magazine based on the Johnson LMG’s design. They didn’t fare too well in Israel due to feeding issues and only 800-1000 were ever made before the second variation was improved upon and ironically entered service in Israel after the fight for independence had already been won.

Image from Wikipedia.

Apart from some missing components in the rear sight, what appears to be some parts of the receiver, and what might be a broken barrel changing level, the Dror here looks to be in good condition for surviving as long as it did.

Currently I know of only two early model Drors that exist in complete condition. One is in the National Firearms Centre in Leeds, UK, while the other is in Batey ha-Osef/IDF History Museum in Tel Aviv. Hopefuly this early model will find a happy home somewhere as well.

A number of other interesting finds also turned up at the amnesty besides the Dror–

A Gewher 98 configured for sporting use and an early milled receiver AK47 make for strange bedfellows.

Much thanks to TFB reader Yoel for pointing this out!