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With three 1905 rifles, it is possible that several crates of that year were in Storage and then issued to the Air Force. There were over 24,000 m/96 rifles made that year, and it is quite possible that a large amount of that year's production was put into a Warehouse at the same time. A large truck load, for example, could easily have been 1000 rifles, stored for future issue in the same area of the Warehouse.
The m/96 in 1905 had only been in production for eight years, and Sweden was in the process of rearming it's Military with this rifle. I can visualize an entire Regiment exchanging their Remington Rolling Block rifles for m/96 rifles, all brand new and straight from the Carl Gustafs Factory, and all bearing the same date. A similar exchange of rifles occurred in Canada in 1914, when troops from the 16 Battalions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force at Valcartier, Quebec exchanged their 1905 Model Ross Rifles for brand new 1910 Model Ross Rifles that had just been made at the Ross Factory in Quebec City, over 30,000 rifles with the same year date on them.
After WWI, with the Politicians looking for a way to cut costs and disbanding Military units, these 1905 rifles could have been put into storage, and / or turned over to the newly formed 1926 Swedish Air Force.
There are a dozen possibilities as to why three 1905 rifles ended up in the same Unit, including co-incidence. But it is fun and interesting to speculate on it.
Certainly the numbers issued to one Air Force Unit would not have been high as they would have been issued with the purpose of Guard Duty and an initial Ground Defence of the Airport until some supporting Units arrived. 100 rifles is probably on the high side of numbers, and that is only 10 crates with 10 rifles to a crate. In day-to-day use, only about 20-24 rifles would have been used by the Guard for the Airfield, and the rest stored for emergency use.
The Swedish Navy and Army had seperate Aviation Units until 1926, when they were amalgamated into the Swedish Air Force. The Navy had a Bleriot XI in 1911 and the Army had a Nieuport IV-G in 1912.
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