Dutch Navy revisited - new info.

[Vlim]

Quite a bit has been written about the Dutch contract lugers, and the Dutch navy contract in particular.

Just as a short reminder:
Dutch lugers come in 2 main shapes:
1. The lugers ordered for use in the Dutch East and West Indies (KNIL). Also known as the M11, with grip safety.
2. The lugers ordered for the Dutch navy, also known as the Automatic Pistol Nr. 1. P08 style without grip safety.

The KNIL lugers were made by DWM and Vickers.
The Navy lugers were made by DWM and Mauser.

Recently I had the opportunity to purchase a rare Dutch 'Navy Bible', 'Bepalingen betreffende de artillerie der Koninklijke Marine'. This book describes all procedures, marking instructions, maintenance instructions, instructions of use and administrative duties surrounding all arms of the Dutch navy. The book dates from 1932 and is littered with revisions which were added during later years.

The book gives some interesting information about the Dutch navy luger which I will summarize here. It would be interesting to cross reference this information with examples of Dutch lugers in collections:

Here we go:
The main suprise is the use of the K.M. marking on the grip strap of the Dutch lugers. As is well known, some have this marking, others don't. We always assumed that K.M. was the property marking of the Dutch Royal Navy (Koninklijke Marine). Well, we were wrong:

This is what the marking instruction says: Pistols with serial numbers 1 - 199 and 1200 - 1249 are intended for use by the Korps Mariniers (Marine Corps) and should be marked with K.M.

The leather works accompanying the pistols for the Marine Corps are marked with the Corps Weapon Number, the ship leatherwork with the number of the ship.

An interesting side note is that the daggers issued to the Marine Corps had serial numbers that corresponded with the pistol numbers, further identified with a P before the number. (P stands for 'Pistol user').

So, a Dutch navy Marine Corps pistol user would be issued for example pistl number 100, accompanied with a holster with number 100 and a dagger numbered P100. This pistol would have the K.M. marking on the grip.

Off to work, check your Dutch navy equipment and see if we can verify this!

Photos of the book and a later Mauser contract with Holster #28.