Theory on Mismatched Magazines

I posted the below in response to mismatched parts. Think maybe it deserves a thread of its own.


I have a theory on why so many mismatched Magazines from Lugers and other German Pistols versus the number of matched Magazines in Japanese pistols. If you wil notice in most pictures of Germans surrendering you will see lines of prisoners and piles of weapons. I think that the Germans were made to eject the magazines from the weapon and they and the holster went in one pile while the pistols went in another. Most pistols taken off the Japanese were not surrendered but taken off Dead Bodies. The same goes for the rifles. Bolts went in one pile rifles in another. Just my thoughts but would make some sense. When a GI selected his pistol he picked up one from one pile and took a Magazine and Holster from the other. Most of the matching items would come from a prisoner actually surrendering his weapon to the person capturing him, accounting for some matched items.

[Orv Reichert]

All surrendered weapons were unloaded and piled up...holsters and gear in another pile...ammo in still another pile. The Americans routinely piled long arms up, poured fuel on them, and burned them.


There were never enough pistols to supply the wants of the American GI's. There was quite a cash market for them...a Luger bringing $75 in the rear areas and many were routinely sold to Sailors in the port towns, too, for even more.


Everyone wanted a Walther pocket pistol but most had to settle for something else. The small guns were much more desirable, I am told.


Rifles: These are often Mismatched because they were shipped into the USA [after the war] by the boatloads without bolts..... as "SCRAP IRON" The bolts came on a different ship. They were fitted/head space checked and sold by Hunters Lodge and others thru large adds in the Rifleman and other sporting publications. I have several of the adds showing them.


Orv Reichert

Makes sense, plus we don't have now nor ever have had matching parts for firearms, much less magazines. Is not part of our military concept.


Roadkill

Any Ex-GI Will verify that anyone seeing how a Armament Room is operated will understand that any any piece of Armament with all matching parts can only exist in the Arsenal, Once a weapon reaches a Depot anything can happen to it "and usually has".

ViggoG

[Joe]

Also, remember that the concept of matching magazines was not important to the average GI who was "picking" up a surrendered Luger. It is only to the collectors years later, that Lugers with matching mag/s have any "value".

The 98k rifle was much easier to stack up horoizitally when the bolt was removed. When a bolt was later refitted to a rifle no one thought of going through the effort to finding the one with the same serial number. In those days there was no "value" in a matched bolt.

[Johnny Peppers]

After WWII there was a massive rebuild program for the M1 Rifles and M1 Carbines used during the war. There was no such program for the Model 1911A1 pistol, and many of these have survived in original matching condition. As late as 1962 the DCM was selling 1911A1 pistols in unissued condition in the original factory shipping boxes.

I carried a .45 for many years. Our .45's were pretty old, in Unit Armorer school, they told us that the last frames were made in 1945 or 1946 and most parts were that old. We had Remington Rand slides, Ithaca's, Colts, oh I don't remember, but we had everything, I remember playing around with them on midnight duty as Charge of Quarters (we were also the night Arms Room Officer).


We also had the old Remington Pump 12 gauges and M10 Smiths. I wish they'd sell some of those old .45's, I'd like another one. The warehouses in Anniston Army Depot have tons of .45's, M1's, old Thompsons, 1917's, etc., (I read an article on that years ago).


But I don't beleive any Lugers, but I always wonder, if you have these huge warehouses and they are, I've been on the outside of them, I imagine they look like the Indiana Jones movie in the end, I wonder if there are old captured Lugers or the 10 (ten, heh, heh) .45 Lugers from the trials, just cosmolined up, waiting for proper destruction...


Ed

I saw a TV deal on Eddie Laker, (?), the founder of Interarms. It showed his warehouses in England. He bought all the weapons captured from the US by the Japanese in the Phillipines for the price of scrap metal. There were 03s stacked up in squares thirty feet high. At that time he estimated he could put 25,000 men in the field with weapons. I heard there was some great stuff found in Hati, Panama, and Afghanistan. Been a dumping ground for obsolete firearms for 50 years.


Roadkill

[Orv Reichert]

I believe InterArms was a Sam Cummings firm?

Probably, I wasn't really sure. There were a lot of guns though.


Roadkill

[Orv Reichert]

The word is that the CIA used him to supply folks that they could not do, directly. And, because of that, he got deals that no one else could get when he bought surplus stuff!


His daughter recently used her .380 PPK to 'terminate' her lover in dad's old house..


Orv

[Hugh]

I'd like to see the markings on that 380. Saw a picture of some Israeli settlers practicing fast fire techniques with pistols a while back. Two had Desert eagles, 9mm(could tell when they held them up to drop magazines & reload) one had a .45. The other was fast as lightning with a ramped sight Browning HP. I wonder where that one came from.


Roadkill