Did receive a nice PM e-mail from Mike Jones...thanks Mike...!

He did want me to reiterate the fact that on page 209 of his Dad's book, Harry did mention that this was not a Contract luger for the Japanese...

On another note :

The better photo of a similar Japanese luger on page 74 of Still's 3rd. Reich lugers does show some Japanese kangi letter/characters stamped or engraved (?) on the barrel, running along its axis...The Jones' photo does as well, but they do not appear quite as good.

Does anyone know if these kangi characters were translated ? If yes, would appreciate knowing their translation...

I will also bring my copy of the Still book up to Reno. Maybe we can get a Japanese collector/dealer to translate them for us...

Regards,

Pete... <img border="0" alt="[typing]" title="" src="graemlins/yltype.gif" />

On the gunboards is a section on Japanese guns that I frequent. I will post pictures and ask this question.

ED

Pete,
Maybe you can print out a copy of the picture I posted for Alain and take it along too. The barrel markings show up very well.

Ed,
Likewise perhaps you can post the picture on the gunboards Japanese section as well.

Posted both on the gunboards with info on where the photo came from.

I will post a reply after I get it, the guys on the Japanese boards seem like helpful guys.

Ed

Hello Ron,

Will do, I have nice laser printer printouts of both Alain's pistol and the Still pg. 74 pistol.

To my eye; the kangi characters are identical...

Maybe there is a joke here and the kangi characters say "Engraved In Kansas"... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> ...just jesting, of course...!

Regards,

Pete... <img border="0" alt="[typing]" title="" src="graemlins/yltype.gif" />

A reply on the Banzai board says it means:

"Doitsu [German] 14th Year Type"

Any other replies and I will pass them along.

That doesn't make any sense to me, as 14th year type is what the Nambu (after the papa and before the type 94) was called? So even if you used chronological Japanese time frame, the model 1908 would not make sense, unless this gun was adopted or used at the same time period as when the Type 14 Nambu was adopted.

Just another point that these are not true adopted guns of the Nippon military, as calling it a type or model was a true designation. And if the Nambu 14 or 94 were not mummed, then why would a Luger be mummed?

Still if someone has a nice one like those pictured, I will give them a slightly better than shooter price for it, <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">To my eye; the kangi characters are identical...</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">They are slightly different:

http://boards.rennlist.com/lfupload/combined.jpg

The second to last character is different, or should I actually say, the second character, because donâ??t they read down to up?

I know they read right to left, but I am unsure if it is down to up or up to down?

Ed, there is a reason that the Nambu pistols were not mummed, as well as any other Jap officer’s sidearm. Since the officer was required to purchase his own sidearm, it became his property, and not the emperors. So no personal pistol was stamped with the chrysanthemum according to the Japanese exports I have discussed this with. Rifles got the chrysanthemum because they were Army property, and thus the Emperor’s property. Another Japanese collector also brought up the very common sense observation that a bunch of 1940 42 coded Lugers would not have been found in the Eastern theater of operations in the first place. And even if they had been bought by an officer, his pistol would never have been stamped with the mum in addition.

Parallax Discussion

True, good points. I felt as much, but wasn't sure and didn't state it as well.

Ed

I don't know if Lugers with the Emporer's Chrysamthemum on them are real or not. I agree they are more likely to appear on Dutch Lugers than German ones.

Having said that, I got a LP08 with the Australian Army (D^D) property stamp on it. Imagine that, a DWM marked "Dad and Dave Industries".

Pete - I also want to thank you for starting this discussion. This forum and others are the places for us to learn and at the same time to perhaps resolve some of these controversies! How boring it would be if all the topics were very vanilla, we would probably stop reading (and learning) in a short time.

Regarding these "Mum Lugers" (I won't call them Japanese Lugers), the pictures above and one other I have seen somewhere indicate a very well done stamp. If this was done outside a factory or arsenal, and by an individual, it appears so good I will lose sleep over what other altered pistols are out there. A chamber date or toggle inscription would be no more difficult than these mums. Aaron and I think alike on this one.

Thanks to Big Norm (thanks very much, Norm...), I do have the original article that was written by Frank Allan in AutoMag last year in July 2002.

In this article, Mr. Allan cites that the Japanese Ordnance Association was asked about the legitimacy of the Mum lugers. This association replied that in conformance to military regulations, handguns were never stamped with the Imperial Crest of Japan (not even on the baby Nambus presented by the Emperor himself...

He also states that a real pair of Colt SA revolvers where presented to the Imperial Family by the US government. These SA have the Mum, but they are placed into the wooden grip panels and not on the metal of the pistols. He states the application of the Mums on these pistols is totally different from those on the Mum lugers, but does not expand on this difference...

Mr. Allan also mentions how the luger and the Nambus were historically "confused" in surrender reports by Allied staff during the war...since Nambus looked similar to lugers and most Allied staff had seen lugers since WWI but not very many Nambus...

Finally, I have sent an e-mail to Mr. Allan; inviting him to join us on the Luger Forum so he might read this discussion thread and maybe add some reply...

Regards,

Pete... <img border="0" alt="[typing]" title="" src="graemlins/yltype.gif" />

"Takeichi Nishi, of Japan, was an army lieutenant when he won the Olympic title in Los Angeles (1932)and made many American friends, among them the actor Douglas Fairbanks. Then came Pearl Harbor. Nishi was promoted to Japanese colonel in the Second World War and when the US forces reached Iwo Jima Island, he joined a mass suicide."

Good example of how a Japanese officer would have had the opportunity to obtain a US firearm for personal use, I'm sure there were more here prior to WWII. Must have also been in Germany too.

rk

Yamamoto the man behind Pearl Harbor went to Harvard and traveled over much of the country...

Pete,

Mr Allen IS a registered member of the forum, but he hasn't posted in a very long time. Perhaps your email will prompt him to spend a little more time with us.

Pete,
I figured that you would make good use of Mr. Allens original discussion of the Mum Luger. Because of its documentation, I feel that it carries a bit more authority than his second discussion in AutoMag. The bottom line is that Lugerheads should not spend big bucks on a 'rare' Luger without doing a heck of a lot studying first. We all work too hard getting that money just to spend it on a counterfeit.
Maybe what you should do is post the four different styles on Mum Lugers that Mr. Allen drew in his article. I also noticed that all the Mum Luger pictures had different serial numbers. This suggests that someone had a sort of assembly line going. This was not a one shot thing. So the Japanese characters and the Mums would all look the same.
Big Norm

Bernard,
yes, there are a lot of counterfeit Lugers out there. Working off of my memory, I believe that AutoMag has shown KU's and Kreighoffs being counterfeited. There also has been a large number of counterfeit Model 1914 navy Lugers posted on this forum and mentioned on Jan Stills web site. While I am not necessarily against the restoration of Lugers, I would never buy a particularly rare and expensive one that has been restored, no matter how well the restoration was done. AutoMag calls these cheats a "cottage industry". Some of these quick buck artists are very good at their disgusting "hobby".

Try reading everything that Tom Armstrong writes on this forum and see what he does to authenticate his guns. The man is good.
Big Norm

No luck with the Mum barrel translation at the Reno gun show this weekend.

The Las Vegas dealer of Japanese weapons and swords does not read Japanese...

My wife will try a friend in Washington State who lives in a Shinto shrine near Mt. Pilchuck...but he is not "wired" so we will go the old US mail route...

Regards,

Pete...

Big Norm,
You, sir, are too kind.
Tom A

I have a new neighbor whose wife is Japanese but I haven't been able to catch them at home since this message thread started... As soon as I do I will find out if she can read the barrel inscription.

Hi,

If I wanted to fake a Japanese luger and did not understand the language, I would copy the characters from another Japanese handgun from the same timeframe...

According to a knowledgeable friend, the barrel inscription reads "Type 14"! If this is true, it does cast a bit of doubt about the authenticity of these Lugers.

Weren't the so-called death's head Lugers discredited as fakes perpetrated by an importer who took reworks etc and stamped a skull and cross bones to make people think they were SS pistols?

Sgt Art,
There are some genuine death's head Lugers in existence. There is no definitive answer regarding when they were created and/or to which units they belonged. There is absolutely no connection between the SS and the death head Lugers. The death head Lugers pre-date the SS by many years.

Yeah, seems I heard that they felt like they came from the Death's Head Hussars or some such from WWI. But, seems I saw some that had SS runes as well. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

Sgt Art,
in Jan Stills 'Imperial Luger' book pg 155-156, he suggests that "the Deaths Head (totenkopf) symbol was adopted as the symbol of the flame throwers during WW1. These were also painted on tanks of that era. The 'Totenkoph' was also put on some Lugers of the 1917-1918 period. Detailed documentation has not been found.".

The single, little 'S' curl on the the top of the deaths head also existed on a 1918 Luger picture featured in the same book (pg 153). Long before the 'SS' was invented by Hitler.

My opinon is that the 'totenkopf' would be an individual small unit thing and nothing official. Later, counterfeiters thought that this looked cool and applied it to other Lugers to make more money selling their toys. I also think that this is the case of the "Mum" Lugers. But that is just my humble opinion. I would never go out of my way to buy either a "Totenkoph" or a "Mum" Luger. There are just too many good, documented Lugers out there and too little money to buy them all.
Big Norm

Was/is there any explanation of the little "S" over the death's head? It's an interesting explanation, but I have to wonder. I know unit armorers had the ability to apply unit markings to the grip strap area during WWI, we've all seen those. Unit markings are numbers and letters that appear to have been stamped on by hand with the grip supported by an insert to keep it from collapsing. But, the Death's Dead looks like it was applied by a die and press of some sort. Wouldn't that require a sizeable press? That doesn't sound like the type of equipment you would normally find at say the "field" level. Just a thought. I think one thing to consider is, what would the value of the specimens bearing mums and death's heads be without those little additions?

Out of curiousity I sent the barrel inscription to a Japanese colleague and he couldn't read it. Maybe it was copied from another gun and the copier got some of the characters wrong?

An update on the inscription that was shown from two alleged "Japanese" Luger barrels...

I printed out the photo showing the two sets of symbols and presented it to two young Japanese born and raised acquaintences without explanation and requested if they could read the inscription that was found on two similar antiques... independently, they each came to the conclusion that the first three symbols are not of Japanese origin... and just as independently, they each said that the remaining 5 symbols indicated a "type of the 14th year"

(Photo re-displayed here for convenience)

http://boards.rennlist.com/lfupload/combined.jpg

Can anyone document the character type of the first three symbols with any known reference?

Only after their partial translation of the inscription did I educate my acquaintences on the origin of the photos... neither of these gentlemen are gun enthusiasts... and once they had each offered their opinion to me privately, they consulted with each other and confirmed their translation to the best of their ability. They attributed the difference in the next to the last symbol (both agreed it was the same symbol) to the depth of the stamping on a curved surface...

Comments and opinions are welcome.

I find this topic VERY interesting. :)

John, either that picture is the one I posted, or one like it, and the symbols are incorrect. In talking to Jan, (one photo was from his book, the other from Datig I think?), he said essentially the same thing, when he asked a Japanese reader, they said that the symbols were not tight, Jan said he didn't go much further with it, as he thought the gun he observed wouldn't have incorrect markings on it, if real.

That is from memory, so I could be convoluting my thinking, :D

Ed

Ed, :D

You must have holiday lag... <img border="0" alt="[hiha]" title="" src="graemlins/roflmao.gif" />

the photo was originally posted by you...

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">(Photo re-displayed here for convenience) </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">All I am trying to do is track down those first 3 erroneous symbols... the last five have been corroborated by several sources now as "type of the 14th year"

Sgt Art,

One of the units that has been identified as a possibility for the Death Head Luger is the "Flammenwerfer" or flamethrower units that had the Death Head as part of their official or unofficial insignia. It has been postulated that the lazy "S" is a stylized representation of the pattern of the flame from a flamethrower as it is swept across a target.

I have examined one "Japanese" Luger and it was a fake. The marking was poorly engraved and off center as well. I am certainly not going to get into the "who faked photos" contrversy, but I have seen nothing to indicate that Mauser made Lugers on a Japanese contract, or that the Japanese ever put the "mum" on captured or purchased weapons. (The type I rifles have no "mum".)

Engraving of chamber markings does not itself indicate a fake. The factory commonly did so when markings were needed for a small lot of guns and it was cheaper and quicker to engrave the guns than to make up a roll stamp. But engraved markings should still be looked on with some skepticism, especially where the marking duplicates uncommon stamped markings (e.g. "M2" markings).

Japanese officers could and did buy their own pistols, and some certainly could have owned Lugers, but these would have been commercial Lugers, not P.08's, nor would they have had the "mum" which indicated property made for the Emperor.

Tales of Japanese Lugers from WWII can almost always be discounted, not because anyone was lying, but because the Type 14 pistols as well as the Nambu pistols as a group, were almost universally called "Jap Lugers", even in army documents. I was once shown a "Jap Baby Luger" by a veteran who captured it on Okinawa. It was a Baby Nambu; still a very nice piece, but certainly not a Luger, baby or otherwise.

Jim

The "Auto Mag" is a fine publication with much excellent information, especially for those interested in Lugers. It is also a product of the members with articles submitted by them and the quality of the information is subject to the limitations of the individuals. I was a member of NAPCA for several years and in that time I wrote a letter detailing information about a US&S 1911A1 that came into my possession in 99.9% condition. The pistol was examined in detail by Edward Banks - now deceased - and deemed original in every way. Ed contacted a very senior official of US&S and arranged the sale of the pistol to him.

I spoke with the gentleman several times by telephone and he had been employed at that time for many years (more than 30, IIRC) with US&S and had complete access to all of their records. According to his account, the ONLY surviving records of US&S 191A1 war-time production were ones that he and a friend had managed to pull from a dumpster when they were tossed out early in his employment. The records they saved are few and don't begin to tell the full story. The information he himself gathered over the years came from first hand accounts of employees who were there during the war and had knowledge of daily operations. At the time I spoke with him, he also owned a "lunch box" US&S pistol that was returned to the company by police who confiscated it from a former worker years after the worker had retired.

Anyway, without going into great detail about the gentleman with whom I'd spoken, I observed in my letter that a great deal of information about US&S production had been lost. The month following the appearance of my letter in "Auto Mag", there was a response from a fellow who thoroughly trashed my letter and made the statement that the reason he KNEW he was correct was because unlike war-ravaged Germany and Japan, we hadn't been bombed and the full records of US&S production during the war were still very much intact.

My first impulse was to ask for the exact location of those records but after beginning a couple of replies that sounded too "testy" I just let it go.

Just as this fine forum is the sum of the contributions of the members, so is "Auto Mag" and there will be differences of opinion. It's how those differences are expressed that makes the debate either educational and enjoyable or just a p!$$!n' contest.

Very true !!

And well said, do you still have this 1911A1? Sounds very sweet, would like to see pictures of it?

:)

Ed

I will just deduct it from your annual overseas lugerforum dues Tac! :D That puts you back down to zero so this years membership is free :D :D (just like my salary as an Admin)

Seriously though, Can your local Japanese speakers identify the type and character of the first three symbols... because my locals told me that the first three symbols were not of the same type as the last five...which I think I remember they said were "kangi" (spelling is a guess).

-John

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva"> A reply on the Banzai board says it means: "Doitsu [German] 14th Year Type" </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Tac's information confirms the translation found by Ed Tinker. Now, why is it that some can translate the characters and others can't? Is there more than one variant of Japanese characters and why would there be a mixture of two styles in the same inscription?

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Originally posted by Edward Tinker:
<strong>Very true !!

And well said, do you still have this 1911A1? Sounds very sweet, would like to see pictures of it?
:) Ed</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Hi Ed,

The pistol was sold to the US&S senior official. That was probably 12 or 13 years ago and at this late date I don't think there would be any harm in mentioning that his name was Robert Karrow. He retired shortly after I sold the pistol to him and if he's still alive is likely living in PA.

The "story" that came with the pistol may interest others so I'll repeat it for what it's worth.

Supposedly a crate of .45's was on one of the Pacific island air bases in 1945 or 1946 and when the base was closed the guns were offered to air crew members. This particular pistol was taken by a B-29 crewman. A friend of mine purchased it from the man's widow, wrapped in old newspaper and completely covered in a heavy black grease that it had apparently been dipped in while the grease was liquid. In turn, it was sold to another mutual friend. Neither of them attempted to remove the grease beyond ID'ing the maker and serial number. That's how I received it and the grease had set up to be very stiff. Removing it from the outside wasn't too much of a problem but even soaking it in mineral spirits didn't faze the grease inside. I finally put it in the oven at about 150 degrees until it was soft enough to take down and complete the cleaning.

Ed Banks, who I mentioned in my earlier post, was one of the annual "American Handgunner" Top 100 pistolsmiths with over 30 years devoted primarily to the 1911. In his opinion, the pistol was correct in every respect. Mr. Karrow also believed it to be original.

Sadly, I didn't take any pictures of it at the time and wish I had. I also wish I'd have kept it as the prices for US&S 1911's has shot through the roof. That, I'm afraid, is the lament of anyone who has collected guns for any period of time.
<img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="frown.gif" />

that was what my locals told me Ron... that the "type" of the first three symbols did not match the last five... peeks my curiosity too why there would be a mix of different alphabets... makes for an interesting mystery...

Hi,

The real mystery is why the same engraving would be found on both a luger and a nambu...

I still believe someone just copied the nambu text on a luger barrel, since that would be the obvious thing to do if you don't speak or write japanese...