Dutch Navy Luger K.M. confusion
 

Here is a bit of information surrounding the K.M. marking found on the grips of some (not all) Dutch Navy Lugers.

The information was published in the 1932 edition of

'Bepalingen betreffende de Artillerie der Koninklijke Marine'
'Provisions concerning the Artillery of the Royal Navy'

The Dutch Navy Luger was accepted and referred to as the 'Pistool, Automatische, Nr. 1' or 'Pistol, Automatic, Number 1'.

The book gives us the marking regulations for all sorts of Navy equipment, which helps. It was not available at the time of writing of some of the standard books on Dutch Lugers, so there has been some confusion about the meaning of the K.M. marking in general.

I hope this helps to set the record straight:

There is a separate section on the marking of weapons numbers for the Marine Corps (Korps Mariniers). The abbreviation for Koninklijke Marine and Korps Mariniers are both K.M. This, of course, does not help much. In fact, the document warns about creating confusion...

It states:



Automatic Pistols are numbered on: barrel, frame and receiver/slide. In the Dutch East-Indies also marked at the front of the grip strap with K.M.

....

The weapons numbers for the Marine Corps are so-called Corps Weapons Numbers.

On the rifles they run from 1 to 1500 and the spare numbers 1501 to 1800.

On the Automatic Pistol Nr. 1 the Corps Weapons Numbers range from 100 till 199 and 1200 till 1249. On these pistols, in front of the number, they are also marked "K.M." (Korps Mariniers) (not to be confused with the "K.M." on the front of the gripstrap of the pistols in the Dutch East-Indies, see above with Weapon Numbers.



So, a Dutch NAVY Luger, issued outside of the Dutch East-Indies has no K.M. on the grip strap.

A Dutch NAVY Luger, issued to be used in the Dutch East-Indies has K.M. on the grip strap. This is done to visually separate ownership of the pistol from those of the Dutch East-Indies Army (KNIL), which is a separate military organization.

A Dutch NAVY Luger, issued to the Korps Mariniers, would have to have the letters K.M. struck before the serial number, which is (in 1932) limited to number 100 - 199 and 1200 - 1249.

No K.M. Marking on the front grip strap, no grip safety, Rust with arrow down: Dutch NAVY.
K.M. on the front grip strap, no grip safety, Rust with arrow down: NAVY Luger, serving iin the East-Indies.
K.M. 100-199 / K.M. 1200-1249 no grip safety, Rust with arrow down: NAVY Luger, serving with the Korps Mariniers.

Any Dutch Luger with a grip safety and Rust with Arrow UP is Dutch East Indies KNIL (colonial army) issue.

An interesting side notes is that the Marines who got pistols (100-199 and 1200-1249) had their daggers (Stormdolk) numbered to the pistol, with the letter 'P' for Pistol before the number. So the user of Korps Mariniers pistol 100 would have a dagger numbered P100 to go with it.

Hope this helps.

Gerben,



Excellent work, thanks very much.


--Dwight

Here is an example of the scabbard of a pistol carrying Marine dagger. Note that the brass plates are similar to those used on Dutch Navy holsters.