[Kyrie]

Hi Johnny,


Thank you for your post


Regarding the validity of the Bureau of Accounting records, Iâ??m afraid you have the situation backwards. If you feel what you term the â??bean countersâ? to be in error, it is incumbent upon you to provide other primary source information that demonstrates the professional accountantsâ?? accounts contain errors. This is one of the stumbling blocks to the line of thought you are following - it requires discounting official US records kept during the events themselves


In terms of the pistols sold by Bannerman, I believe you are over generalizing. While Bannerman sold all the surviving 1900 Test Lugers, not all Lugers sold by Bannerman were US Test Trail Lugers - Lugers were quite an item with Bannerman and Bannerman was still selling Lugers decades after the Test Trials. The out of range 1900 Commercial variation Lugers in Bannermanâ??s records could have come from any number of sources - the US was hardly the only country considering the Luger for adoption. Moreover, if you are doubtful concerning period US government records, in all fairness you need to extend that same skepticism to Bannermanâ??s records.


Concerning your comment that the Lugers sold to Bannermanâ??s â??...were condemned and sold more or less as scrap.â?, I regret to say this is untrue. The pistols were neither condemned nor sold as scrap. They sold at public auction because they were â??surplus to current and anticipated service requirements.â? Bannerman acquired them for $10 each, and fifty cents for each spare magazine. In 1900 dollars that wasnâ??t cheap, and was more than a weekâ??s wages for a workingman.


There is nothing â??strangeâ?? about DWM delivering blocks of consecutively numbered pistols - this was the rule rather than the exception for small contracts.


Regarding your comment that, â??The pistols sold to Bannermanâ??s accounts for all but 20 of the original shipment of 800 pistols.â??, I regret to point out this is highly unlikely. It is a matter of historical record that the US army traded 50 of the 7.65 mm 1900 Test Lugers for 50 Luger in 9 mm Parabellum (and these 9 mm Parabellum pistols were consecutively serial numbered beginning with serial number 22400), and that two of the ten original 1,000 1900 Test Lugers shipped to West Point were never issued nor accounted for - and were presumably stolen. Additionally, some unknown number of 1900 Test Lugers were regarded by the US Army as unserviceable, beyond repair, and were destroyed rather than going to auction. Thus, youâ??re counting on having more than 50% of the pistols lost, stolen, destroyer, or return to Germany to have come from the only the last 200 pistols delivered to the US. It is much more likely that some of the pistols offered by Bannerman came from sources other than the US Test Trials. This is especially true if you believe, as you write, that there is â??plenty of reason to believe that the second shipment would not all be sent to the field and therefore be the "best of the best"â??.


Finally, regarding Dr. Scott Meadows and his "US Military Automatic Pistols", his extension of the test pistol serial numbers into the 7000 range would be more persuasive if he had cited some primary source documentation to support this extension (or at least provided some hints as to his reasoning for doing so). As he did not, his extension of the serial number range can be regarded as nothing more than his own speculation.


While I respect your position on this and find your reasoning interesting, I cannot agree with your conclusions. To do so Iâ??d have to be willing to discount primary source records, accept unlikely lines of speculation as being likely true, and put more faith in supposition based on desire for a specific answer than I did in historical fact. Iâ??m reluctant to do these things


Best regards,


Kyrie