French Mle 1950 Pistol Factory Shipping Box and Manuals

[Wilhelm]

Tonight, we're going to take a look at a neat little item I recently picked up to go along with my collection of Mle 1950 pistols, an original cardboard box that each pistol was shipped in when it left the factory. This particular one, while it's clearly housed a pistol sometime during its life, doesn't seem to have ever been used for its intended purpose as it has no tag affixed:

Note that the lid is marked 8356. Whether or not that's a serial number, I have no idea.

Now, had it originally left Châtellerault, it would have had their label attached and looked like this:


Had the pistol been made by St. Etienne, it would have had one of their labels attached:

Regardless of the manufacturer, both labels contained essentially the same information; namely, the manufacturer of the pistol, the contents of the box, the year, serial number, and who to contact in case of a problem with the contents.
Each pistol was shipped with one cleaning rod, two magazines, and one manual.


Upon opening the box, you would encounter the contents listed on the label:



Unfortunately, few of these boxes are still around today. Generally, once they were delivered, they were stored in plastic boxes with a hole passing through the box and trigger guard of each pistol so that they could be secured with a chain. Here, we see the factory cardboard shipping box compared to an arsenal plastic storage box with its cover removed for clarity:


Bottom of box:

This box was clearly held closed with tape. Whether this was common practice or not, I cannot say.


Shipping box shown with contents removed:



Detail of construction showing a simple staple assembly method:

Close observation of the photos shown to this point will reveal that the French were careful to assure that each assembly staple would only have to pass through two thicknesses of cardboard. The cardboard used is rather thick and the assembled box is surprisingly sturdy.

It appears that this box did have some sort of label attached along one of its sides at one point, but that label is lost to History unfortunately:



Detail photo showing the inside of the box and some of the staples used to assemble it. It's crude but effective:



Thanks to some networking in France, I have managed to gather a few box labels from both Châtellerault and St Etienne and they will be shown below. What's neat about them is that they can be used to give some idea about when a particular pistol was manufactured because each label includes both a serial number and a date. We start with six labels from Châtellerault:

So, we know that by 1959, they were up to the "R" block and they were into the "S" block by 1960. St Etienne took over in 1963.

Here's a closeup of a 1959 Châtellerault label:

Notice that is says that the "safety parts" have been dismantled. According to a 1964 training manual I have, those parts are the recoil spring and its rod. However, if my research is correct, this was later changed to the mechanism support and that's how they were received by Navy Arms from the French Gendarmerie last year. Whatever the case, when the pistols were originally shipped from manufacturers to government storage facilities, parts were removed from each pistol and shipped in separate boxes to make sure that each pistol was deactivated upon transport.


An example of a St. Etienne label:

Unlike the Châtellerault labels, the St Etienne labels seem to have changed over time and they seem to have been cut individually, where the Châtellerault ones seem to have been a standardized label.


Here, we see s grouping of Châtellerault labels:



And here, a grouping of St Etienne labels:




I also want to touch upon printed manuals in this post. According to my research, the first manual was released in May of 1951 although actual pistols weren't released to troops until 1953:


The May of 1951 jobber was not a booklet but rather a long strip of cardstock printed on both sides and folded in on itself:

All subsequent manuals were, to my knowledge more conventional stapled booklets.

Lets, go back to the picture showing a grouping of manuals:

Starting with the top row left to right, we have the May of 1951 version, the 1963 6th Edition, and the 1970 7th Edition.
On the bottom, left to right, we have the 1973 8th edition, and the 1975 9th edition. Later, the 9th edition would be reformatted into a larger dimensioned booklet but the information therein would remain essentially the same.
And here is the problem. Try as I might, I have never been able to find copies of the 2nd through 5th edition manuals. It's like they never existed. That just simply does not make sense to me though. SO, if any of you fine folks has a copy of a 2nd through 5th edition, please contact me as I would love to see it. It may even be that there was a 1st Edition after the May of 1951 printing, I just don't know. Any and all information would be much appreciated!

Of course, there was a LOT more literature produced by the French concerning this pistol concerning parts manuals, repair manuals and bunch of other stuff but that's not germane to this conversation. Here, we are just talking about the neato little box and the manuals issued with inside them with the pistol.

Alrighty, that's it for this little piece of History. Thanks for your time and I hope you enjoyed the read!