MAS Manufactured 1935S With No Serial Number

[Wilhelm]

In this thread, I'm going to document an early pattern French made MAS 1935S pistol. Very few of these are around anymore and examples sans a serial number are so scarce that even Jean Huon can only speculate as to their origin. In my personal research, I could find no detailed pictures of one and all of it's markings so, that's what we're going to do here. I'm also going to go over a few of the accessories that were made for these pistols.



Now, when talking about old firearms, we always hear "buy the gun, not the story", and I agree with that line of thinking. However, in this case, I'm going to tell you the story because I happen to believe it. But even without the story, this pistol speaks for itself. We cannot know whether it was built before 1940 or after the factory was liberated in 1944, but it was certainly built before the end of the war.



This pistol came from a 77 year old Veteran who was a family friend of the man who brought this back after the war. That man's name was Charles Slagle Jr., born in 1925, and passed on in 2011. According to his obituary, he was a member of the 101st Airborne. I was told that the entire rig was being passed on to me exactly as it was brought home. Judging by the imprint that the pistol has left in the holster, I 100% believe what I was told. Additionally, the pistol was absolutely bone dry with not a trace of lubrication to be found other than that which had dried on it decades before. It was difficult to disassemble due to the fact that some of the parts had frozen from dried lubricant. The phosphate was an almost bright green that, once oiled, darkened considerably to the shade that we are accustomed to seeing on MAS made examples.



It came in a holster that I cannot identify:



The correct holster would have been a Model 1937. We'll take a look at that and the pictured cleaning kit later:



As you can see by looking at the rear, it's been modified from its original form:

Notice that time has molded the holster to the pistol. You can even see the protruding barrel.


The closure stud is a mystery to me. It is marked on both the front and rear:





The spare magazine pouch was restitched too to perfectly fit a 1935 magazine:

When the pistol is in the holster and the flap is secured, there is a fair amount of space between the rear of the pistol and the flap, leading me to believe that it was originally intended to hold a slightly larger sidearm.


Mr. Slagle added some flair to his prize:



Other than the missing serial number and the early style safety, there is nothing remarkable about this particular 1935. Almost all of the parts will interchange with a common M1 example. Still, because this variation is so scarce, I think it would be useful to the hobby for me to document this one.

We start with general left and right hand views:



Other than the absent "M1" after the "S", the markings are standard.

Normally, there is a serial number on the frame below the slide markings. Here, it is absent. It is almost a certainty that this mystery will never be solved.


Manufacturer's mark on the left side of the slide:



Both magazines are the proper early style with milled floorplates:

The follower and stop plate are different than the later style magazines too. We'll look at them later when we disassemble a magazine.


Left and right hand views of the pistol disassembled:





That's it for this post. In the next one, we'll begin looking at the various bits and the markings I could find. I'll see you then.