Lets debate

[Herb]

Last year I posted my theory of serial numbering. It was that the serial nembers continued unbroken throughout a contract. Example--Mauser recieves a contract for 350,000 Lugers, they cannot possibly procuce that amount in one year therefore the contract numbering continues unbroken until the contract is filled. Suffixes to the numbers also continue with only the chamber dates changing. A member of the forum stated that my reasoning was flawed in that all of the suffexes ie; a thru z were not used. I took that as a challenge and since that time I have haunted the weapons sellers sites, and auction sites such a gunbroker, auctionarms and others to include Ebay where a lot of magazines are sold. Finally I have personally verified that every letter in the alphabet was used during the production of Lugers. Many of these were FXO/122 magazines with the E/37 proof and the Mauser E/63 proof, while others carried no proof at all, therefore I cannot difinitely state that any single manufacturer used every one of the alphabet suffixes. The last one, the 'Z' suffix is a Mauser mag #2332 with an E/63 proof. Therefore, assuming that a single maker, lets say Mauser, recieved a contract for 300,000 Lugers, they would begin production with #1 and then begin the suffixes at 10,000 with #1a then 10,000 later with #1b and so on until the entire contract was fulfilled changing only the year of manufacture, changing the chamber stamping to reflect the new year but not the serial number range, until the entire contract was finished. In my opinion only the year stamping changed, not the serial number sequence based upon my research. I welcome your comments.

[Herb]

I think that this is a topic that deserves some research to resolve, lets do some and post your results.

[Johnny C. Kitchens]

I wonder about this very thing. Having an interest in the byf 42 series,
I noticed a descrepency for the numbers. The serial blocks run to n,
which would give somewhere around 150000. In one source I see an estimate
of just over 98000. I read here, that the first two blocks were used up
by the byf 41. That still leaves about 30,000 to figure out. I've seen
byf 42 in 6 blocks...

[Dwight Gruber]

Herb, unless I misunderstand you completely, this very principle is demonstrated in chart form by Jan Still in Third Reich Lugers, page 16. According to this the only letter suffix not used was j, and this carries through all sequences of production.

--Dwight

[Frank]

Jan Still estimates that 113,000 byf 42 Lugers were produced for the German Military and spanned the no suffix to the L-Block. Allowing 10,000 pistols each in the B through L Blocks, knowing the J-Block was unused, accounts for 100,000 pistols. The no suffix and A-Blocks were shared between the byf 41 and byf 42 chamber markings. So the 13,000 byf 42 Lugers in these two blocks seem pretty reasonable to me, give or take a few.

All, or nearly all, of the Lugers produced in the M and N Blocks were Portuguese or Bulgarian Contract Pistols!!

[Herb]

Dwight, as I stated I have personally seen all 26 suffix letters to include the 'J' suffix. I wrote each one down as I found them, then put them in alphabetical order, checked each one again, counted each to insure there were in fact 26 total. At the time I did not consider the proof marks relevant and unfortunately did not make note of them therefore I don't know who made the mag with the 'j' suffix. I was so excited to find the 'Z' sufix that I bought that one, a really nice mag too. To insure that I am making myself clear on this I give some examples--If Eurfurt recieves a contract for say 5000 pistols from the Army then they would be numbered #1 to #5000. If the contract had been for 100,000 they would start at #1 and up to 10,000 then #1a, 1b, 1c and so on until the contract was filled. Since they could not fill a contract of that size in one year they only changed the chamber date on 1 Jan and carried on with the next serial number in the sequence, not starting over with #1 again as it was still the same contract. I feel that this would account for the large amount of the 4 digit numbers and so few of the one, two or three digit nembered weapons and magazines. For the smaller contracts, Bulgarian, Russian, Latvian, I have no idea how the numbering or suffixes were chosen. The 'Z' suffix indicates to me that Mauser had recieved a contract, presumably military, for at least 260,000 weapons or more thereby running the suffixes up to the 'Z' block. Is my reasoning illogical?

[Frank]

Herb, there were just a few J-Blocks Erfurts made. I don't recall ever seeing ot having heard of a DWM or Military Mauser J-Block.

Regarding Military Mausers, the K-Date began with a low no suffix and then went through the G-Date, 1936 and most of the 1937 before it hit the first Z-Block. Then they built the 1938, 1939 S/42 and most of the 1939 Code 42 before they hit the second Z-Block. Then came the 1940, 41 Code 42 and then near the end of the byf 41 production they hit the third Z-Block. Finally they quit production with the end of the L-Block (actually extremely early M-Block).

Then, they used remaining parts (maybe made a few new parts) to complete the M and Lugers in the N-Block for the Portuguese and Bulgarian Contracts.

I don't know the details of the Imperial Luger Numbering Schemes with all the "Special Contracts" intertwined with the Military Contracts. I suspect from the data I have seen, the Military Contracts were alpha-numeric, while the "Other" Contracts were strictly numeric. Perhaps we can get some help from the "Grip Safety Guys"

[Dwight Gruber]

</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 Herb:
<strong>Is my reasoning illogical?</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Not at all. The chart in Still shows that the serial number series of Mauser WWII pistols cycled through the z series -three- times.

I'm wondeing if your "contract" scenerio doesn't add an unnecessary layer of complication (and confusion) to the process. Do we know that Mauser was given "contracts" for specific numbers of pistols during the war? Or, were they simply contracted to begin production and crank out as many as they could, dates codes and serial numbers simply falling onto the line in their order? Does anybody actually -know- the answer to this question, or were these part of the records lost in the flames of wanton destruction?

Btw, I read recently of a Luger reported in the j block, can't find the source to cite at the moment.

--Dwight

[Herb]

My use of the word 'contract' is based upon having a quantifiable number of lugers produced, I assume that the military or some other entity would order a set amount of lugers, or perhaps by saying here is
500,000 RM's, build them till the money runs out, either way a 'contract' was let.

[Johnny C. Kitchens]

Thanks Frank!!!

That explains a lot about the byf 42 series. I had noticed John Walter showing 98,758 for German contract, which would be about right for b thru j...

[Frank]

Dwight, Jan Still shows a 1917 Erfurt J-Bock on page 76 of his book on Imperial Lugers

Johnny, careful - there are no J-Block Military Mauser Lugers!!! So B-Block to L-Block is 100,000 pistols!!!

[Lugerdoc]

Herb, I don't know where you got the idea that any Mauser PO8 contracts (Germany military or otherwise, stated at #1. Convertional wisdom re Mauser PO8 serialization, is that the K date lugers started at #1 and subsequent year's production, continued the same series (no suffix thru Z blocks, less J which is used interchangeable with "i" in German). The only exception to this that presently comes to mind, is that there were a second (larger "flowing" V thru Z blocks) reserved for commerical, police and foreign contracts (mostly Banner toggles), which also did not begin at "1" for each contract, eg the Portugese GRN contract, Thai contract, etc. which are quite well documented. Tom H.