Third Party Press

Lost and interchanged weapons

Stephan98k

aka 8x57IS
Some time ago, I wrote something about "Lost and interchanged weapons" and how important the exchange was for the units. I have shown some examples, but all were dated before September 1, 1939. Some people think that this topic was not so important during the war, the Germans had enough other problems, but even at the end of 1943 meticulous care was taken.

Ostseetagesbefehl by the Navy High Command Ostsee from November 24, 1943:
Lost Weapons 1.jpg
At the Navy-train station-command Kiel was stored these listed K98k which was lost from the owners. The owners or units who lost these weapons should contact the Navy-train station-command Kiel to get them back.
One of these K98k is a Sauer & Sohn "147 1939" with the serial number 6375.
147 1939 6375a.jpg

They only wrote the serial number without the suffix and the example above has the serial number 6375a. Certainly it's not the mentioned rifle, in 1939 existed 20 K98k with the code "147 1939" and the serial number 6375.

Ostseetagesbefehl by the Navy High Command Ostsee from July 26, 1943:
Lost Weapons 2.jpg
On May 28, 1943, during a train ride from Hamburg to Kiel, two rifles were interchanged with two Czech carbines. The exchange has to take place at the Sperrschule in Kiel. This example is interesting in my opinion, because not the code and serial number, but the Navy property number is called and the two Baltic Sea property numbers are not far from each other.

Regards,
Stephan
 
Very interesting! Not surprisingly, Beutewaffen were still being used for non-combat assigned units.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Very interesting documents Stephan. I think the 1 in 20 chance on the Sauer being the same one isn't terrible odds! I wonder what punishment was met out for the poor trooper that looses a rifle on a train, or at the station?
 
I wonder what punishment was met out for the poor trooper that looses a rifle on a train, or at the station?

That's what I was wondering. Put out on blast across the Reich. That's a fair amount of rifles collected at that train station.
 
Very cool document! It’s neat to see them listed by maker code, others I’ve seen simply list a rifle’s serial only, thanks for posting them.
 

Military Rifle Journal
Back
Top