Posen depot build rifle

Picked this up at SOS for $500. Down side is both bands and front end of stock is missing. Up side is the rest of the gun is matching, and it's neat!

Stock is cut between the bands so will be an easy fix, but I don't have time at the moment for that. Receiver is bcd 41 marked. It's not often you find an "a" block depot gun of any flavor, so that's also neat. Pics should tell all....

What a steal! Neat is an understatement. Thanks for sharing!

Neat rifle!

Neat mix of spare parts and recycled ones, and it is interesting to see different methods of serial cancellation with some X's being serifed and some not.

Is the a block the highest reported, or did they make it farther than that?

sweet rifle farb!

Wooow

nice find Mike,
Congratulation

Stan

One other "a" block is reported, earlier than this one, 500 a, much the same situation, DC with front missing, also a bcd/41. The rest from the depot/Wehrkreis are in the first block.

RyanE said:

Is the a block the highest reported, or did they make it farther than that?

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Posen Depot Build

I have not seen one of these before. That is a really interesting rifle. So you are saying they completly made the rifle up from spare parts at the depot. Is that correct? Also, those depot stamps are pretty small. How can you tell which depot it is? I have one with a SU2, but it is also hard to read. Where can I see a list of these marks. I suppose they exist in some collection. How do you know what depot a stamp comes from?

Brian

Germany was divided up into Wehrkreis districts, the Army, Police-SS, and Luftwaffe all did this, though the areas varied slightly. The depot marking in this case is actually a Wehrkreis, the "XXI" before the serial number. Posen was the HQ of the Wehrkreis and the origin of the rifle (the assembler), it is also marked in the stock e/Psn2

This rifle is not rare because it is a depot build, or because it is from this locale, rather it is rather scarce because of its condition. Not too many of these are matching, most are rc, as the GG and eastern depots-Wehrkreis were heavily engaged in supplying the eastern armies. Most of these went east and never came back, except as maybe an rc.

The lists and maps are varied, you can find them in books and period documents, an easy book to find is "German Order of Battle 1944", it has a foldout map with the Wehrkries shown, actually taken-copied from a US Army original map.

Here is the Wehrkries district map SS mentioned. You can also find a basic description of the workings here: http://www.lonesentry.com/manuals/tme30/ch6sec2.html

Edit: Ooops missed your question

Hercules said:

How do you know what depot a stamp comes from?

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The acceptance will usually have the first and last letter of the HZA (with an occasional one in between) followed by a number. So, Su2 = Spandau HZA, Kru1=Krakau, Kg = Konigsberg, Jt = Ingolstadt ,etc.

Posen Depot Rifle

OK, thanks for the info and the explanation on the Depot Organization.

Brian

Cool rifle... seemingly, good for research too.

How many districts are known to have produced rifles?

Bob,

That has been a question for many years!

Speaking of depot builds, not reworks, which are very numerous and hard to identify accurately due to the fact the manner of identification changed (Posen, among others, has at least two variations to the abbreviation, Psn & Pon, believed to be when they went from HNZa to HZa). There are the following known-documented that built rifles:

I, V, VII, IX, XI, XII, XVII, XX, XXI, the last two the most numerous. Of course Mark Wieringa has been studying this topic longer than any other researcher and he probably has a larger database than I do.

Perhaps the moderator of this forum can create a special thread for this topic to try and identify others? It will not be helpful on Vol. I, but will be a necessity for Vol. II, might be good to get ahead of this.

Bob in OHIO said:

Cool rifle... seemingly, good for research too.

How many districts are known to have produced rifles?

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Farb,


I really, really, really like this one!!!!





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