KS98 - leather handled made by erfurt in 1911

markwadeks98

Active member
KS9245 issued to the schutztruppe in dwsa , each armourer had their own unique style of stamping ,this allows us to identify that this came from artillery depot 2 with the stampings by armourer d1 , the remnants of the original frog are attached (it was common for south african troops to cut it off the ks98 webbing) , made by erfurt in 1911 (all ks98s in the period 1901 to 1912 were made by erfurt , and all bayonets pre 1912 were only leather handled).

Note there were two artillery depots in german south west africa , depot 1 and depot 2 . Depot 1 seems to have issued numbers 1 to 5999 , and depot 2 seems to have issued 8000 to 12000 , with no 6000s or 7000s found (most likely 6-7k was a buffer range assigned to depot 1 but not used).

As the war clouds gathered in europe so bayonet production increased , 1911 being regarded as R4 (common) with the KS stamp being the most common stamp found on ks98s .
 

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Very nice sir and thank you so much for sharing. You can't help but love the type of weaponry from the colonial forces. Hopefully one day I can find a matching blade like this. Hell I'd like to find the darn rifle!
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