New addition from the Mauser factory

[Ledzep]

I finally ponied up and got myself an all-matching K98k! Early laminate stock (flat butt plate), "byf" (Mauser Oberndorf) from 1941, about 11,000 into that year's production. Neat to see the level of attention given to the pre war and early war German stuff. S/42 1936 (also Mauser Oberndorf) Luger tossed in for the picture. I think 1942 was the real turning point when quality started down hill fast. I have a post-war czech rebuild made with late-war (1944/1945) parts from the BRNO factory that's a rough rattle trap next to these early guns. Even so, much better than the last-ditch Type 99's I've seen and owned . I've been looking for a few months now and was hoping to find one in the 1935-1939 range with a walnut stock but thew few that popped up were ungodly expensive and/or in rough or dicked with condition. Pretty impressed with this one overall.

Matching #'s on action screws...

 

[respiegel]

Germans really love their serial numbers... very nice find!

 

[Random Guy]

Looks like a nice matching K98, congrats.

(Apologies for the digression, but technically speaking, I'll note that 1941 is not "pre-war" per se in western Europe but rather early war. I think historians generally agree that WWII officially began on the morning of Sept 1, 1939 with Germany's surprise naval bombardment at Westerplatte (strategic port near Gdansk) and subsequent invasion of mainland Poland. So 1941 was two years well into WWII as far as Germany is concerned, but you are quite correct that the early war K98s with flat buttplates are much nicer than the later 1944-45 examples. I visited Westerplatte last summer, hence the digression/correction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Westerplatte

 

[Ledzep]

Neat to see the level of attention given to the pre war and early war German stuff.



ETA: What's actually kind of interesting, but I guess not totally surprising is with Lugers, for example, You see in the middle of 1937, 2 years before the war kicked off, the beginning of a drop in quality to expedite production. Now saying that, it's important to recognize that the Luger as it was being made was obscene in terms of quality for a military sidearm. The amount of fitting and the overall fit/finish of the "worst" Lugers puts most anything else to shame. Nonetheless in 1937 you see straw finished parts and rust blue give way to hot dip bluing. Then throughout each year after 1938 you start seeing less and less final polish work, introduction of plastic grips and magazine baseplates, etc...

It's not really just the Germans in that interwar time frame that were making obscenely good service weapons. Czechs, Swiss, French... Really amazing to see the transition after WWII to more 'disposable' manufacturing.

 

[RTH1800]

Sort of makes you want to grab that rifle and march across the tundra to attack Stalingrad. Sort of....

 

[RTH1800]

Very nice, thanks for posting.

 

[Ledzep]

Sort of makes you want to grab that rifle and march across the tundra to attack Stalingrad. Sort of....

Another tangent, but worth researching to anyone who hasn't, is the scale of the fighting on the eastern front. By the time D-Day happened, we were contributing to a side show in a war that was pretty much already won... Or that Germany had already lost, anyway.