Third Party Press

1915 VCS 4674e Rastatt Rework

chrisftk

chrisftk

Moderator
Staff member
Hi Guys,

I've been busy with work and extracurricular volunteer stuff, but still found some time to go after this one a couple weeks ago. This is a nice bookend to early VCS production, being toward the tail end of 1915. My other 1915 VCS is the earliest known and was built off a reclaimed Spandau 1905 receiver while Haenel was getting geared up to supply receivers to the consortium. You can find that one here for comparison:
www.k98kforum.com

Matching 1915 VCS "a" Block (1905 Spandau Receiver)

Here's a pretty wild one-- I picked this up with a "take a shot" on Gunbroker. The rifle was advertised as a matching Spandau 1905, but the fireproof was a Thuringian style Eagle, so definitely not Spandau assembled. The early thought was possibly Erfurt assembled, though the pics were not...
www.k98kforum.com www.k98kforum.com

Anyway, I had wanted a proper, marked 1915 VCS since I let the last one that popped up go to a friend. This is #11 in the study, and appears to have been not previously recorded. (Thought you'd like that Paul!)

On to the rifle itself. The metal was fuzzy and there was a fair amount of active rust in places that I resorted to steaming to convert/neutralize (this was one of the rare times I felt compelled to) It ended up turning out nicely with a limited, conservative cleaning. Great wood too. The only evidence I see of rework is a renumbered early Amberg bolt and a "7"/ Rastatt marking on the buttplate. The scrubbing style of the bolt is identical to Marc's 1905 DWM Rastatt rework:
www.k98kforum.com

1905 DWM Gew 98 Unit Marked

A recent purchase from Legacy. Yet another unit marked Gewehr this time to the 151st Infantry regiment who were part of the 37th Division. The 37th was rated as first class by Allied intelligence. The 37th started the war on the Eastern front fighting in major battles such as Tannenberg & the...
www.k98kforum.com www.k98kforum.com

The rest of the rifle looks to be factory, save the floorplate. Based on the patina though, the it is likely a wartime m/m as it as been with the rifle for ages. The follower matches, so probably not an extended magazine scenario either. The rear action screw was buggered, but fortunately still usable. There are stains from a bolt cover, particularly on the left side of the stock. The barrel is a JPS finished Bismarckhutte blank. The blue under the wood is gorgeous.

Here is the data:

Receiver 4674 e
Barrel 4674 (BJ 77 S&S)
Front Sight 74
Rear Sight Leaf 74
Sight Slider 74
Ejector Box 74
Trigger Sear 74
Front Barrel Band 74
Rear Barrel Band 74
Trigger Guard 4674
Trigger Guard Screws 74,74
Floor Plate mm
Follower 74
Stock 4674
Buttplate 4674 e
Bayonet Lug 74
Handguard 4674
Bolt body 4674 (force matched)
Safety mm
Cocking Piece mm
Shroud mm
Firing Pin mm
Extractor mm
Cleaning rod 47



20240928_191125_5.jpg20240928_191125_6.jpg20240928_191125_7.jpg20240928_191125_8.jpg20240928_191125_9.jpg20240928_191125_10.jpg20240928_191125_11.jpg20240928_191125_12.jpg20240928_191125_13.jpg20240928_191125_14.jpg20240928_191125_15.jpg20240928_191125_16.jpg20240928_191125_17.jpg20240928_191125_18.jpg20240928_191126_19.jpg
 
Glad you got this one Chris, I’ll have to post my 1915 VCS at some point. I’m also glad this helps validate my 05 DWM.
 
Congrats on picking up a nice example of a scarce rifle, that conservative cleaning did a wonderful job on this one. That's an insane amount of inspection marks on the receiver, most I've ever seen. Is there a rough estimate on VCS rifles made in 1915?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jdt
AN-94 said:
Is there a rough estimate on VCS rifles made in 1915?
Click to expand...
The Consortium shared SN ranges from what we can tell, which makes individual firms tough to pin down. High point recorded right now for 1915 is 1814f (a JPS), so at least 71,814 for all three firms combined. The survival rate for these is pretty low though...
As far as actual 1915s observed, I have 11 JPS, 9 CGH and 12 VCS.
 
chrisftk said:
The Consortium shared SN ranges from what we can tell, which makes individual firms tough to pin down. High point recorded right now for 1915 is 1814f (a JPS), so at least 71,814 for all three firms combined. The survival rate for these is pretty low though...
As far as actual 1915s observed, I have 11 JPS, 9 CGH and 12 VCS.
Click to expand...
It would be interesting if documents ever surfaced as to assigned serial blocks for the 3 firms considering there's overlap within the same letter blocks. Hopefully, more come out of the woodwork to continue to trend these rifles.
 
AN-94 said:
It would be interesting if documents ever surfaced as to assigned serial blocks for the 3 firms considering there's overlap within the same letter blocks. Hopefully, more come out of the woodwork to continue to trend these rifles.
Click to expand...
It would be absolutely amazing if it happened, but to be really frank the chances of that are exceedingly slim. Long story short, a ton of German military documents related to WW1 were destroyed in WW2. There was a big archival reorganization after WW1. A lot of the military documents were gathered from the various places that had previously held them and centralized at a new Reichsarchiv in Potsdam. During WW2 some of the records were moved out to mines for protection, but a huge chunk of the collection - especially those related to the military and especially those related to the Heer - got destroyed in an April 1945 bombing raid. It's a microcosm of the archival destruction that happened throughout Europe during the war, but one that is particularly painful if you are researching German military affairs in WW1.

Then you have documents that disappeared into the archives of the occupiers. A lot of Nazi-era stuff is still held - either in original or microfilm copy - at NARA, for example. A lot of that got repatriated, some didn't. The history of the Prussian Secret State Archives is a good example of that - it was pretty widely dispersed in the evacuations at the end of ww2, and the archivists in charge of it deliberately slow walked the orders from on high to burn it in the last days of the war. (note that despite the "secret" in the name, it wasn't. It kind of became a dumping ground for really old files post-1919). As a result a good chunk of it was captured intact by both the Americans and the Soviets. Eventually those documents ended up in two different archives, one in E. Germany and one in West, allegedly minus some files that were skimmed by pretty much everyone. Finally in the early 00s the holdings at Bonn were moved back to Berlin, unifying the collection for the first time since it had been dispersed during the war.

Interestingly, some of the best preserved documents are the very high level stuff from the Foreign Ministry. Their archive was captured nearly intact. It was a bit of a bummer for the intelligence officers because it was almost entirely documents from 1867 - 1940, but an absolute boon for historians since then.

All of this means that the surviving documents are simultaneously pretty well combed over, but there do remain pockets that might be found. Once in a while you'll read about someone finding something in a mislabeled box, for example. Some of the finding guides aren't very good, which means some expensive fishing expeditions. Here, for example, are the captured documents in NARA that date to WW1: https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/242.html#242.6

This entry makes my skin itch:

NARA said:
242.7 Microfilm Copies of Records of the German Army
1864-1945 (bulk 1935-45)
9,086 rolls
Click to expand...

Note that the bulk of them are from the Nazi era. And chances are the handful of rolls from earlier aren't anything we, as a forum, would find interesting but were the sort of things that miltiary intel in 1945 thought should be included.

I'd love for something to turn up to answer these kinds of questions, but at this point it's highly unlikely. Heck, we don't even have definitive answers for the annual wartime production of the major state arsenals: instead we have to extrapolate from the one factory that had a ton of records survive (MWO) and assume that Spandau would be doing similar numbers.
 
Cyrano4747 said:
I'd love for something to turn up to answer these kinds of questions, but at this point it's highly unlikely. Heck, we don't even have definitive answers for the annual wartime production of the major state arsenals: instead we have to extrapolate from the one factory that had a ton of records survive (MWO) and assume that Spandau would be doing similar numbers.
Click to expand...
Yeah, Amberg appears to be the only state arsenal with extensive records that survived. Storz made great use of them but it's only a piece of the puzzle.

Most of what we know about production numbers comes from simple extrapolation of serial ranges. There's always a thrill of excitement when we find a new high #. Haha.
 
Cyrano4747 said:
It would be absolutely amazing if it happened, but to be really frank the chances of that are exceedingly slim. Long story short, a ton of German military documents related to WW1 were destroyed in WW2. There was a big archival reorganization after WW1. A lot of the military documents were gathered from the various places that had previously held them and centralized at a new Reichsarchiv in Potsdam. During WW2 some of the records were moved out to mines for protection, but a huge chunk of the collection - especially those related to the military and especially those related to the Heer - got destroyed in an April 1945 bombing raid. It's a microcosm of the archival destruction that happened throughout Europe during the war, but one that is particularly painful if you are researching German military affairs in WW1.

Then you have documents that disappeared into the archives of the occupiers. A lot of Nazi-era stuff is still held - either in original or microfilm copy - at NARA, for example. A lot of that got repatriated, some didn't. The history of the Prussian Secret State Archives is a good example of that - it was pretty widely dispersed in the evacuations at the end of ww2, and the archivists in charge of it deliberately slow walked the orders from on high to burn it in the last days of the war. (note that despite the "secret" in the name, it wasn't. It kind of became a dumping ground for really old files post-1919). As a result a good chunk of it was captured intact by both the Americans and the Soviets. Eventually those documents ended up in two different archives, one in E. Germany and one in West, allegedly minus some files that were skimmed by pretty much everyone. Finally in the early 00s the holdings at Bonn were moved back to Berlin, unifying the collection for the first time since it had been dispersed during the war.

Interestingly, some of the best preserved documents are the very high level stuff from the Foreign Ministry. Their archive was captured nearly intact. It was a bit of a bummer for the intelligence officers because it was almost entirely documents from 1867 - 1940, but an absolute boon for historians since then.

All of this means that the surviving documents are simultaneously pretty well combed over, but there do remain pockets that might be found. Once in a while you'll read about someone finding something in a mislabeled box, for example. Some of the finding guides aren't very good, which means some expensive fishing expeditions. Here, for example, are the captured documents in NARA that date to WW1: https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/242.html#242.6

This entry makes my skin itch:



Note that the bulk of them are from the Nazi era. And chances are the handful of rolls from earlier aren't anything we, as a forum, would find interesting but were the sort of things that miltiary intel in 1945 thought should be included.

I'd love for something to turn up to answer these kinds of questions, but at this point it's highly unlikely. Heck, we don't even have definitive answers for the annual wartime production of the major state arsenals: instead we have to extrapolate from the one factory that had a ton of records survive (MWO) and assume that Spandau would be doing similar numbers.
Click to expand...
A random rant. . . .

I offered to rent a microfilm scanner, it was insanely fast, converted each slide into a jpg and or pdf file. At my own cost. And donate the digitized files either to NARA/NPS and or publish or host them for free.

I was told no, because that presents ownership issues, and it is illegal for me to profit (since I am a business) from NARA and NPS. I asked what about Ancestry, Fold3, and of the other archival services?!?! Oh that’s different. . . .

So I was left with the option of having an over paid government bureaucrat individually PHOTOGRAPH the original documents to the quoted tune of $10k.

There’s no reason that the microfilm rolls paid for by the American people in the 80’s and 90’s so that the original documents didn’t need to be handled, should all be digitized and scanned. You can’t convince me it is anything other than governmental malfeasance.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Military Rifle Journal
Back
Top