I have had district rifles and commercially proofed rifles on my mind lately. I think perhaps our desire to place everything we encounter into simple classications may be making it more difficult to grasp what may be obvious. Kind of like trying to describe the forest based on the descriptions of individual leaves and blades of grass. Considering that we collect the leaves and grass I suppose this is understandable. Regarding the district rifles, I had always assumed that they were produced in a specific district and marked accordingly for use by that civil authority within that district. Now I think more than likely it was a way to mark rifles completely rebuilt and newly manufactured from spare parts by a depot within that district. More than likely the depots were either tasked by higher authority to do this or were responding to the pleas from the units in combat. It seems to me that most of these rifles were put together in the 1941-2 time frame. Shortly after that we have the camp Steyrs, the hand stamp byf's, the N block byf's, and the commercially proofed rifles. Of course I realize that earlier commercial rifles exist. It would be nice to think that every one of these species and sub-species was created for a specific purpose. I think the more obvious answer is that the Germans had a rifle shortage from the start of hostilities and that it only got worse for them. More than likely every one of these non-standard types I mentioned was created for the simple purpose of sending more rifles to the front and that these rifles were indicative of German adaptability and desperation in bad circumstances. They, perhaps more than any other country, were champions of cottage industry. This is evident in all the sub-contracted parts. The reality is that the commercial rifles and many if not all the others simply indicate that the final step in the production of rifles, the fitting and assembly of parts, was also sometimes delegated, or even forced to occur, outside of our narrow, major manufacturer based classification system for these rifles. Given their constant shortage for rifles along with increasing allied pressure on manufacturing and distribution, I think it was the natural response to increase production of parts by small industry, perhaps even down to an almost mom-pop business level, and that when possible the final step of assembly occurred outside of the MO's and Sauers too. In the end all that mattered was that the troops were armed and not how it was achieved.
. Im curious, does the P in the other barrel code you have seen look like this? I was wondering if this was a D stamped upside down.
