Possible SS identified K98

bruce98k

bruce98k

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Mike and I talked about this and figured we would put it out on the forum for discussion.

Will post more images as I have time but the short story is as follows:

Rifle was purchased today at Mansfield Civil War Show and not represented as anything special, just an estate K98 purchased by the dealer from
the family of the vet. Veteran landed D-Day+3 and was wounded early 1945 and shipped home. I believe he was a captain and was able to take the rifle
with him. Rifle is combat worn ce41, 100% matched and crusty and was not represented as anything special. As my normal OP is to take the rifle down,
I stripped the action from the stock to take images of the stock channel and barrel code. Figured would take a look under the butt plate and to my surprise the penciled SS service number was there.

See image. Comments.
 

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By service number, you mean a number attributed to an individual? I am not a dagger person but I know that the SS numbers can be researched on the daggers. I believe there is a gentleman that does it over on WAF. Would be interesting to see who turns up as the owner.
 
Why would a soldier go to all the trouble to remove the buttplate to write his service number where absolutely no one would ever see it? It just seems pointless.
 
Like I told Bruce, a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted, I'm skeptical. I asked the same question as Ryan, why do it? We do randomly see personalization, but this was Verboten on service rifles, so if the soldier just had to mark his it would have been in an unseen area. It's not hard to remove a buttplate either.

I think what you do is research the number and see who it comes up to and go from there, if it is even an SS Party number (this does follow the SS Party member number format IMO). Remember, it was illegal to be a member of the Armed Forces AND be in the Nazi party, and that included the Waffen SS. Any SS Party member that joined the service had to quit the Nazi party. Nobody was allowed to wear the SS Party Badge on their uniform, even though you occasionally saw it on high ranking scumbags (like Hermann Fegelein)

It's impossible to know when the number was put there, so I don't see it adding any intrinsic value to most guys, it's more of a curiosity.
 
Maybe they saw it with the Swiss and their K.11 and K.31 rifles and thought that was cool and stole the idea .....:googlie
 
current thread

Reply from another forum targeting SS service numbers associated with daggers.

"Thanks for the info and congrats on the rifle. Sorry to report that SS Mann 472 899 is currently unidentifiable. Judging from other records for numbers around this, it is likely that it was assigned 1938-1939 period. Never seen a dagger with that high a number which is why I asked about what it was on."


Of course I agree with Mike on being skeptical here.
 
I think the number is authentic. "SS" stands for Sergeant Schultz. It's his personal rifle. I know he's real, I saw him on TV quite a few times. Worth a lot to the astute collector.
"I hear nothing and I see nothing" :rofl:
 
You forgot "I know nothing" too. Besides Sgt Schultz didn't carry a K98k on the show either for some reason he carried a Krag rifle. Wonder why they did that there were plenty floating around back then.
 
Could be the U.S. Vet captured it and put the ss solder's ID on it as a reminder? I like farbs idea too, marked by original owner in an unseen area.
 
I afraid the reality is its vandalism from a German or American at any point from 1941 on. These finds are just fun facts. If you could have attached the number to an SS Mann and then traced the GI's path to where they both could intersect, then you could call it significant. At this point unfortunately it's a pencilled number under a butt plate.
 
K98 Man said:
Hilarious! :happy0180:
That show hooked me in and hasn't shown anything as of yet.
Click to expand...

My little girl watches it with me and keeps asking/telling me "they aren't going to find anything are they?" So, don't tell me where you are in the series as we DVR'd them and I'm midway through. After watching the two dudes who said the Holy Grail was down there, buried by the Knights Templar, I saw where this was all going to end up. I would have more readily accepted that Jimmy Hoffa was down here, or perhaps that Hitler and his SS bodyguard tunneled there from Berlin.
 
Interesting find. Strikes me from the get go that the numbers aren't German: the 7 is missing the "continental bar" and the 9 is not rounded on the bottom, both of which are stylistic attributes that every German child learns in school (the 4 is also usually closed at the top). Just a thought.
 
It's not a SS service number and in general it has nothing to do with the SS (Schutzstaffel).

The topic is organization and control of armaments and production. The "SS472899" is a priority number. The topic is of extreme importance if one wants to understand how German armaments were controlled and directed at that time.

In most cases there was no linear and evenly increasing production of armaments and weapons. Production was controlled according to demand, if necessary the armament was redirected. Since the end of 1939 one of the biggest problems was a lack of workers, as many workers were drafted into military service. For example, if the front losses of machine guns were higher than those of rifles, then the remaining workers in the factories were transferred to the other department and the full output of machine guns could be maintained or even increased.
Another very big problem was the lack of wagons and these problems became particularly severe during 1940 and 1941. Sometimes it took not just days but weeks until the weapons produced could be shipped by the Reichsbahn.

Here is a important comment with some documents about this topic: Link
In one of the documents you can read: "As a result of K98k being transferred to priority level II, capacity cannot be fully utilized."

There were different priority levels such as I and II, like Kriegswichtig (important for the war effort) and Kriegsentscheidend (decisive for the outcome of the war). Due to the large number of orders that the armaments factories were given, it was necessary to rank the orders according to their priority. As already mentioned, there were often not enough workers and not enough wagons, so that even very important things could not be transported or could only be transported with great delay. The priority levels Sonderstufen (special level) "SS" and "S" (very fast & fast) was introduced to solve this problem.

Imagine a manufacturer or assembler for example Sauer & Sohn has all the parts in storage to assemble more K98k and the only thing missing are the stocks. If the armament was redirected and the K98k doesn't have high priority anymore, they could have some trouble to get the stocks. In general it would be difficult to get workers or waggons. In order to resolve this problem, the company has requested an "SS" or "S" number. If the importance of this particular case was recognized and confirmed, then such an "SS" or "S" number was assigned.

But that didn't always work either and Steyr for example, once had to transport MG34 parts in hand luggage so that the MG34 assembly was not interrupted.
 
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