CUMULATIVE UPDATE TO 15 AUG 2020: The recent receipt of new information from the Smith & Wesson Historical Foundation allows a better understanding of how this gun (and two others like it) came to be produced. The original letter of authenticity from late 2012 said this gun had been shipped to Jack Reeve of Paris, TX on 14 Apr 1945 as part of a 100-unit order. Barrel lengths were not distinguished. New documents allow us to see that Jack Reeves (not Reeve) was the Police Chief of Paris at that time, and we may conclude from a letter exchange that Reeves, through the DSC, had requested only four .38 Special Victory revolvers with four-inch barrels and three .38 Special Victory revolvers with two-inch barrels. I invite readers to jump to Post 43 in this thread, where the new documents are presented.

Previous updates to the initial post in this thread have been deleted as the the new documents correct and extend prior conclusions and suggestions.

It's interesting to set this gun's shipment in a historical framework. Two days earlier (April 12, 1945) President Roosevelt had died in Warm Springs, Georgia. Adolph Hitler was in his third to last week as an underground resident of Berlin. And the War in the Pacific was less than four months away from coming to an abrupt end.

Some of my baseless speculations in the early parts of this thread have not been edited out. The documents take precedence in pointing to the proper understanding of this revolver.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

This came to me recently, and since these are not commonly seen I thought I would post a few pics.

V629214, shipped April 1945. It's a Defense Supplies Corporation gun, according to company historian Roy Jinks, which is consistent with the lack of US PROPERTY markings on the top strap. DSC guns were not considered to be government owned.






It does have have the flaming bomb (butt, to left of serial number) and P (top left rear frame, rear cylinder surface). Serial number is on butt, barrel and cylinder. (Addendum: Also on rear yoke face and underside of ejector star.)








Barrel markings are correct:




The MADE IN U.S.A. stamp has been painted white, or some other color that has now faded to near white.



The question arises later in this thread which hammer block safety is used in this revolver. This photo shows the non-stepped profile connected with guns manufactured before the mandated safety redesign of January 1945.




This gun is not without ambiguities. I think it is in original configuration, but there are four inch Victory revolvers that were known to have been rebarreled as two-inchers. This could be one of those arsenal rebuilds/conversions.

The stocks are not original. They are numbered (clumsily, even erratically) 584402. They don't fit the frame very well, as can be seen in the photos.

The lanyard loop is perhaps not original. It is restrained by a loop of wire rather than a proper pin, and it is (I believe) incorrectly finished. Weren't these also parked on the Victory revolvers?

The gun may have been re-parkerized as the trigger return spring stud has been polished flat to the frame. But the frame and barrel markings were not aggressively polished and still look strong.

Screw slot damage shows that the sideplate has been off. I won't look inside the gun until I get some better finger control going in my right hand, but I will add photos in the future if there is anything there worth looking at.

The gun seems to have been fired little (if at all) since it received its current finish; there are no powder rings on the front of the cylinder and no cartridge slap marks on the recoil shield.

I will try to add a little history about two-inch Victory revolvers in a subsequent post, maybe tomorrow.

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David Wilson

HI David,
It looks legit to me! I think these are somewhat more difficult to fake than people think as getting the serial number font on the barrel flat correct would be a difficult task. Infrequently are these offered for sale, so congratulations as its a nice one!
LG

David, nice find. I've been on the lookout for one of these a while, but the funds and gun seem not to be together at the same time...ah, the joys of collecting.

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Alan
SWCA LM 2023, SWHF 220

Gee David, I don't think it could be evaluated any better. What was or is the Defense Supply Corp. and government or private?

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Jim
S&WCA #819

The Defense Supplies Corporation (sorry, I got the name wrong in the first post and have now changed it) was a subsidiary of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a government agency. (Or quasi-governmental; RFC was a centerpiece agency of the New Deal.). Among the DSC's responsibilities was procurement and distribution of security supplies for law enforcement agencies and critical industries during WWII.

With the exception of a peculiar 500-unit OSS order in August 1944 from which no guns have been found or identified, all two-inch Victory revolvers were DSC purchases. There was one DSC order for 300 guns in October 1942, and another one in early 1944 for 500 units. No other orders are known. It is possible that not all authorized units were produced. The DSC had to apply to the War Department for approval to manufacture specific runs of particular configurations.

Four-inch DSC Victory revolvers are far more frequently encountered.

Most of what is known about these uncommon models comes from Charles W. Pate's U.S. Handguns of World War II. I also thank forum member ordnanceguy for helping me understand some of the basic information about this rarely seen class of Victory revolvers.

ADDENDUM: some of what I say in this post is wrong. See lower posts for better info.

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David Wilson

David,

Are you sure about this part?

Nice gun, btw. Congratulations.

Thanks,
Kevin Williams

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Kevin Williams SWCA1649 HF208

Kevin, I am open to correction if I got that wrong, but that's how I interpret the Pate information: 800-1300 total production (or authorization, because Pate is open to the notion that not all were built), with the 500-unit uncertainty connected with the OSS order of August 1944: do those guns really exist?

300 guns were authorized in October 1942 for DSC receipt and distribution (reportedly for the DOJ, which I take to mean FBI), and 500 more in May of 1944 -- again for the DSC. There is a flyer from 1944 that Charlie Flick has shown me that talks about these two-inch revolvers as a DSC production run.

I wouldn't be surprised if somebody showed me a two-inch Vic with Navy or other US stampings on it, but in my current state of knowledge I would not expect to see such a gun.

Somebody please clue me in if I need educating, because I would really like to understand these two-inch V-guns better.

ADDENDUM: I just found a reference to the guns of the October 1942 Contract being marked UNITED STATES PROPERTY, which strikes me as inconsistent with a DSC order. Yet in another place I see that order specifically identified as a DSC order. So something needs to be better understood or corrected.

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David Wilson

David,

I'm not challenging you--just trying to resolve the same ambiguity from Pate's information. Hopefully Charlie will come along and straighten us out.

Regards,
Kevin Williams

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Kevin Williams SWCA1649 HF208

David and Kevin:

Thanks for the vote of confidence but for now the question of 2 inch barreled OSS Victories remains unresolved in my mind. They may well exist, as suggested by Charlie Pate, but so far none have surfaced and no serials have been reported. Other OSS guns, including Victories, are well known to collectors but I have never seen or heard of a genuine 2 inch OSS Victory. The factory records are probably going to be the final arbiter on this issue, but as far as I know Roy has not mentioned finding any 2 inch OSS-shipped Victories in the shipping ledgers. (The 4 inch OSS shipped Victories show up in the ledgers as such.)

Earlier this week I sent David a copy of the S&W flyer seen below which is in my collection. It makes pretty clear how the DSC had authorized S&W to sell 2 inch barreled Victories for those who qualified, those customers being primarily civilian law enforcement agencies. My expectation is that David's new 2 inch gun will letter as going to a law enforcement agency.

The 1942 shipped 2 inch guns went to Fort Mason, in San Francisco Bay. They are indeed marked on the left topstrap "UNITED STATES PROPERTY". They are USGI guns.

I have never seen an example of the 2 inch guns that reportedly went to the Dept. of Justice either, and none show up in the Victory Model Database.

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Charlie Flick
SWCA 729 HF 215

Charlie,

I think you're most likely correct in your assumption that David's "New Toy" is going to Letter to a Law Enforcement Agency!!

Reason I mention it is I show a fairly large order (Over 100) V-Prefix Serial No.'d 38 M&P Revolvers in close proximity to his as being shipped to the NYCPD (New York City Police Dept.) on 12/21/45!! Sorry to say there is no mention as to David's Serial No., or the Barrel Lengths of any of them, but imagine they'd have been mixed between the Two Barrel Lengths!! Don't you??

It will be interesting to hear if David's Revolver was one that isn't listed, but shipped there as well!!

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Masterpiece

I too think it likely that this gun went to a PD or Sheriff's Department. I'll report back when I find out. This one shipped in April of 1945, just under a year after the DSC authorization alluded to in Charlie's flyer.

It appears that I developed a completely wrong idea about the 1942 order of 300 two-inch Victory revolvers. Looks like that had to have been a military order, and I don't understand how the DOJ could have received any guns from it. I saw at least one gun from this order (serial numbers scattered in the V175000-V177000 range) described as "OSS gun." I'm not sure if that designation is intended loosely or precisely; certainly the OSS was a very young agency at the time of the 1942 shipments to Fort Mason. Would they have received armaments there for the operations they were setting up in China?

Unless there are other DSC orders involving two-inch Victories that have not yet come to light, it now appears to me that the May 1944 DSC order for 500 units is the only one that produced such guns for stateside law enforcement agencies.

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David Wilson

David,

I did see that you had your's listed as being shipped in April of 1945, but was more trying to give you an idea that it may have had the possibility of being shipped to the NYCPD as literally "Hundreds" & "Hundreds" of these DSC Revolvers were shipped to them during the time these were being produced!!

I guess time will tell "The Rest Of The Story"!! Whatever the outcome it's a "Beauty" for sure!!

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Masterpiece

Masterpiece,

Understood. Thank you.

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David Wilson

David,

I forgot to mention to you a bit ago that I believe the OSS term is a actual designation given the fact that the data I'm using for reference is military information & the few I've found in the 175,000-177,000 Serial No. Range are listed as such in those records!! Although I have no idea what the Barrel Lengths were as I stated earlier!!

By the way, the earliest "OSS" shipped Revolver I have found so far was 54659 & is listed as being shipped to OSS-SSO-Washington 12/14/42!! It's really hard to decipher some of the abbreviations they use so you're on your own here!! I'm assured it's Wash. DC, but the SSO is a mystery!! Social Security Office maybe??? I realize this is most certainly not one of the Two-Incher's, but I wasn't sure if you were trying to track down any & all OSS Revolvers or not so I thought I'd mention it!!

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Masterpiece

SSO stood for Strategic Services Operations. The various field operations branches reported to the SSO.

Masterpiece, perhaps I missed it but what is the source of the records you are deciphering?

Thanks,
Kevin Williams

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Kevin Williams SWCA1649 HF208

Kevin,

Thanks!! I appreciate the translation!!

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Masterpiece

David, congrats! Very nice!!

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Linda
SWCA #1965, SWHF #245

I doubt the arsenal would have numbered a replacement barrel, and even if they did, I have never seen them use those tiny stamps.




The sloppy numbering is quite common on Vics, like done by a drunk blindfolded, but not on all. So, there might have been more than one person numbering them. The drunk survived the war and was there into the early 50's, judging by the numbers on SOME of the 5 screw Masterpieces.


Can we talk about swivels?
I thought it was impolite to mention, like hemorrhoids or somethin.....
Since you said it first, there are actually THREE verified varieties, and I suspect FOUR are possible.
1- Originally, swivels have a pin through the lump or boss to keep the loop centered. It is ground flush. Swivels were always case hardened, but don't expect a lot of vivid colors.
2- June 1, 44 Engi. Order eliminated pin- "new method makes pin unnecessary". I suppose that means there is a partition in the hole for the loop and the loop is folded in. If anyone has one with no pin, tear the loop out and tell us please.
3- Dec 20, 44 Engi Order changed Case colr to sandblast blue because case colors were not uniform. Duuuuhhhhhhh.

4- Obviously, we can assume that IF any old bosses with pin holes were found late in the game, there MIGHT be some pinned swivels that were sandblast blue.





Wartime rebound studs are often below flush or ground flat.
Apr 7, 42 Engi Order to "Change length of rebound stud to length of stop stud for sandblasted guns only"
I added two pics of rebound studs on guns I believe to be original.

All that proves is all that it proves- the sideplate has likely been off.
People tinker.
People open them up when they get dropped in a creek, or the mud, or get a drink spilled on them.
I opened my first S&W when I was 14 (my gun) cause I wanted to see what made it tick. That gun, btw, was a 4", 5 Screw Pre-29 that I bought used from Bob Berryman when his whole operation consisted of two showcases in a hardware store in East Point, Ga. (He made my Mom come in and 'take possession')

Attached Images

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Regards,
Lee Jarrett

I was happy enough before Lee's post. Now I'm happier.

Hypercritical after the Mexican fiasco, I guess. Thank you for the insights and corrections to my hasty judgments.

The work of the Blindfolded Drunk:

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David Wilson

David,

Is that all you were concerned about?? In comparison, they're stamped nearly perfect to some I've seen!! It's a shame they don't match your Revolver!! Not being critical...just saying!!

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Masterpiece

14344
OR
43144
??????

Attached Images

IMG_8229.jpg (106.4 KB, 105 views)

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Regards,
Lee Jarrett

I see two overlapping 4s in the final position, so on the principle of two rows of three numerals, I'd make that 143444. (But I acknowledge that's pretty awful spacing and alignment.)

In the photo I posted, I figure the three heavy strike numerals are the top row and the three light strikes make up the second row. Good thing the two central numerals were the same, because when I first looked at these stampings I thought it was a single row!

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David Wilson

I'll have to agree with David...143444!! Looks like he tried to stay away from the Stock Washer with the Last 4 so he didn't chip the wood!! Ha!~Ha! Just Kidding!!

Alright fellas, who wins the Big Prize for the Ugliest Serial-Numbered Grips?? Or should I start looking around to see if I have a Pair to beat them both??

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Masterpiece

I think the double 4 is a bounce. Maybe not.



N frame post war

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Regards,
Lee Jarrett

I hate to switch sides David, but I think I may have to in this particular scenario!! Sorry, but I believe Lee may have a good point on this pair!!

Reason being, I've seen Grips stamped similarly in the past, but I can't recollect anymore if the seemingly Double-Stamped Numerals were the same No. or not!!

I'd say too close to call with any certainty!!

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Masterpiece

I should have mentioned that there is an S stamp on the frame under the stocks (right side) and on the rear face of the cylinder. That one is visible in a photo above.

Is the S an inspection mark?

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David Wilson

This is just a guess, but if snubs went to a military address, might they have been meant for Army CID personnel, or CIC?

If shipped to CA , some may have been sent on to Hawaii, too.

David,

I want you to know that I'm not saying that this statement is a positive fact, but I suspect that the S's have the possibility of being related to it having had the Hammer Safety Block Upgrade installed!!

Granted it doesn't have the other stampings they are generally seen with, (Rear Upper Right Side on the Sideplate stamped with an S and/or an S added to the Butt Serial No.), but beings it shipped in the vicinity of the time these modifications should have been done when built, I'd have to think it's a possibility at least!!

I'll admit I'm not sure if the S would be on the Sideplate for sure, but most assuredly it should at least have an S stamped somewhere on the Butt before or after the Serial No. if it was installed!! Like I said, this is just my opinion, not the cold hard facts!!

Do you know for fact if the Hammer Block has been installed on your Revolver?? If not, I'm sure if Charlie Flick sees this he'll know for sure if those S stamps are an indication of it!!

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Masterpiece

I should have mentioned that when I asked the question. This gun does not have the revised hammer safety block. You can tell by looking down in front of the hammer as the hammer comes back in both single and double action operation. The S has to indicate something else.

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David Wilson

Good points.

I also have a two-inch Colt Commando that I have not yet lettered, but based on the serial number and known guns with nearby numbers it probably went to San Francisco Bay. From there I imagine the guns went to Hawaii, the South Pacific, and maybe even to China with the OSS guys who were involved in some programs there.

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David Wilson

Hi David,

Now he tells us!! I suppose that's partly my fault as that was the first thing I should have asked!! That's alright, I like to type anyway...not really!! Ha!~Ha!

No harm-No foul!! I guess it's back to square one!! Still think Charlie might have an idea if he stops around!! We'll see!!

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Masterpiece

The S on the grip frame is probably a service department marking. If its on the
rear face of the cylinder, it probably means that the cylinder was worked on, or
replaced.

For the modified hammer safety, the S is on the sideplate.

Regards, Mike Priwer

I guess it depends on which one of those gun you want to put them on....

I can just envision ole' GDH (or is it GHD) the government inspector with his stop watch looking over the shoulder of the poor assembler stamping the numbers in the Smith plant!

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Jim
S&WCA #819

Back to top: Original post updated with info from company letter.

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David Wilson

Looks like 14344 to me...

Paris, Texas is not a very large city. Maybe it was during WWII if some kind of defense plant was there, I don't know. I doubt there were 100 LEO's in Paris, Texas that needed sidearms then. They may have been shipped there but I suspect they were shipped for reasons other than going to a local S.O. Let us know what the letter shows. Nice gun, interesting thread.

Camp Maxey, Lamar County, was a training & staging center during WWII, was still a National Guard training site last I was involved in military business. There were probably "lots" of LEO's, but don't know if there were 100.

Edit to add: Also one of the largest if not the largest, POW compounds in the CONUS. So maybe a basis for a larger than usual SO?


rayb

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"cumplo pero no obedezco"

Paris, Texas has a population of about 25,000 today, and Lamar County a population of about 50,000. After a postwar period of decline and recovery, the county population is about where it was in the 1940s, but Paris has grown a bit; the population was less than 20,000 during WWII.

Camp Maxey opened for business in July 1942 as an Infantry Training Camp and ceased operations in October 1945. Today it is a training facility for the Texas National Guard.

I have no idea if the division between military and law enforcement supply operations was somewhat porous in the late days of WWII, but a bureaucracy is a bureaucracy, and I suspect the answer is "not very." I would expect any sidearms purchased for use at Camp Maxey would have been War Department orders, and the stateside LE or essential industry purchases would have gone through the Defense Supplies Corporation. A hundred-gun shipment does seem large for a small county, but if the budget was good and supplies high, maybe the agency was buying ahead. Possibly the guns were purchased in greater-than-needed quantities and in some cases never issued to LE personnel. Certainly the gun with which I started this thread shows no signs of heavy or regular service, though it has some handling scuffs from its years of passing from collector to collector.

I don't for a moment believe that all 100 guns in the Paris shipment had two-inch barrels. I would imagine that 90 or more were four-inch Victories, and that perhaps only two or three had the shorter barrels. As soon as the wartime and early postwar S&W records have been digitized by the S&W Historical Foundation, I will try to find out how many of each type were ordered through the DSC. Perhaps the archived DSC records themselves hold the answer.

I have not found a Jack Reeve in the 1930 or 1940 census who can be clearly identified with this Jack Reeve. He is mentioned in a brief item in a 1941 issue of the Paris newspaper as a "former deputy sheriff" who was an announced candidate for election to the office of Marshal. I don't know if Reeve was again a deputy sheriff in 1945, but whatever his occupation or affiliation he was clearly in a position to take delivery of firearms orders placed under policies governing non-military acquisitions.

During WWII Lamar County was the site of a facility that built munitions crates. I imagine that would have been considered an essential industry whose security department had the right to seek appropriate firearms through the DSC, but I am not sure how big a security force such an operation would require. I suspect the order was placed through the local Sheriff or Police Department.

It's nice to know the destination for this uncommon Victory, but there is still plenty to learn about the circumstances under which it was ordered and shipped.

By the way, connoisseurs of whimsical public art might like to know there is a miniature Eiffel Tower in Paris crowned with a large red cowboy hat.

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David Wilson

Again a very informational thread on a interesting subject. This forum is just about astounding.

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Have guns...will shoot'em.

. . . and now we know what Jack Reeve was guarding!

Great thread, David. Thanks for sharing your story, ... and curiosity.

Jerry

Another location that might yield some info would be Red River Arms Depot. It is about an hour and a half east of Paris in Bowie Co. Tx. It was a major ammunition depot during that period.

Bob

I thank Don Mundell, Assistant Historian of the Smith & Wesson Historical Foundation, for digging up these documents and making them available to me.

Jack Reeves (John Freeman Reeves, 1896-1976), appears to have submitted a request to the Defense Supplies Corporation on or about March 15, 1945 (the date is in one of the lower documents). He appears to have asked for four .38 Special revolvers with four-inch barrels, and three .38 Special revolvers with two-inch barrels. On March 23, S&W Sales Manager David B. Murray wrote him this letter.





Murray advises Reeves that the four revolvers with four-inch barrels had been shipped, but reports that the DSC's supply of two-inch revolvers had been exhausted. He explains that three four-inch guns could be re-barreled, but at some cost for time and parts. Negotiating with himself, he dispenses with the parts cost and offers to undertake the modification of three revolvers at a total expense of $4.50 for the minimal required labor.

At the bottom of the letter Reeves squeezes in a quick reply and sends the whole page back to Murray: It's a deal, and I enclose payment.

Murray sends three revolvers to the Service Department (or Repair Department, according to the work order) for the necessary modifications and orders them to be returned to the Shipping Room when done. These next three images show the actual assessments for service work on three revolvers forwarded for modification: V625065, V625443, and V629214.











Murray then writes to Reeves again, letting him know that modifications have started and that the guns will be shipped in the near future:





And in conclusion, this following form is generated, which I take to be both a fulfillment memo for the DSC and documentation for S&W's own files that the DSC order was properly wrapped up. It's interesting to see an actual DSC Transaction number on S&W paperwork -- DSC 6001, in this case.




With these 75-year-old pages I finally have documentation that my two-inch Victory left the factory as a two-inch gun. That was already the most likely explanation for its consistent condition, but it's nice to have the company record. We also have the serial numbers of two more two-inch Victories that we can keep our eyes open for. We see that the DSC appears to have burned through all the two-inch Victories that were ever in their hands, but that S&W was willing to convert a gun on the fly before shipping to a specific customer exactly what he wanted.

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David Wilson

John Freeman Reeves, who was Chief of Police in Paris, TX in 1945, was born in Lamar County in 1896 and died there in 1976. His military service included a year in Europe during WWI. It isn't immediately clear what he was doing during the 1920s beyond starting a family, but in the 1930 census he is a Captain in the Paris firefighting service. In 1940 he is a Deputy Sheriff, and five years later we can see from the documents above that he is Chief of Police. In the available censuses he has a wife, sons, daughters and a mother-in law in his household. He is interred in Hickory Grove Cemetery near Petty, a few miles south of Paris.

Usually a Chief of Police will generate a few newspaper stories in the course of his career, but Reeves seems to have been a low-profile sort. Or maybe there just weren't any reporters around him when things got exciting.

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David Wilson

David:

That is a fantastic paper trail.

I don‘t have any particular interest in 2“ Victorys. But I find something confirmed here that has puzzled me about another police order from June 1945:

All three serial numbers involved in your case, very close together, should fall (by extrapolation) into a June/July 1944 production timeframe. So they sat at the factory for almost a year.

I have posted before about the order of 4“ Victorys for the Louisville Division of Police, 400 guns that shipped on June 6, 1945. I have by now accumulated full or partial serials for 9 guns, which are easily identifiable by a backstrap stamping. 9 out of 400 are statistically a better sample than we usually have for such batches, and all serials are in that same range, between V 602- and 630-. In fact, my specimen, V 626880, is in the vicinity of your three converted 2-inchers.

Just a peculiar pattern that‘s emerging here. It really can no longer be explained by some guns being late shippers due to not passing inspection, which was Roy‘s guess when I first double-checked just my Louisville gun‘s late ship date.

David,
Thanks for sharing these fascinating documents. It would be helpful if you could re-post the original photographs of the gun. BTW, I practically grew up in Paris, TX, or at least spent a lot of weekends and summers there with my grandparents. My mother grew up there and my father grew up a little further east in Detroit, TX.

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Kevin Williams SWCA1649 HF208

Kevin, I think the original photos are long gone, but from the adjacent narrative I know what the missing photos must have shown. I'm going to rephotograph the gun and get replacement pics up soon. I will also be taking and inserting new photos for other threads where the loss of photos has severely impacted their utility.

I haven't been to Paris, but it's on my must-see list; I'm somewhat familiar with Lamar County through Google Earth, and I know other nearby counties well from travels. My mother's earliest years were spent not too far away in Frisco, Plano and McKinney. Her father had grown up in Colin County, and her mother hailed from Lewisville in Denton County. The part of Texas north and east of Fort Worth is one of my favorite areas in the US, and I hope to explore it more completely before I am ready for the rest home.

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David Wilson

Living in North Central Texas I can tell you the area "northeast of Fort Worth" might as well be called North Dallas due to growth.

I can remember as a child travelling to see relatives in "east Texas" that lived in Sulphur Springs and Winnsboro and there wasn't even a stop sign between Denton and McKinney on 380.....and very few between McKinney and Greenville. When they finally put a stop sign up at a 4-way intersection between Denton and McKinney my father forgot about it the first few times and blew right through it.

My family just spent a few days out on Lake Caddo on the Texas/Louisiana state line in the small Texas town of Uncertain. We went 380 east and west for part of the the trip and there are now a million stop signs and stop lights between Denton and Greenville. Just crazy how much it's grown in that area. Large housing subdivisions, schools, businesses, and shopping areas springing up everywhere out there.

I've been saying for a several years now that they need to build another true freeway several miles north of 380 for through traffic!

If you've never seen the bald cyprus trees out on Lake Caddo it is something to behold. The state park there offers some beautiful views of them but don't forget to take a boat tour as well!

I seem to remember Paris Texas getting hit by a large tornado or two when I was growing up.

Top post once again has photos.

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David Wilson

Hello David:

Thank you for this valuable update. Isn't it amazing what can be drawn from the S&WHF documents that were so carefully preserved and then digitized at considerable expense so as to make them useful to collectors?

One other minor observation. Although your example did not ship until April 1945, there is a well-known group of 2-inch guns in the same serial range of V650000 +/- or so. Almost all of those guns were shipped to various law enforcement agencies in 1944. As the March, 1945 S&W letter you posted indicates by early 1945 the supply of them was quickly exhausted.

I noticed in the Victory Model Database that the 2 inchers in the V650000 range which shipped in 1944 had P-proof marks on the upper left frame, the cylinder face and the barrel flat. A few of these recorded in the Database had no mention of P-proof marks which I think now was an oversight by the reporting parties.

Your example has the P mark in 2 of those 3 locations, the exception being the barrel flat. And that makes sense because we now understand that your revolver was originally manufactured as a 4 incher that had its barrel changed to a 2 incher before it left the factory, at Chief Reeve's request. For whatever reason, the standard P mark on the barrel flat was not applied to your example before it left the factory even though the proper serial number was applied.

As I said, this is a very minor observation but one that I will remember if I ever run across another 2 incher with 2 out of 3 of the usual P-proof markings.

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Charlie Flick
SWCA 729 HF 215