Gentlemen:
A recent thread asked about 4 inch, .38 Special Victory Model serialed V73, an early number, with unusual markings. Here is the link to that thread:
Victory Base
The original poster was evidently unable to post pics of this gun.
I have some thoughts on this gun's markings, and others, and wanted to toss this out for discussion without appending it to the earlier thread.
First, V73 is not the only example I am aware of that is so marked. Indeed, the Victory Model Database reveals three other guns marked in a similar fashion. Those are V1170, V2033 and V2500.
I think it is not insignificant that all four guns so marked are in relatively close serial number proximity to each other. From the Database I estimate that they likely shipped in the July 1942 time frame. At that time the factory was producing 1000 revolvers per day, so these four were likely manufactured and shipped within 48 hours of each other. It is within the realm of possibility that they all went to the same destination and, thus, received identical markings.
The markings in question are odd for several reasons, but the one that leaps out is that they are oriented aslant at about a 45 degree angle on the left frame below the cylinder latch. Perhaps this was because it was difficult to fit the entire marking on the frame in a level orientation.
Although the assumption is that these guns were shipped to the US Navy, none of the four had factory letter data and, thus, it cannot be said for certain that any or all were, in fact, Navy shipments.
In my Victory archives I located photos I had saved of the latter three guns. Here is V1170. (I did not record the source of any of the photos.)
Here is V2033, a gun that was later refinished to nickle.
And here is V2500.
All of the markings appear to be uniform in their style and application. I suspect that the same facility (or person) marked all of them.
Another oddity is that the NOD is marked with only a single period following the D, rather than N.O.D. or NOD with no following period.
The next obvious question is the meaning of the NOD acronym. A reasonable guess might be Naval Ordnance Depot. However, I have not been able to establish that the term "Naval Ordnance Depot" was in use during WW2. The Navy operated Naval Ammunition Depots, but I have not been able to locate "Naval Ordnance Depot" as a term used in WW2.
Perhaps it is a post-war term, or maybe it just means something other than what I have speculated here.
What about the number "1543"? I think we rule that out as a rack number since all four bear the same number. Perhaps the 1543 is part of the title of the facility itself. But where are the other 1542 such facilities?
Which brings us to the question of greatest significance: Is the marking a legitimate Navy marking at all or simply a fiction dreamed up by an imaginative gun faker? Regrettably, I can't answer that one. The comment in the thread on V73 mentioned that the gun was located in California, a state which once had a flourishing cottage industry of Victory fakers. The fact that a gun is now located in California is not, of course, at all sufficient to condemn it as a fake, but one wonders. For me, the jury is still out on whether this marking is genuine or not.
It is a bit of a mystery. The Database has helped us again by aggregating this information and allowing us to begin this discussion.
If anyone has any better or different information than what I have posited here, I'd invite you to post it. In particular, I would like to see if any of these 4 revolvers have factory or SWHF letters proving shipment to a Navy destination and where that destination was located.