Hello Historian 13:
Thanks for your PM. I have returned from my travels with the family and will try to answer the questions you posed.
I hope this does not come across as hopelessly pedantic but the first question to ask is what is an OSS Victory? Is it one that factory records will show as having shipped directly to the OSS, or is it one that was not so shipped but ended up in the possession of the OSS, or perhaps both? I lean towards both.
Since your question is about a .38 S&W gun (which for clarity's sake I will now refer to as .38-200) let's focus on that first. As far as can be determined there were only 4624 .38-200 guns shipped directly to the OSS, according to Charlie Pate. These were guns ordered under contract W-19-ORD-1361. The order was for thousands more but Pate indicates only the 4624 were shipped in early 1945. (Lend Lease orders had ceased by the end of 1944 so continuing production of .38-200 guns was evidently a problem for S&W.) To date and to my knowledge none of those 4624 guns OSS shipped .38-200 guns have come to the attention of the Victory collecting community and none are listed as lettered in the S&WCA's Victory Model Database.
It appears that the great bulk of the .38-200 Victory guns with an OSS association will letter as Lend Lease guns that shipped to the Hartford Ordnance Depot. Those guns have no distinguishing characteristics or marks that will tell a collector that it was an OSS gun.
Excepting only the 4624 guns referenced above which presumably should letter as OSS shipped, the Springfield Research Service database created by the late Frank Mallory and records later uncovered by Charlie Pate and published in the S&WCA Journal are the only sources I know of that will document by serial number a .38-200 gun as one that was in the possession of the OSS. I think that many, perhaps all, of those serial numbers are now in the Victory Model Database.
The situation is quite different with the 4 inch .38 Special OSS guns. Those revolvers were shipped directly to the OSS and will so letter. It is my belief that they were intended to arm OSS personnel in contrast to the .38-200 OSS guns that were primarily intended to arm resistance fighters. The .38 Special OSS guns have particular characteristics that allow the knowledgeable collector to identify them. I revealed those characteristics in my address to the members of the S&WCA present at the 2024 Symposium. My article on how to identify the .38 Special OSS shipped guns will, I hope, be published in the S&WCA Journal in the not too distant future.
Be aware that in WW2 S&W did not ship in strict consecutive serial number order. Additionally, .38 Special and .38-200 guns are mixed and scattered throughout the production run up until the second quarter of 1945. Thus, trying to identify an OSS gun by finding surrounding serial numbers that shipped to or were used by the OSS is fraught with difficulty and, in my judgment, not a reliable method.
I am not sure if I have completely answered your questions but I hope so. As you can see there are many variables involved.
Regards,
Charlie Flick
