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02-19-2016, 11:54 PM
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SWCA Member Absent Comrade
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Late (very late) Victory
Since we recently had a discussion about the reliability of the serial numbers in dating a Victory and the speed and regularity of the sequence of shipping dates, here is a example of an outlier. I've posted about this one before, but now it's properly documented.
Victory #V 626880. No topstrap marking, backstrap stamped "Lou.Div. of Police". That's Louisville, KY. I've found earlier threads about several others with the same inscription, all in the same serial vicinity. The consensus on the forum among the experts, including the keepers of the Victory database, was that these shipped around July 1944 based on the serial. Mine fit right in the middle of the flock.
When I recently received the letter, I was rather surprised to read June 6, 1945 as the shipping date. Surprised enough that I actually bugged Roy Jinks with a "Are you sure about this?" e-mail. He was positive that the date was indeed correct, and stated that there were several in that range shipping around that time, although the record didn't show why.
So this Victory sat at the factory for almost a year. S&W must not have been worried much about liability back then if they shipped unmodified guns five months after regular production started shipping with the new hammer block in mid-January 1945. Interesting.
If you happen to have a Louisville Victory, please letter it. Nobody seems to have done so or posted about it so far. I'd like to find out if they all shipped in one order.
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02-20-2016, 04:53 AM
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Great post, Absalom. Thank you.
This reminds me of a K-22 I once owned. It was a one-line-address revolver with a serial number in the K10xxx range. The serial number should have put it in about 1947, but it lettered to December, 1949. That one sat in the vault for a while too!
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Jack
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02-20-2016, 05:07 AM
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Interesting post.
It doesn't seem that strange in the context of all things S&W and that most things come down to budget. I can easily imagine a scenario where the Div of police put in an order, bought a number of the guns in the order when they were completed, and that the budget would support.
The next budget year they took delivery of the remainder. Hence the serial numbers of the 2nd shipment were in the original group of serial #s and range that S&W originally assigned to the total order # of guns. Seems like plenty of precedent with other S&W large orders.
A search of the St Louis Div of Police record archives on the net could possibly confirm the details of their order.
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Jim
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02-21-2016, 02:04 AM
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May I offer another possibility. When I worked in production many years ago, items that were slightly out of spec but could be salvaged were set aside until enough were collected to make it possible to run a lot through. These units were sold as normal production runs, only known to those with access to internal serial numbers.
Going back years ago; do you remember when one motor might leave another in it's dust? I totally understand this as one might have been bored over sized and had shaved heads with higher compression and maybe longer rods.
I would not have surprised me if some units might have sat for quite some time until enough parts came through to run a slightly out of spec lot through. Manufacturers hate to waste parts if at all possible to save them.
Just a thought from my experience.
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02-21-2016, 02:27 AM
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Welcome to the forum.
Your experience and theory could have merit with other products. In the context of S&W production of safe firearms, I don't think it reasonably applies.
If a gun was out of spec enough not to sell initially, it's unsafe. And wouldn't be sold out of spec a year later or at any time after. Especially to the same customer who would be most likely to discover the difference from their initial delivered guns, nor would it be likely that it'd be satisfactory to them to have a portion of their order delivered over a year later, unless originally in the terms of their contract with S&W.
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Last edited by Hondo44; 02-21-2016 at 02:29 AM.
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02-21-2016, 02:44 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hondo44
Interesting post.
It doesn't seem that strange in the context of all things S&W and that most things come down to budget. I can easily imagine a scenario where the Div of police put in an order, bought a number of the guns in the order when they were completed, and that the budget would support.
The next budget year they took delivery of the remainder. Hence the serial numbers of the 2nd shipment were in the original group of serial #s and range that S&W originally assigned to the total order # of guns. Seems like plenty of precedent with other S&W large orders.
A search of the St Louis Div of Police record archives on the net could possibly confirm the details of their order.
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Smith & Wesson worked and still works on a pay as you order business. Your scenario is all wrong. If a police agency, or any customer ordered 10 revolvers they paid for 10 and got 10. If they ordered 20,but paid for 10, they got 10. Smith & Wesson would not put 10 aside and wait one year.
S&W doesn't assign serial numbers to a work order, nor would they only do a run of 10 or 20 guns to fill an order. I just lettered a .44 SPL that was in an order of 5 guns. The invoice listed all 5 serial numbers. If you expected that all five were consecutive, you'd be wrong. The spread was 55 numbers apart. Two guns had serial numbers that were 4 numbers apart. I recently lettered two 38/44's consecutively numbered. They shipped almost a year apart.
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Don Mundell
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02-21-2016, 02:47 AM
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Did these police guns lack the new drop safety the military's guns had by then? If they don't, maybe they were the last of the guns built without and were set aside for non-federal government sales.
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02-21-2016, 03:33 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BUFF
Did these police guns lack the new drop safety the military's guns had by then? If they don't, maybe they were the last of the guns built without and were set aside for non-federal government sales.
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A creative idea, but it doesn't match the timeline. According to Pate, the Navy didn't authorize the change to the new hammer block until October 1944, and due to necessary tooling changes, deliveries of guns with the modification did not begin until about January 15, 1945, at serial V 769000. That's over 140,000 guns later than my V 626880, and many ASP (Army Supply Program) guns with the US PROPERTY stamp fall into that range in-between, as well as for example an OSS Victory V 662384 from August 1944 I just posted about in another thread.
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02-21-2016, 11:54 AM
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For a similar cop gun snubby situation: Victory Model information?
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02-21-2016, 01:01 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DWalt
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Thanks for the link. I had somehow missed this. So that's the Tulsa gun you mentioned earlier.
I wonder whether by the summer of 1945 S&W was having a "clearance sale" and just getting whatever was left in inventory out to DSC-qualifying customers. That could have included guns pulled out of the production line because they didn't pass inspection initially and needed to be fixed; Roy raised that possibility for the delay in shipping in his e-mail response to me.
Obviously, by that time the war was basically over and whether or not the customer was "critical to the war effort" was no longer relevant; budget-conscious police chiefs may have just taken the opportunity to get good (if not pretty) S&W revolvers at a significantly lower cost. The finish wear pattern on mine indicates that it spent many years with post-war magna stocks; it likely stayed in Louisville service for quite a while.
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02-21-2016, 01:12 PM
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What an excellent, interesting, and informative thread. This is one reason I joined this forum.
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