As my Letter stated, there is no way to determine if the Navy revolvers actually saw combat duty aboard a US Navy ship, but pictures abound of US Navy combat pilots, carrier based, with their Victories in a shoulder holster rig with their Mae West vests so you can certainly surmise duty, even if no provenance.
One of the many MANY project I am working on right now is aimed at addressing this issue.
I've been going through Victory REPAIR and CORRESPONDENCE files within the SWHF archive.
The vast majority relate to DSC guns. For example I have before me a letter from the Detroit Police Department where they list dozens of Victory revolvers by serial number that they wish to have repaired. That gets logged into the database I'm working on so that when someone orders a Deep Dive from SWHF this info will be include with it.
There are significantly fewer letters like that of a military nature but there are enough that it does add to the database. An example would be like a letter I was just reading from a Washington based Coast Guard Facility where they were listing, by serial number, a number of Victory revolvers in their possession that needed work (an issue with burst barrels).
The vast majority of Victory revolvers will never really have any primary source material that indicates where they ultimately went. However, every once in a while Fate will reach out a hand and grant us a boon in the form of a letter or two asking about a repair or spares and that boon gets recorded.
This really illustrates a major issue within the collecting field and that is the loss of identity ('chain of custody' if you prefer) for arms once they leave the manufacturer. You can letter your Victory and SWHF will write back that it went to USN Oakland 10APR45 and the trail ends there. What we need are secondary sources.
In my case those secondary sources are NYPD records so that you get a letter that says your Victory went to the DSC who shipped it to NYPD in 1942. Now you come to me and I letter it as having gone to a specific officer on a specific date; that continues our 'chain of custody'.
Another example would be Colt SAA revolvers. You get a letter from Colt saying it went to Zork Hardware in Texas in 1890 and the trail ends there. Except the local University archive has all the old Zork records including their ledger books that show who they sold that gun to!
Many people on this forum have access to stuff like that and just don't avail themselves of it. You got your twenty in at LAPD and are getting ready to pull the pin? Go to the firearms guys and ask if they have copies of shipping invoices you can scan. Doesn't have to be current. You know how many commands have basement rooms full of boxes of old records they never got rid of? I found NYPD 1921 sales records in a milk crate under a sink in a mens room at HQ!
Check your local University or college archive. Did you know Amherst college in MA has several feet of S&W documents in their archive, many of which contain serial number data?
Mike Helms would part with a (manly appendage we each have two of) if he could find the JW Storrs records for the No. 1's. I did some checking and there is an archive in NYC that has Storrs family and some business records. Could there be something in there that shed lights on No. 1 shipments, including Helms' number 5? Maybe. I have to go down and look.
Lots of major businesss concerns that went out of business, relocated or change hands donated old records to various colleges and business schools. Look around.
Imagine what we'd find if we could find an archive of Abercrombie & Fitch records or Griffin & Howe? Now that they are going out of business, what would old Sears records tell us. Heck, what about Tiffany? They did a surprising amount of gun engraving and plating; wouldn't their records be informative?
Best,
RM Vivas
(up to my neck in research projects)
