Production

The achilles heel of US Krag books is the production numbers.  They were always hard to get correct.  The existing books are all based on incorrect production numbers.  The incorrect numbers lead to lining up serial numbers incorrectly.  That just kept pyramiding.  So I’m not a big fan of the existing sources.  Most sources give production at about 470,000.  I own a Krag with a serial number higher than that.  I have pictures of serial numbers on guns with numbers into the 482K range.

Another problem is “correct” guns.  Many of what were accepted to be “correct” guns are not correct.  Not enough research was done to determine what “correct” was.  The guns were tools.  They were fixed in service and rebuilt when returned from the field.  Most M1 Garands show obvious signs of rebuilding.  It’s simply noticeable on Garands.  The same level of work was done on Krags but it was less noticeable.  The parts aren’t marked as well as Garand parts.  Garand parts have revision numbers whereas Krag parts are, most anyway, unmarked.  If the US Ordnance Department had marked all subparts, along the lines that the Germans did with their Mausers, people would be in for a shock.

Sadly most of the changes will be pretty much impossible to accurately pin.  For a number of reasons.  Step one is to assemble correct production data, year by year.  I’m doing that with primary documentation that hasn’t been used before.  After that is done a reasonably accurate serial number by year table can be made.  It’ll take time.

One of the advantages of the Internet, an advantage that I have but those who came before me didn’t have, is I can see more guns than they can.  Rather than visiting a gun show every month or so I can look at guns pretty much daily.  This means I can view a lot more guns at a faster rate.  Assuming I can gather information based on serial number, statistical trend analysis should start to make some things clear.  As an example I’m pretty certain stocks were swapped much more frequently than expected.  1903 cartouche on a gun with a serial number of 212000, as an example, would indicate a swapped stock as 212000 was made earlier than 1903.

A lot of compilation should give me the information I’m after.  It’s a lot of work.