Details

LOT 1171

German M1884/98 Third Model Bayonet and Scabbard

DATED 1940 A.D.

16 in. (588 grams, 40.5 cm).

Comprising a knife bayonet for use with the Second World War 8 mm Mauser Kar 98k rifle; fitted with resin grip scales and spring release button; scabbard with original throat and chape. [No Reserve]

Provenance

Property of a Luton, UK gentleman, by inheritance.

Literature

See Capwell, T., Knives, Daggers and Bayonets, Lorenz, 2009, p.180, for general type and details.

Footnotes

The bayonet offered here is an example of the third pattern of bayonet manufactured in 1927-1930 and again in the period 1934-1935, with this specific example having been produced in 1935. In an attempt to keep their identities a secret, the makers of these weapons stamped the blades with a letter/number code, a practice they repeated for the scabbards. This scabbard bears the code for 1943, although it was double struck. Both blade and scabbard in this instance were produced by E. & F. Horster & Co. of Solingen, and the weapon is apparently a pre-war example that was captured and reworked in eastern Europe, likely Yugoslavia.
The plastic grips such as those used on our bayonet, and typically found on M1884/98 III bayonets, are made from a phenolic resin. Owing to a shortage of such resin in Germany during WWII a substitute moulding compound known as type 41, which contained a much lower percentage of resin, was adopted in January 1943.