This is an Sg98, not a 98/05 (Simson did make the 98/05 but this is not one of them... imo); Carter covers the SB in some detail and MarkW covered naval Gewehr98's back in the late 70's but not a terrible lot of detail on the subject in English though Storz new book may have?
I believe there were 3 battalions pre-war and raised to 12 when war broke out. The III SB was in China or Asia at least.
My SB Sg98 is from the I SB and assigned to the Baltic, mine has this accountability number on the same location. Whether an accountability number of some sort (naval contract or some in-house Simson Suhl deal I am not sure) or a serialization thing similar to Herder typeII production I haven't heard a good explanation (at least that I recall) and I am not curious enough to risk breaking a rare one piece grip taking it off to see if the serialization thing pans out like the Herder theme...
It could be some sort of subcontract issue as its well-known & accepted Suhl practice (Simson no exception) that they were famous for collaboration amongst one another for completion of contracts.
I will also point out that none of my Garde marked Sg98�s have this number (all early Erfurt); though I do have a 65th R also from Erfurt (1900 I belive) that does have this number in this location, interestingly its number is very similar though not exactly the weapon number of the unit marking- coincidence I suspect as the few SB Sg98�s I have on file or own that I can identify with this number are not similar in this regard (the accountability number is totally different from the unit marking weapon number)
I have hundreds on file though I have never looked into this subject before.
Best guess is a naval contract accountability number, after the earliest naval Sg98�s (Erfurt) Simson Suhl got the naval contracts as noted by the database in Carters & my own- Simson Suhl is by far the most prevalent (note also DWM with their Gewehr98 naval contracts of the same era- seems DWM & Simson got the contracts to arm the naval service- two ruthless competitors I might add and no friends as evidenced by DWM war time behavior to Simson!)
quote:
Originally posted by John C. Jacobi:
That is a beauty! Does anyone know the total strenght of sea batts during ww1? It would give a rough estimate of how many 98/05s got stamped.
