Hi Houston, Thank you, Indeed there is still much to learn, & still a lot more in the documents I have. I've been pouring over them for a couple of weeks now.
I don't know the name of the main document as the front cover is missing, however it is a book detailing the events & statistics of the shoots. Every entrant of the event in 1944 is listed with full details of their scores for every shoot they took part in. Every person who qualified for the grade has a badge number by their name, I've been cross referencing to try & see whether any are missing but it seems all received a badge.
It also stated the numbers of all the different types of badges issued for each year from 1938 onwards (bronze, silver, gold, gold with oakleaves etc). The "Kombination" events for which the Meistersch�tze badges were issued are treated as a completely seperate set of shoots from 1941 onwards, so I doubt whether earlier qualification would count as the event seems to have been a new one in '41. It also clearly states the number of 3 year badges issued in 1943 (390) & 1944 (323), there is also a big thing over the introduction of the 4 year spange & the 279 shooters who qualified for it that year. I can't find any mention of earlier shooters receiving it retrospectively.
There is no mention at all of the 6 year Gaumeister, so I take it that your theory, mentioned before on an earlier thread, that the 9 year had been produced ready for future use was also the case with the 6 year badge.
I aquired the documents through a friend in Austria who found them in a second hand bookshop quite by chance. Also with the book was a similar type of report to the above but less detailed for 1941, a pamphlet like you describe for the 1942 event & a Stammkarte for the "pistole 1942" discipline.
My comments re an earlier theory of person possibly being able to win several badges in a year was just down to speculation amongst collectors, incorrectly based on the only cased sets I'd seen before that, like Gary's, only contained badges from a single year, nothing more.
There is so much more to discover just in these documents alone, without whatever else is out there. Hopefully slowly we shall find out more.
Cheers
Don
