UBB.threads Forums Edged Weapons Army, Navy, and Luftwaffe Forum LUFTWAFFE SURVIVAL MACHETE - ALCOSO

Hey FP, I can't remember on what forum we compared black and white photos in our discussion of these blades. Yes, that was me. The brass fitting/police connection from the German site might be perhaps a misinterpretation of my post in the German language. I wrote that some of the machetes with brass fittings are found with police acceptance marks.

I agree that there is no source documentation of the use of the blades by the police forces. It is all circumstantial. We may disagree as to whether the Die Woche photo featured a brass or steel fitted machete, but we cannot disagree that the type of blade was used in LW airplane emergency kits. I know the police operated their Flieger-Staffel in close cooperation with the LW. They used multi-engine planes. Whether they were equipped with survival kits is theory. Why all the minty machetes? Perhaps the idea behind them. They were packed away in boxed kits to be used in emergencies. And there they remained.

Many of us search for collecting examples in the finest condition that can be found: guns, daggers, uniforms. A minty machete means it was never used. If the plane never went down, the box was never opened.