"SS reworked rifles & Lugers why would they not rework & or Assemble bayonets." There is important the timeline, i dont believe the SS reworked rifles as Gew98 or Lugers post 1939. Same as i dont believe is real the hypothesis of batlefield salvage bayonets, the period of post 1942 is mentioned as very problematic period, when every month were lost about 50 thousand of rifles and bayonets in war, other point is that the rifles that were in late 1944 produced already have not the bayonet adapter, Kriegsmodell K98k rifle,Stg44, K43, STg45, VG rifles, thats the reason why the 1945 bayonet production is from only 2 firms. The bayonet production was already stopped as not important.Because the material were needed in other important arms production, like by panzerfaust production. The major part of a bayonet is the mashining of rifle slot, which could be done only by special mashines and certainly not by a camp labor employment. There should be used special caibers to made the bayonet attachable on every rifle used by Wehrmacht and SS, the parts as springs, screws and other were done by small firms, not by the bayonet producers, the scabbards are too hard to made by a small works, because You need a special press mashines.best regards,Andy
Andy makes some good points here. By '45 the bayonet was an obsolete weapon of little use in the war the Germans found themselves fighting. As to "battlefield salvage", well, from '43 onwards the battlefields were left in the hands of Germany's foes allowing little opportunity for "salvage".
Len
