Turkish Bayonets

[trajan]

urS>S,

My hat has been raised to you (I must be one of the very few ordinary people in Turkey who still obey's Ataturk's hat law! - and it is, btw, an Australian 'diggers' hat), and I have just given a double bow towards the antipodes, and I now raise a glass of wine to you! You have almost certainly cracked the code!

My two 1890's with the 'mystery' marks are indeed 1311, and my third, with the accepted Sauer mark, is indeed - you have guessed it! - 1312... Again, a salute to you!

BTW, one of my 1890' does have a very good and clear example of the 'no-longer-a mystery' mark, and I'll try to get a 'photo up soonish.

Cheers, and again cheers!

Trajan

[trajan]

And here is my 1890 with the good example of 'the mark'...

Trajan

PS: Ignore the black 'prop' on the left, there for the 'photo: it is a shortened ASFA example but with intact quillion.

[shippingsteel]

And here is my 1890 with the good example of 'the mark'...

Excellent Trajan - that nice clear shot of the marking is exactly what I've been looking for.! And thanks for the extra data and support - any excuse for another drink, hey.!

Anyway now we have a decent picture we can clearly see the 'offending commas' in the red. I am not at all surprised they 'did a rethink' on those first stamped markings.

I'm sure they had quite a lot of Turks scratching their head in bewilderment.! The way they have written these names is confusing enough without adding more 'noise'.

So if we disregard those extra markings the translations on both versions then becomes SAUER FACTORY , SUHL (which will be known to us as Sauer Mk.I and II)

Cheers, S>S

[trajan]

FYI: This has just turned up on Turkish e-bay - 'Turked', and 'only' US$ 225...Looks to be 1313. A Sauer mk II stamp.

Trajan

[trajan]

Same seller has this one also, again 'Turked', for about US$ 180... Was this a Sg 98? Weyersberg, Kirschbaum stamp? S>S, looks like your post 002, and same year as well - 1322...

Trajan

[shippingsteel]

The narrower blade example is the Turkish M1903, which basically used the blade of the German S98 and the standard hilt of the M1890 bayonet.

At least most of the Turked bayonets, while a shadow of their former selves, can usually provide us with their original stamped markings still intact.!

And BTW you have ID'd both the makers stamps correctly. Another thing I have found is that the WKC stamp does NOT include the name of Solingen.!

I guess they thought the combination would be just TOO long, and so decided to only go with the Weyersberg, Kirschbaum part of the makers name.

Cheers, S>S

[CharlieBris]

May I add some perspectives from analysing markings on Turkish guns in Australia. There's a primer in reading the gun markings at http://landships/landships/artillery_articles.html?load=artillery_articles/Turkish_Gun_Markings.html.

The calendar used in the dates on the guns was the Rumi calendar which had the same year length as the Western calendar but was offset by 584 years. There was also a small difference in the start of years (13 days) which

wasn't rectified until 1917.

The process pre-war for accepting guns into service was that the Imperial Arsenal (top hane i amire) received orders from foreign manufacturers, ran whatever acceptance tests were needed and inscribed in Turkish with the manufacturer

and other info including a date. This means that the dates on guns can be up to 2 years later than the order date for equipment. I don't know whether this applies to bayonets though.

The guns were inscribed rather than stamped so there's a lot of variation between different batches of guns. The calligraphy on the gun markings means that, to the Western eye, there often are a lot of additional marks around the characters

which have no other purpose besides improving the appearance.

The practice of processing foreign orders through the Imperial Arsenal seems to have stopped at the start of WW1 and the only Turkish guns found with Arabic markings after 1914 are those built by the Arsenal.

Regards,

Charlie

[shippingsteel]

Thats very interesting Charlie, thanks for adding, it all helps.!
The link you posted was not working properly (obviously missing something important) but I found it HERE

EDIT. You're definitely right about all that extra calligraphy - it sure makes it much more difficult to decipher all the markings.
I have had a play around with your gun marking for Fried. Krupp of Essen and have written it in the plain Osmanlic script below.

Cheers, S>S

[trajan]

May I add some perspectives from analysing markings on Turkish guns in Australia. There's a primer in reading the gun markings at http://landships/lan..._Markings.html.

Charlie

Many thanks also from me! That was an interesting read and I now look forward to impressing my Turkish in-laws with my ability to make sense of any gun markings we happen to see when out together Also, I never realised there was a difference between the Rumi and the standard AH year-dating system - so, thanks again for helping to improve my knowledge box!

Trajan

[CharlieBris]

I should point out that the Turkish script above the "Freid Krupp A.G. Essen" reads as "Fabrik i Krup Esen". I had thought it was a transliteration of the "Freid Krupp" line but

a couple of Turkish historians on the Axishistory forum supplied the correct reading.

You can see the variation in the styles of inscription on the Krupp 75mm field guns in the survey at: http://www.ammsbrisbane.com/articles.html?load=articles/Turkish_75m_Survivors.html.

I've been told that the calligraphy on the M1909 guns is very impressive by a Pashto speaker (Pashto uses an Arabic script).

A real challenge is to pick out the "Top Hane i Amire" from the calligraphy representing the manufacturer found on Turkish built guns.

Regards,

Charlie

[CharlieBris]

Yes - I agree. I found a gun marking in my stash which doesn't have many calligraphic marks. Working from the Ottoman alphabet in Wikipedia I get;

( swapping the text to read left to right)

F - r - i - d - k K - u - p

E - s - n

Regards,

Charlie

[shippingsteel]

Thats great Charlie - I am glad we have agreement.! The writing is certainly strange and very 'exaggerated' as far as the calligraphy goes.

You can tell that it has been translated over from the German names, as both the letters F and K are written as isolated symbols, as in capital letters.

If it was written in the proper 'Osmanlic' script you would not be able to pick them out, as they would look very different being 'blended' with the next letter.

I can see why the Turkish guys would suggest the 'fabrika' translation, as both the Mauser rifles and bayonets that the Germans made included that OT script.

Anyway it's been fun looking at it again from a slightly different perspective, so thanks. BTW my favourite Krupp gun is the 75 that I see regularly at Wandoan.

Cheers, S>S

[CharlieBris]

.........

BTW my favourite Krupp gun is the 75 that I see regularly at Wandoan.

Cheers, S>S

There's a 75mm at Wandoan? I know about the 15cm sFH 13 lg there - http://www.ammsbrisb...n/sfh13_4.html.

I agree it's difficult to pick apart Turkish script - the different characters dependent on whether the syllable occurs at the start, end or within a word I find very

confusing never mind the characters which don't join to other characters.

Regards,

Charlie

[shippingsteel]

There's a 75mm at Wandoan? I know about the 15cm sFH 13 lg there ....

Ahh yeah thats the one.!! You can tell I know mighty little about big guns, but anyway its still my favourite.

Your links don't seem to be working for me, so if anyones interested in seeing it, I'll add a link to the gun HERE

Cheers, S>S

[shippingsteel]

Well just when I thought it was safe to start packing things up here, another decides to show up.! Its rough and very dirty but undeniably different.

This marking was found on a 'turked' M1890 and they are always scruffy, but I think I've found a worthwhile use for them - contributing markings.!

I think this is the mark for VC.Schilling of Suhl, which I always thought 'should' exist, but have never before been able to find an example up till now.

It obviously has the leading letters representing Suhl at the start, then something with a letter S, then ending with the letter G right in the middle.

While I can't make out the smaller markings, this inscription clearly has all the right ingredients to be the 'long-lost' marking for VC.Schilling of Suhl.

Schilling was one of the major manufacturers of military equipment during that period so it always made sense that they should have been involved.

Hopefully I will be able to come across a clearer marking to allow a more complete translation to be made. Has anyone got a photo of one of these.?

Cheers, S>S

[Guest car99]

Firstly, thank you shipping steel for putting in the effort to help decipher these bayonets. I have been trying to do the same for some time with my wife's knowledge of Arabic, and she writes:

Regarding the picture of the receiver, the three letters preceding 'fabrika' are 'silah' which is the Turkish word for arms.

On the Coppel bayonets, it is important to remember that handwritten Arabic is different then printed script. On the bayonets 'Coppel' is clear- three Arabic letters are used the 'q' which has two dots over it followed by the Persion "p" with three dots over it and the "l".

On the bayonets from Sauer, even in both versions, the "s" "wa" "r" is clear. Sometimes the "wa" and "r" are written above the elongated "s"; sometimes they follow it.

This is a great forum, and I'm happy to have finally found and joined it.

[trajan]

Firstly, thank you shipping steel for putting in the effort to help decipher these bayonets. ... This is a great forum, and I'm happy to have finally found and joined it.

Hi DHAB, and welcome!

Yes,we all owe S>S a lot for his sterling work - but it is also good to hear the extras and the confirmation from your wife! Hope you enjoy all that follows on in this and other GWF threads.

Trajan

[Guest car99]

Yo Trajan! DHAB is also carr99 from gunboards, and thanks again for this link!

[trajan]

DHAB/carr99 - Pleased to be of service! But be careful with this forum - there are so many interesting things that pop-up (e.g., 'Prussian Officers buried standing up?') you'll be addicted within days!

Trajan

[shippingsteel]

Firstly, thank you shipping steel for putting in the effort to help decipher these bayonets. I have been trying to do the same for some time with my wife's knowledge of Arabic, and she writes:

Regarding the picture of the receiver, the three letters preceding 'fabrika' are 'silah' which is the Turkish word for arms.

On the bayonets 'Coppel' is clear- three Arabic letters are used the 'q' which has two dots over it followed by the Persion "p" with three dots over it and the "l".

On the bayonets from Sauer, even in both versions, the "s" "wa" "r" is clear. Sometimes the "wa" and "r" are written above the elongated "s"; sometimes they follow it.

Hi DHAB, glad you managed to find your way over to this forum. A number of us do frequent both forums and they are both good, but very different, and thats always a good thing.!

Thanks for your extra input - its great to get some confirmation as well as a few new pointers. So that 'arc shape' letter is an S on the Sauer marking - I was really struggling with that.!

Yes I have had a number of people all contribute a little information on these Turkish inscriptions, and it is fantastic to see that we have made some solid progress on the translations.

I was hoping to do up a bit of a summary of all the inscriptions, once I have accumulated clear photos of all the different makers. Some of them I have found are not really that common.

If you have any that you wanted to post here for discussion, I am sure it would be useful to compare notes. Extra heads always come in handy when trying to 'nut over' the tough ones.!

Cheers, S>S

[CharlieBris]

If you'd like to wrap your findings into an article I can post it to Landships II so it doesn't get lost in the forum. I admin this website and I'm always

open to posting articles on WW1 topics. Although Landships started as a modelling site it's acquired a lot of material on WW1 technology over time.

Regards,

Charlie

[shippingsteel]

Thanks for the offer Charlie. I had considered putting all of it into an 'article' of some sort once I had tidied up all the loose ends. I'll keep it in mind.

Cheers, S>S

[trajan]

Hi one and all,

Just to add to Shipping Steel's ever-growing 'Corpus' of Turkish ricasso marks (and dates!), I thought I'd put this Weyersberg 1312 up - not mine, but spotted on the Turkish eeeh-by-gum bay. Compare with post 4 and 8 - some slight differences in letter style.

Cheers!

Trajan

[shippingsteel]

Thanks Trajan, I would appreciate you keeping a lookout for any of the 'new' markings that you may come across in your travels over there.

I have even been venturing to the Turk ebay site looking through the lists of 'sungu' and 'kasatura', together with every other ebay site globally.

I am desperate to locate some more pictures of those less common markings. I need to get some clearer pics so then I can wrap everything up.

It is interesting that there are some slight variations in all the markings over the different dates. I have an earlier 1306 WKC that is different again.

The thing with this marking is that it is stamped on my M1887 rather than the later M1890. The differences must have come with the change in models.

Cheers, S>S

[trajan]

Thanks Trajan, I would appreciate you keeping a lookout for any of the 'new' markings that you may come across ... It is interesting that there are some slight variations in all the markings over the different dates. I have an earlier 1306 WKC that is different again. Cheers, S>S

Glad to be of any help! And might I venture to suggest that when you feel you have got as far as you can with this piece of fascinating research, then you publish it somewhere in hard form as well as in web form? From a personal viewpoint, the great strides forward in identifying the markings apart, I would be interested to see if it is possible to track down any patterns of supply: e.g., with WKC making specific types of bayonet in specific years, other makers suplying bayonets of the same or other types in the same or other years. Only problem is the very small size of the available sample base, which at the moment at least relies on GWF members willing to pass on the information!

Trajan