bronze close combat clasp frequency

[deiter]

was this award rare to see in WWII?.......any idea how many were made?.......thanks for your help


doug

[Don D.]

The most common of all the clasps.

[Feldwebel]

Not to sure on how many were made but around 35,000 were awarded

[Thomas Durante]

Hi Doug,

This was actually a pretty infrequent award to be seen on a soldat IMO. If you think that about all the millions of German soldiers that fought in WWII (I have seen estimates of up to 19 million), only about 35,000 bronze awards were ever issued. It is estimated that about 9500 silver grades were issued and about 750 gold grades.

Judging also by period photo's of soldiers, it is pretty rare to find ones wearing the CCC.

Tom

[Don D.]

Tom, when it was instituted credit was given for length of service at the front. I forget the number of days and my book is at home. Can you run the figures out as an example?

[Thomas Durante]

Hi Don,

Here is the snippet right out of the book for those interested.

Tom

[Don D.]

Thanks Tom. I can see the potential for 1000s of bronze ones being awarded very quickly but after that the nature of the fighting didn't allow many to live long enough for silver or gold.

[fugpaw]

Whilst only 35,000 (ish) Bronzes were ever issued, I would be interested to know how many were actually made - I would guess it would be in at least the 45,000 to 55,000 region - but we will never know.

Mike

[Thomas Durante]

Hi guys,

Don, the creation of many 1000s of CCC very early on was most certainly the case, I would even venture to say that there were many 10s of 1000s made. Don't forget the letter on June 28th 1944 (page 253 of the CCC book), which stated that approximately 14,000 CCCs in Gold were stockpiled and requested refinishing to the silver class! They totally overestimated the amount of gold grades needed, so we can only imagine how many bronze grades were made and stockpiled. If we want to entertain the ratio between stockpiled gold CCCs (14,000+/-) vs. how many were actually awarded (750+/-), that gives us about 18 times the amount of clasps produced vs. awarded. Using that with the bronze clasps, that same ratio would mean that 650,000 bronze clasps were produced!!

Personally, I doubt that many were actually made. I could see maybe 3 or 5 times as many clasps were made vs. awarded.

Tom

[deiter]

thanks for all your help gentlemen




doug