2 x IAB what maker?

[Norm F]

Would be good if we see just one proof or one grouping for all the "Design-Change" ideas for f.e. "Deumer" and "Juncker" badges

sry its a bit an other topic

Yes indeed it's off topic, but Deumer's change of design from the Tombak U-Boat badge to the zinc badge is very well documented since the former is clearly shown in their early war catalog while the latter repeatedly appears in Deumer marked envelopes (and the reverse setups for both of them match the Deumer marked Minesweeper badges).

Best regards,
---Norm

[PKAliebhaber]

I dont see it and i believe its too hot to compare KM badges with Heer badges. Its two different production lines.
Why should this are a design change?

Its too thin ice to take this and to explaine and proof all this imagine design changes of all Heer badges

" from the Tombak U-Boat badge to the zinc badge is very well documented"

interesting! from the tombak badge to the zinc badge a design change? So it would be not the same with the Heer badges - then it would be from HOLLOW ZINC to MASSIC Zinc a new design (PLEASE NOBODY DISCUSS ABOUT THE WORD DESIGN) if this story would be correct.
So you have a hollow zinc badge first and then take a new design also in zinc?

I dont believe this all

[Norm F]

I dont see it and i believe its too hot to compare KM badges with Heer badges. Its two different production lines.
Why should this are a design change?

Its too thin ice to take this and to explaine and proof all this imagine design changes of all Heer badges

" from the Tombak U-Boat badge to the zinc badge is very well documented"

interesting! from the tombak badge to the zinc badge a design change? So it would be not the same with the Heer badges - then it would be from HOLLOW ZINC to MASSIC Zinc a new design (PLEASE NOBODY DISCUSS ABOUT THE WORD DESIGN) if this story would be correct.
So you have a hollow zinc badge first and then take a new design also in zinc?

I dont believe this all

Hi PKAliebhaber,

I don't quite follow you, probably because of the language barrier. You initially asked for some proof of Deumer changing designs and so I just showed you a proven Kriegsmarine example, that's all. You didn't mention you were only interested in Heer examples.

Anyway, this doesn't matter to the two topics of this thread which are 1) when was zinc was introduced in the manufacture of war badges and 2) when were hollow zinc Heer badges produced. Neither of those questions could be precisely answered yet.

And please understand, I'm not saying your theory of late war hollow zinc production is wrong; I'm only saying we have to keep looking for some evidence to support it.

Best regards,
---Norm

[PKAliebhaber]

AGREED "keep looking for some evidence"

BUT everybody should do it .... in this world a catch or hardware compare is enough to name a maker to a badge... exsp. for MODs here
If something dont fit everybody crys "Design-change" out load and so all badges from different kinds are from one maker

[PKAliebhaber]

You didn't mention you were only interested in Heer examples.

Like i said before, i think you cant compare Heer badges 1:1 with KM and Luftwaffe Badges.

You dont see KM badges in hollow (just the one uboot ok) and this has clear reasons i said before. The amount was much less then the Heer combat badges. You never had this much mass production, you dont needed hollow ones

if you can you will always produce in solid - its the nicer badge, or not?

[Thomas Durante]

Would be good if we see just one proof or one grouping for all the "Design-Change" ideas for f.e. "Deumer" and "Juncker" badges

This has been proven time and time again. There is no question that both Deumer and Juncker changed designs. A simple look at their LW badges are a perfect example of this. And there is no reason why a KM or a LW badge production would be any different than a Heer production badge. These were all made by the same workers, using the same tools, same hardware, same finishes, etc. This defines a pattern that Juncker and Deumer (and others) had no problem change designs during the war. It is your assumption that a LW and a Heer badge cannot be compared, but that is not based on logic or reason or any shred of period evidence. On the contrary, the few period catalogs we do have shows LW, Heer and Kriegs badges all mixed in together. Why would they be produced differently?

Tom

[Thomas Durante]

So you have a hollow zinc badge first and then take a new design also in zinc?

If you want to see proof of Heer badge design changes, well then you don't need to look any further than Andreas's post above where he shows the L/56 hollow IAB.

F&BL has a well documented obverse design that is unique, but also clearly marked L/56 on the reverse. The one Andreas posted is in the "FLL design", but its marked L/56 as well. Two different obverse designs, so if you believe that both of these badges were produced by F&BL then you must accept the theory of Heer badge design change.

Tom

[Thomas Durante]

Another example for you PKA, this time with Friedrich Orth.

The Silver example above is their typical, common IAB beautifully marked with their L/14 code on the reverse. But we know of two other IABs also marked with the L/14 code (one is the FLL-design, and the other the Rettenmaier design). So if you believe that these IABs were all made by Orth, then you must accept the theory of Heer badge design change.

Tom

[Thomas Durante]

Personally, I don't believe that Orth or F&BL had a design change in their IABs. The hollow L/56-marked badge that Andreas shows is the only one we know of, so its really impossible to make a determination on a single badge. Perhaps it was made by FLL then sold to F&BL who stamped it with their LDO code for retail sale? Perhaps it was marked postwar by a dealer to increase its value? Like Andreas says in the ongoing Kriegs thread on the same subject, its impossible to make a conclusive statement based on a single example.

The same can be said with the L/14-marked examples. We only know of a single L/14-marked hollow badge in the FLL design and one single example in the Rettenmaier design. Impossible to draw a conclusion based on single examples, especially in the case with the Rettenmaier badges as the mark is very lightly struck and reeks of postwar/dealer addition.

Without finding a few more examples like the one-ofs above, I don't see any reason to believe that either F&BL nor Orth went through any design change with their IABs.

Tom

[Norm F]

Before this thread spins off further into repetitive proofs on other topics, perhaps I can try to summarize the salient points to the original question.

Casey76 started by posting his hollow zinc IAB and asked about the possible maker. Although it's the Schickle design and uses hardware also used by Schickle, the point has been made that we can't be definitive as to the maker, and although Schickle was allowed to sell off his remaining stock it remains unknown what became of his tooling. Schickle is not ruled out though.

This led to the more general question as to when hollow zinc IABs like this could have been made. This represents the intersection of two topics - the introduction of zinc and the introduction of the solid format. The following points were covered:

1) In March, 1942 there was clear published proof in "Schwert und Spaten" of the regulation to switch to zinc for the KVK and some other Orders. Although the lesser war badge badges are not mentioned, it is assumed that this probably applied to war badges as well by this time, and possibly earlier. There is no known regulation forbidding the use of zinc for war badges prior to this time.

2) Also in March, 1942 the correspondence between S&L and Wissmann makes it clear that regulations now required the solid vs. the earlier hollow format for the IAB (and GAB and PAB) by this time.

3) The S.H.u.Co. 41 solid zinc badge suggests the solid zinc format was already being used by some makers in 1941, possibly as early adopters before validation by regulation. There is no known regulation forbidding solid war badges.

4) Several groupings of solid zinc badges with January 1942 award documents have been mentioned for what that's worth.

5) For sure zinc was used by Schickle for the cores of his L/15 marked EK2s in early 1941 despite whatever regulations existed at the time.

6) It is speculated that hollow format for zinc badges could have been introduced in late wartime based upon pressures to reduce consumption of resources. There are some not so nice looking hollow badges that subjectively may suggest late war production, but the quest for hard proof continues.

So, pulling all this together, the possible time periods for hollow zinc production are:

A) 1941-2 - between Tombak production and solid zinc production and possibly overlapping on either end, or
B) 1944-5 - to conserve materials, or
C) post-war from leftovers or new strikes on original tooling (the age-old "zinc question") or
D) any combination of the above

Obviously, some feel pretty passionate about one possibility over the other but really that's all we can say at this time. At least it seems pretty sure that hollow zincers would have been against regulation after March 1942 until such time as the regulations may have changed.

And so the search for evidence continues...

Best regards,
---Norm

[Thomas Durante]

I dont see it and i believe its too hot to compare KM badges with Heer badges. Its two different production lines.

Why not? A simple comparison of Juncker badges from all three branches of service proves this statement to be completely false. Specifically the rivetting; brass rivets with a neat flatspot on top is a typical Juncker production feature, and is always the same whether you are looking at a Heer, Kriegsmarie or Luftwaffe badge. Proof positive that all Juncker badges used the same production techniques, whether it was an Army Close Combat Clasp or Luftwaffe Paratrooper Badge or Kriegsmarine Auxiliary Crusier badge, etc.

Tom

[Thomas Durante]

How often do you see Hollow Zinc combat badges? quite often right? The quality of them are not as good as many massiv zinc badges. If youre theory would fit, how do you explaine the many hollow zinc badges??? All produced between just the pair of months between the order BM to Zinc and this letter hollow to massiv? Sorry this makes no sense!

An inventory of hollow zinc IABs compared to the solid examples for each maker shows that this statement is completely incorrect. Out of the 51 makers we can distinguish in IAB production, the vast majority (71%) made a solid zinc version with no hollow equivelant. Only 29% of makers produced a hollow zinc badge, and in almost all cases the solid zinkers were more common. I could only find 2 makers where their hollow zinkers were more common than solid!

So just based on numbers alone, it is clear that hollow zinc production was much less than solid zinc.

When you then take into account that the majority of these hollow zinc badges are of superior quality in terms of quality of base metal and finish and hard finishing (such as is the case with makers like GWL, FLL, Wiedmann, etc.), you can make the case that these hollow badges came before the solid zinc.

Further support for this is to look at the combat badges that were introduced later in the war. I cannot think of a single example of a combat badge that was produced after 1942 in the hollow version. Badges like the Close Combat Clasp, Anti-Partisan badge, #PAB, #GAB, Heer Flak badge, Luftwaffe GAB, etc. are all produced in solid zinc. No hollow zinc can be found, so the notion of solid production switching to hollow production late in the war is an assumption that is not based on any evidence. And there is a logical reason for this.......hollow badges were more complicated and therefore more expensive to produce. With hollow badges, you need two, very detailed dies that must fit perfectly together. These are more complicated to produce compared to a solid badge, that only required a single, detailed obverse die. Going to solid production was more economical, its as simple as that.

What we do see later in the war, is a move to thinner, scooped back badges (such as the numbered PABs & GABs, antipartisan badges, etc.). This was the true effort to reduce materials in the later stages in the war by using less zinc. A molded reverse die was needed for this, but it was simple to form and didn't need to be as detailed as the obverse so it was still much more economical to produce than for hollow badges.

So to summarize:

1 - Hollow zinc production was short lived compared with solid zinc production based on the numbers.
2 - Hollow zinc badges are generally higher quality than solid zinc examples.
3 - Badges introduced after 1942 are all found in solid zinc version, no hollow.

All this supports early hollow zinc production came before solid zinc.

Tom

[jordi]

Hi Tom,

A small correction to your list:

Assmann.
ShuCo (marked and unmarked).
Vienna design.

Them all do exist as hollow variants too.

Best regards.
jordi

[Andreas Klein]

Would you please ad the number of IABs you have counted too when you correct your list?

[Andreas Klein]

.... and how about the different hollow SHuCo. design badges?

How did you count them? Did you count them "1" (you list looks like this) or did you count them "3" because we know that Gottlieb&Wagner and Eduard Hahn of Oberstein used the SHuCo design too.