Luftwaffe Glider Pilots Badge

[90th Light]

I can see two features which match perfectly with my veteran brought back ball hinge glider badge. I have never disclosed these features on the forum but your badge has them 100%

Go with the vets son on this one, his Dad brought that back.

Ask your self, how does a vet have all the other items which are 100% and beyond doubt but they always seem to sneak in one of the best reproduction glider badges (according to some) seen so far.

Does not make sense does it and how did all those vets know it was the fake glider badge that all we collectors would be wanting years after the event and paying such high prices for.

I mean no fake EK1 or 2's, No fake assault badges not even a fake pilot badge or any other fakes. They always went out and got them selves a really good fake glider because they always wanted to bring a glider badge from the war. Every thing else is original but its the glider they just had to get post-war because they did not get one.

Really makes no sense does it ??? plus we are insulting both the veteran and his son by trying to say that they are not telling the truth when they are.

The reason why it makes no sense is because that ball hinge glider is 100% original and that veteran got it from the war.

The important thing is for you to hold on to that and do not sell it for next to nothing because what you have there is an orginal.

I do accept that they may be later in the war and not many Glider pilots were issued one in that style by that maker if any but the fact remains that Allied servicemen brought them back from WW2 and got them before May 1945.

100% correct, enjoy

Chris

p.s. the bottom hook has been crimped into a circular housing and may even move a little bit. You see the same set up on "RK" and "SA" Panzer Assault badges. Interestingly the "RK" hook always seem to move but the "SA" ones do not.

[Stijn David]

Hello Chris and others, <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o></o>
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I think arguments as given here are valid in some points but most of the given toughts are emotionally inspired. Nobody is insulting allied veterans etc…. but quite a few of these discussions are put up because persons have such badges, money or ego is involved etc….. <o></o>
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Everyone seems to forget that glider training ended in september 1944 as said before. And with glider training ended => no badges where anymore awarded. What use does a industry have to produce badges that are no longer needed? None at all. And even iff a industry did still make these badges, why????? No answer will most probably ever be given on that question because we do not know. <o></o>
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Why does such badges never pop up untill now with the german veterans who earned these badges? Also a question that is not easy to answer, i can only report from what i have found so far. Such things can’t also not be denyed and the findings on these are in my book. From that, it is also true => everybody does believe the things he want, i can only vent my opinion with what i did find in my over 10 years research by now in this subject. <o></o>
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In short it is always the same, iff you have a certain piece and you believe it to be original => then everything is ok. In the end it is you who have the piece and should be happy with it. But please do not expect everybody will have the same opinion, and even iff most of the persons do also say original => why are they believing in items? In most cases no answer will ever be given. Some of you guys do argument why you believe in a badge and that is the good way and why i respect your opinion. <o></o>


Cordial greetings and thanks for contributing,

[90th Light]

Hello Stijn,

I too respect the opinion and efforts of others in regard to these badges but I have a duty to report what I have found and what happened.

The fact remains that I got a ball hinge glider from a WW2 New Zealand veteran who brought it back from a LW base in Germany at the end of WW2

Other collectors on this forum are now reporting that they too have also got a ball hinge glider badge from returned allied soldiers.

Surely this tells you something that may be you might have been too quick to declare this one bad. After all, although I respect the hard work you have put into talking to as many German glider pilot veterans as you could, your sample at the end of the day is only one of convience or choice and in no way is a cross-section of the entire population of German glider pilots of WW2. It is not a properly proven or scientific sample so therefore a strong possibility still remains that you could have missed the pilots who may have been issued this badge.

The other possibility is that the badge represents a type made from 1943 onwards and although manufacturered may in fact never had been issued as an award piece but was avaliable in case an existing pilot wanted a replacement or by some strange turn of events in the war they started issuing this badge again. The other clasps and qualification badges which I got with my ball hinge glider were all zinc ones of 1943/ 44 manufacture.

Now it is not my intention in any way to try and discredit the sterling effort you have done on producing a book about these badges. Rather my intention is the opposite, the existance of these ball hinge gliders proves the need for more investigation and perhaps another section to the next edition of your book because at the end of the day these badges were made before May 1945 and I think it is very sad that your book does not cover this. In fact it makes the work on this subject incomplete.

Personally I could not care less about the value of my badge it is going no where until I die and god knows what will happen to it then. What I care about is to see history recorded accurately esp. when on this point I was lucky enough to witness a wee piece of it and hold it in my hands.

With the up most respect, Chris

[Stijn David]

ball hinge glider

Hello Chris,


As said before in several threads we must keep the mind open, the future will offcoarse proove iff i need to revieuw my opinion. But at this point it remains the same.

Surely you are right that i might have missed the pilots who had such a badge, but those are things we will never know untill i encounter them. The same is true when we are talking about sample's => these 2 badges found at a base in northern Germany are also not really a sample and it is also no scientific correct to say these are representative. Therefore i stick with the numbers i encountered so far. (a bit more then 2 in almost all cases of known awarded and also private purchase pieces, for example the large eagle, etc....)

I do not believe in to many mayby's and badges produced in 1943 (even late 1943) and never been awarded or handed out. Glider training went on untill september 1944 and badges that where awarded towards soldiers in both glider schools where the Zinc C.E.Juncker types at that point.

I do not think personally one should be sad because the ball hinge is not covered in my book. The book does also mention that it does only contain 100 % proven originals. As in each book, it is open for new editions iff important new info is discovered for the subject. Many persons where also not happy that i did not cover the Deumer made glider badge. In the meantime it is proven that that one certainly did not have a place inside the book for a simple reason. At this point of time i will not rewrite it and do stick with my opinion.

Iff one can do a more complete job on the subject => feel free to go ahead with it, i have no problem in such things. As an author and collecor you have to stand towards what you believe. I do write about the subject and have also the up mostr espect for other opinions.

Cordial greetings,

[Spagg199th]

Chris, David,
Thank you for the comments. I must add this to the thread. I had a talk with the Son last night, this is what he told me. His Father has letters if he can find them today dating from 1944 thru 1945 from France an Germany . All these TR items came home with him, including this Badge! He brought back, I didn't want to do this but here it goes. (1). HJ Dagger. (2). five original german cloth patches that he himself cut off the Tunics. (3). Mother cross, (4). Russian Front Badge, (5.) Two nice pennants, (6). German Flag, (7). Visor Cap which they are keeping. And a few other TR items plus all his U.S. Military stuff. Everything is dead on including all the U.S. items. So a repo Badge does not work for me?? Here is what another well know (Collector's Guide) Author says about these Ball Hinges. (Under Genuine War Badge pin Assemblies): Ball hinge; standard needle pin; retaining clip soldered into hole in reverse of badge. A variation preferred by a small number of Manufacturers.

Sal

[90th Light]

Hello Stijn,

What is happening is a growing rate of ball hinge glider badges occurring from veteran sources. You in fact have three on two threads on this forum;

1/ is mine from an NZ POW from an LW base near Luckenwalde in 1945

2/ is "Warlord" which is from an RAF officer from an airfield (base) in northern Germany in 1945

3/ is "Spagg199th" which he has got from a veterans son but we do not know where that veteran got the badge from or how (maybe Spagg199th can now find out and even post an image or two of the other items which came with it ???)

This is not a sample and it has never been put together with any intention of being a sample but it is a growing rate of incident.

These ball hinge gliders badges have been around for years. There is one clearly pictured in a book I have here called "Wings of World War 2" by Russell.J. Huff and I can name 5 other publications by different authors going back to the 1950's which have featured them.

The point is, this is no new over night fake by the likes of the hero. This badge has been in collections ever since the end of WW2.

Your declaration that the badge must be fake because none of the veterans who you interviewed for your book had one surprised me to say the least. All that really proves, is that they were not were these were being issued at the time but it certainly does not prove that such badges were in fact not issued.

What we have proved now, is that they were in existance before May 1945 and were still sitting on the selves of airbases as stock.

The other thing to consider is how they are made and what they are made of. You show me a fake aircrew badge from the 1960's or 1970's which was any where near the standard of these and yet I can show you the dealers and collectors who has had at least one of them back then.

Reason: they are a wartime badge made before May 1945

My hope is that as more see this and the other threads about these badges then we may see even more of them but at least Spagg199th can now feel better about his one and not throw away a real deal brought back by a veteran.

Will be interesting indeed to see if you do end up talking more about these in any new editons of your book and hopefully do them the justice they deserve but I do think for now anyone can declare them wrong with any form of certainity and they should in fact being opening their minds to the fact that they are real and seriously underated.

And thank you for taking my comments in the spirt they are intended as evidence to try and get to the bottom of this matter.

Best regards, Chris

p.s. did not see Spagg199th,s last posting when I posted this but now that I do it adds weight to what I am saying.

[Stijn David]

ball hinge glider

Hello Chris,


I like the way you are defending these badges!

We can discuss endlessley about what is a sample, etc.... => lets say there where 1500 military glider pilots trained. Are 100 of these representative as a sample? Just a way of looking at things IMHO.

I can be convinced for sure => for example show me pictures where these are in wear (and yes pictures do exist where one can see what badge is worn - this type of badge is so distinctive it should be possible to ID that type of badge by a picture.)

But what i dont get at this point is that none of these badges did pop up so far with a German glider vet. ??? But that can also be countered with what you say offcoarse.

But my dear friend please forget the idea that you could get your hand if a glider on any base somwhere in germany. There where only 2 glider schools with several side airfields. None of these was Luckenwalde. I can tell you with the info available that these where for sure not award pieces. Not in 1943 and not in 1944 (even not as late as august 1944).

The only thing that does rest is private purchase pieces. But where are then the glider pilots who did get such a duplicate? And why do private purchase pieces end up on airfield bases? (or we have another Schloss Klessheim - wich would be exceptional - but possible?) such theory's do not make sense IMHO and prooving such things is also nearly impossible (as we both know).

It is always needed in our hobby to keep a open mind, in that i do agree. But i need more and iff they are indeed original as you (and several others claim) then sooner or later i wil find one with a german glider pilot, iff that day does come i will happily join the believers. But as it does stand now, no need to re-edit the book etc... as far as i am concerned.

Time will bring advise for sure and proove me wrong or right. We will see and i like the debates on these.

Thank you also for being so sportive !

And also thank you towards Sal for providing so much info. Iff you are happy with the badge then that is a good thing ! => that is al that matters

Cordial greetings,

[Terry OToole]

this one on Jamie crosses site

[Spagg199th]

Terry, can we see the other side?
Sal

[Jeff V]

I think that Stijn's logic of there being only around 1400 people qualified to wear this badge and so the german would have no reason to have any more than a couple of makers, especially when training ceased in 1944 to be false. I offer a comparison to the german badge effort when it comes to the aux cruiser badge. 9 ships totalling around 3000 sailors took part in aux cruiser raids. They were only in operation from 1939 to 1942. For that puny amount of people the germans had between tombak and zinc 13 different manufacturers and a large number of zinc badges that this day we do not know the makers of. If a person would interview a hundred survivors I bet at least 7 or 8 makers would not be represented in the survivors badges.

Lastly, when one compares the finish and hardware of these badges to other wartime badges how can a person logically say post war. I have never seen a plated finish on a zinc badge that bubbled in any badge made post war. Never. I have asked other collectors if they had any pictures of known post war badges with finishes that had bubbled over time, no luck. I do not own one of these ball hinge gliders but to me the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of original wartime production.
best wishes,
jeff

[90th Light]

Hello again Stijn,

what I am defending is the fact that I got one of these ball hinge glider badges off a veteran who was a prisoner of war at Luckenwalde but yet I am being told here this badge must be a fake because no German glider pilot from a convenience sample where we do not know the standard deviation of error had one so mine must be a fake.

This is a statistical nonsense from which we can not draw any conclusion.

What happened at Luckenwalde in 1945 is that the Germans up and left the POW's to fend for themselves and they did. Off they went down the road to what they referred to as a base where stuff was stored. Now I do not know if it was an actual airfield or a logistical supply depot but they seemed to think they would find food there. Not only did they find food they found all sorts of other things. Some of these were badges and they filled more than one pillow case with them. These were then taken back to the POW camp and poured out into the middle of a floor for anyone who wanted to to help themselves to do so. More than one Kiwi serviceman amongst them did as there have been several finds of these badges in both the North and South Islands of New Zealand.

The badges I have seen from these finds have been

A/ Pilot, Airgunner, Paratrooper & glider qualification badges (most maker marked by different makers except the glider which is ball hinge variety).

B/ every different type of flight clasp you can get - fighter, bomber, day, night, transport, recon, long range, short range in bronze, silver and gold plus many with hangers of different types (most maker marked by different makers).

C/ cufftitles - LW flying units, FJR1, and an unseen before version of the Afrika/ Kreta titles on a tight woven linen.

The flight clasps were by far the greater of all the badges found and there were literally many of them all in unissued mint condition some very rare such as the bronze ground assault clasp by Osang but there was also the silver and gold versions as well.

Now going by the range of badges found I would speculate that this was an LW distribution center to supply various bases rather than a airfield specialising in one or two particular types of LW units but may be some one reading this can tell us more about what was at or around Luckenwalde at that time.

I got over twenty items myself from the one veteran who I encountered but the collector here who advertised got many, many more than me.

Now does it not seem strange to you that amongst all these badges which are 100% correct and desirable that the glider badges were fake and if they were fake then how did they get into such an inventory of original items.

Please explain how unissued mint ball hinge glider badges gets in with a whole lot of other mint unissued LW badges looted from a German Airforce base in 1945 ???

Again with the up-most respect and in the interests of trying to get this solved,

Chris

[Stijn David]

ball hinge glider badge

Hello,


Quite a interesting discussion and that is very good.

@ Jeff: what you say about aux badge is impossible to proove IMHO and is an assumption (or you did intervieuw those over 100 surviving veterans and can say such things with certanity.) Therefore i can only speak for myself and say what i have encountered so far and in what i do believe.

I seriously doubt that only wartime zink made badges do show bubbling (read Zink is reacting). That can't be a criterium to judge originality on its own. Bubbling might show old material as once used to produce badges but is not a factor on its own.

@ Chris: I also do respect your (and others) belief in the ball hinge gliders. The same about the veteran where you got the badge from.

We will never know the deviation when talking about badges because we simply do not know at this point who where the producers in many cases, howmuch where ordered, howmuch where produced, etc... etc ....

Therefore the glider badge is a rare bird (it has always been and will always remain a rare one = fact). I can only comment on badges that i have handled and seen with veterans, in their legacy's, etc.... and in wich i do feel comfortable and believe.

Personally i would be very interested to see the other glider badges who where in these batches. What types where they? etc .... but that is not directly related towards this discussion (simply for my own interest)

When talking about legacy's we do always have the following problem: is the badge wartime amongst a certain find or was it obtained post war? that is also a problem i do encounter from time to time and it is not the story behind it (even if it is my story or your story) that is important . It is the badge. Provenience is interesting but thats it.

The badge must stand on its own. Many of you (iff not the largest part?) do believe in these ball hinge gliders and that i good. I at this point not for the already mentioned reasons.

I would be very happy to find such a badge on period pictures, etc... etc... but why do we not encounter it? a question unresolved and might as well be shown such a picture in the next few minutes.

Quite a few questions do remain unsolved at this point and i also do not know the answer on these. But i still keep the mind open as we never know in this hobby.

Cordial greetings,

[Jeff V]

Did you read my post David? It does not look like it. I never said I interviewed anyone. How do you explain 13 known manufacturers for around 3000 sailors? Of which 9 were made out of zinc when operations ceased in 1942. Do you collect or have knowledge of any other badges besides glider badges? If you do you would know that the high quality plated badges are the ones that bubbled. Washes over zinc just fade away over time and I have seen that effect on post war badges. I would be most interested in any pictures you could show us of post war badges of any type with bubbled finishes.
best wishes,
jeff

[Thomas Durante]

Ask your self, how does a vet have all the other items which are 100% and beyond doubt but they always seem to sneak in one of the best reproduction glider badges (according to some) seen so far.

Hi guys,

Getting badges from vets is pretty good provenance in my opinion, but not 100% guarantee of authenticity. There have been many instances were collectors have gotten reproductions from vets who swore they were originals and gotten from the "battlefield". I personally have gotten a post-war helmet from my wife's grandfather that swore he got it during the war. I don't doubt his sincerity and would venture to say the same for most veterans and they honestly remember it that way. However, the truth is that it was a long time ago and some simply do not remember. I am not saying that happens in all cases or a lot of cases, but it does happen and that is why any story should be taken for what it is......just a story. A badge should stand on its own merits IMO. Finding these in 2 well detailed vet groupings is pretty good provenance to me, but not 100% proof, that is all.

JLikewise, Stijn saying that of the 7% of glider pilots he interviewed, none had a ball hinge glider among them, doesn't mean they didn't exist. It is a significant amount of research Stijn did and I for one am thankful for his tenacity at tracking down surviving glider pilots and their badges. But 7% does not a majority make and I think Jeff makes a good point about the AC badge. Surely not a large demand for these, yet many makers can be found and have been encountered in untouched groupings directly from vets.

Tom

[TJ Suter]

Getting badges from vets is pretty good provenance in my opinion, but not 100% guarantee of authenticity. There have been many instances were collectors have gotten reproductions from vets who swore they were originals and gotten from the "battlefield".

Tom

I agree 100%. In addition to this, I've seen cases where nefarious individuals have stolen original badges and replaced them with reproductions without the vets knowledge.