Retired Pilot's Badge - Question

[90th Light]

Tim - you must spend all day looking for fakes! Good job!


On another note, here's one I have.

Hello Leroy,

very interesting to say the least and it would appear to be the same "L/11" mark as on mine.

Could you please tell me if the rocks/ cliff the eagle is sitting on and your swaz at the bottom have been made darker with black paint or an extra chemical darkening stronger than what is on the eagle. My rocks/ cliff only appear to have had a black paint or extra chemical patinia there which is worn and chipped away (see post 52).

Many thanks,

Chris

[Leroy]

Could you please tell me if the rocks/ cliff the eagle is sitting on and your swaz at the bottom have been made darker with black paint or an extra chemical darkening stronger than what is on the eagle.

Chris

Chris,
Interesting point. I looked closely at the swas/rocks and I do think they were chemically blued (or some similar process). I also agree, based on what I can see, that the mark on yours and mine are very close indeed, if not identical.
Best,
Leroy

[Thomas Durante]

Chris, just for clarity, did you say that yours came from a vet?

The mark on Leroy's badge looks a little more believable and inline with what I expect from a Deumer mark, although it doesn't appear to be the same tool that marked Deumer Wound badge and EK1s. Maybe due to the angle of the pics, but are they identical to your eye Chris and Leroy?

The various cutouts, spurious maker marks and 57-type hardware still all speak negatively about these badges IMO. How do we get around feeling comfortable with these aspects? Especially the narrow hinge with small oblong plate. I cannot think of one unquestionable badge that has this type of hingeplate on it, yet it can be found on 57 badges. Even without the plate, the thick and narrow nature of that hinge is a very common aspect to 57 badges, but not found often at all on wartime badges.

Tom

[Leroy]

Tom,
Some areas of the one I have are hard to see detail on (such as the eagle's legs) because of "zink pest". The detail, though, is there.

I THINK that the marks on mine and Chris' are the same, but it's a pretty subjective call under any circumstance. All in all, though, if I had to bet, I would say they are the same.

If you look at the swastika and the leaf formation immediately next to it at the bottom of the wreath, to the viewer's left, I see some differences between the badges, almost like the die missed part of the planchet.

On another point (and NOT in defense of my badge, Chris' badge, etc., but just as a thought) I think the hinges seen on these badges, and others, are wartime, but late, and that the use of the same hinge type on 1957 pieces should not be considered unusual or damning. To me, the key issue when looking at 1957 pieces is not the hinge, but the pins and catches.

On mine, there is no story to go with it, only that I have had it as a display piece for a very long time (certainly 30 years, if not longer). Coming from a Luftwaffe collector, this may sound strange, but I've never had any interest at all in the Retired Pilot badge, never cared enough to buy a Juncker version (even though I've had many offered to me over the years) and have instead preferred to concentrate on "active, in your face combat" pieces. Probably my loss, but I always found the other badges to be more compelling.
Best,
Leroy

[Thomas Durante]

On another point (and NOT in defense of my badge, Chris' badge, etc., but just as a thought) I think the hinges seen on these badges, and others, are wartime, but late, and that the use of the same hinge type on 1957 pieces should not be considered unusual or damning.

Hi Leroy,

Can you point to another late wartime badge that is unquestionable with this type of hinge? I cannot think of 1 off hand or have one in my files. For example, if we can find a textbook zinc badge from JFS, Osang, Juncker, Assmann, B&NL, etc with a hingeplate like this, it would certainly help the case for this type of hinge to be wartime. The fact that we haven't seen it on one of these unquestionable badges does raise a red flag IMO. It is possible that it was only used by S&L and may be wartime. But wartime zinc S&L badge are quite common, their IABs, GABs, PABs, CCCs, etc. are some of the most commonly encountered badges and with all sorts of hardware combinations. Yet, we have never encountered this type of hinge on them. It is only to be found on their post war products. If it were truely used late war as you suggest, there is a good chance we would have come across it by now given how common S&L badges are. The fact that we haven't speaks negatively about these badges.

I will even go one step further and say that even some of the "unquestionable" zinc badges that we accept as wartime S&L badges were likely produced postwar. S&L's dies clearly survived the war as many 57 badges were made with the exact same dies. For instance, their Para badges used the exact same eagle and wreath dies. They also used the same reverse die from their wartime CCCs to make the 57 CCCs. Since they used the same dies, it is virtually impossible to make a distinction between a zinc S&L badge made in 1944 versus one made in 1950 IMO. The fact that S&L badges are so common today is likely the result of S&L's post war activities and that we must resign to the fact that some of these S&L combat badges we accept as wartime manufacture could very possibly been produced postwar using the same dies, materials and finishes.

Tom

[Leroy]

Tom,
You may recall the other items on the Ludenscheid "salesman boards" We only had one shot of the reverse of any of the badges on those boards (the APB). Here's the hinge on that badge.

[Leroy]

Now that shot doesn't prove anything at all, and I don't have the time available tonight to go looking at thousands of badges, but I know as sure as I am typing this that I have seen that hinge on real badges. Maybe you haven't, but I won't argue the point.

Regardless of this or any other badge under discussion anywhere, it is a serious error (repeated over and over again, to the point where it becomes gospel) to believe S&L engaged in the new production of Nazi badges between 1945 and, probably at the earliest, 1955. There is no proof for this whatsoever, despite multiple requests for the same and despite what some people would like us all to believe. It may have assembled some badges from existing parts, but that's it. This notion is nonsense.

Sorry to digress, and maybe you were just using "1950" to make a point, but I've had it with this misinformation, to the point I am seriously considering leaving this Forum in the hands of those who are willing to believe this fairytale.

Anyway, that's it for me for a while.

[90th Light]

Chris, just for clarity, did you say that yours came from a vet?

The mark on Leroy's badge looks a little more believable and inline with what I expect from a Deumer mark, although it doesn't appear to be the same tool that marked Deumer Wound badge and EK1s. Maybe due to the angle of the pics, but are they identical to your eye Chris and Leroy?

The various cutouts, spurious maker marks and 57-type hardware still all speak negatively about these badges IMO. How do we get around feeling comfortable with these aspects? Especially the narrow hinge with small oblong plate. I cannot think of one unquestionable badge that has this type of hingeplate on it, yet it can be found on 57 badges. Even without the plate, the thick and narrow nature of that hinge is a very common aspect to 57 badges, but not found often at all on wartime badges.

Tom

Hello Tom,

the differences between the two stamps on mine and Leroy's could come down to how hard they have been struck into the badge. Mine appears to be lighter stiking than Leroy's but to my eye they appear to be the same "L/11". This can have quite a bearing on how a stamp looks sometimes.

I did not get my retired pilots badge directly from a veteran but I did get my ball hinge glider directly. This is where some confusion would have taken place during the course of this thread.

I was however very close to the vet source on the retired pilots badge and have had mine almost as long as Leroy's. Many years ago an antique dealer who I got things off had a grouping of LW items brought into his shop by a member of the family and sold to him (He assumed German or Dutch who had immigrated to New Zealand). Not having much money at that time I put what I had into buying the LW roll of honour clasp and the Retired pilot badge which were two items I did not have at that time. I did not get to see all of this grouping either because some was sold before I was told and there were items from more than one family member who had been in the war.

They did not want to talk about the war and why they brought it with them to New Zealand you would have to wonder but this is not the first time I have had excellent items from people who have immigrated here. Got an SS helmet & WH crusher cap from two other situations just the same.

Tom, I am a bit confused as to which type of hinge plate you are saying is post war on S&L badges. Could you please clarify this for me. Is it the oblong type ?

Many thanks, Chris

[Thomas Durante]

Well hold on Leroy, don't get crazy here. I just threw out 1950 as a date of "after the war". I have no proof that they made badges postwar and would like to think that they did not. I would also LOVE to think that all numerous S&L badges made from zinc on the market today and in collections were all made pre May 1945. But I think that would be a bit niave, although I really don't have any firm information to proove this to be the case. Likewise, can you show any proof that S&L DEFINATELY stopped production for 10 years from 1945 to 1955??

In Dietrich's RK book, he specifically talks about a German article from 1953 stating that awards with the swastika were still being produced and likely by S&L. Is this incorrect?

Tom

[Thomas Durante]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the clarification on the vet story. Its always good to have the provenance on record, no matter how strong or weak it may be. Every aspect of how these badges were acquired as well as their physical attributes all goes into the pot to help make sense out of these badges.

Here is the hinge I am talking about. Note the small oblong plate, very different from the types used by Deumer on their wartime zinc AG and ROAG badges. The hinge itself is also unique, it is thick and narrow, not really a match to the ones used on wartime badges, but very commonly found on 1957 badges IMO.

Tom

[George L]

For your review is some pics of my early retired pilot by S&L!

[George L]

Another

[George L]

back side

[Leroy]

Sorry to go off, Tom, but that's a real sore point with me. The article referred to in Dietrich's book very clearly says (in the part no one ever bothers to read) that if the dealer didn't have what the (entitled) German veteran wanted, the veteran would be sent to S&L to put in a "special order" which would take 4 weeks to fill. Was S&L looking for parts to assemble? Was it really going to the trouble of a new die-striking for one person? Or was it really ordering from Souval (with whom it seems to have had a relationship of some sort)? According to interviews in Ludenscheid with the former director of the Assmann firm (another Ludenscheid maker), conducted by a couple of members over at GCA, the entire idea of postwar production before the end of Allied control (@1955) was unbelievable. The political climate was all wrong, the demand was too slight to take the risk, there was plenty of real stuff still around, etc., etc.
I personally know people who dealt with the major early postwar dealers. One particularly prominent dealer (Sedlatzek), whose 50's catalogs are often used to "prove" early postwar production in Ludenscheid, had ONLY Souval products . Immediate postwar production in Vienna is a much more likely scenario than immediate postwar production in Ludenscheid. I could also go into a LONG discourse on S&L RK's (there are very many fakes produced after 1957; very, very few before that, and there are physical ways to tell the difference), but that is a REAL digression from the topic of POSSIBLE Retired Pilot badges by makers other than Juncker.

Look at Post #89 in this thread: http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...+board&page=19
Another strange catch, at least similar to the one on Chris's badge. I know these "salesman board" photos are contentious, because the boards and their contents were themselves contentious when discussed here; however, you were, at the time, able to identify many of the pieces as legitimate Ludenscheid wartime pieces. Other items were subsequently verified as correct, as well, including the RK's (which were thought at the time to be all "A" types, but which subsequently appeared to be 2 "A" types and 1 "B" type). Older collectors who had seen these types of boards in "the early days" confirmed that they matched what they had seen many years ago, before the days when we were inundated with fakes. The Retired Pilot on those boards matches (at least on the obverse, which is all that could be seen) the obverse on badges posted here. IF those boards are real, there is another maker of the Retired Pilot other than Juncker.

You either believe or you don't and in the absence of very strict scientific testing and analysis, we are just guessing at this point.

Again, sorry to have gone off, but to me the burden of proving early postwar production in Ludenscheid should be on the people asserting that proposition and, so far, no one has even come close to meeting that burden.

[Leroy]

George's very nice post of a 1957 version shows very clearly some die details which certainly suggest that the possible wartime versions of the Retired Pilot were the model for the 1957 version.

As a sidenote, has anyone considered what the mechanics would be for actually being able to create a new die, without swastika, for the production of these pieces, and still retain the same details?