The Red barons revolver

[Mike Downey]

Gentlemen.Over the weekend I had the opportunity to inspect a small 7.65 revolver made by Sauer and Sohn together with its holster reputed to have been taken by an Australian machine gunner who was involved in the shooting down of Manfred v.Richthofen.I have not been able to find any photos of this pilot wearing a revolver but presume it would be suitable to carry because of its small size.The holster is stamped B.V.R.I would appreciate any comments from forum members as one takes items like this and their claim to fame with large doses of doubt...Thank you.
Mike Downey

[Robin Lumsden]

Mike.

If the 'BvR' stamp is meant to allude to 'Baron von Richthofen' I'd be extremely skeptical!

It'd be like me stamping something 'MrL'

Cheers,

Robin.

[Luftm40]

I've been fascinated by Von Richtofen and the controversy surrounding his death since I was a kid. I agree, the initials sound a little fishy, and I also suspect that if you rounded up all of the Von Richtofen shoot down souveniers in the world you would have enough to outfit 10 red triplanes! This one would depend almost entirely on the provenance...period photos of it being worn, documentation to show where it came from etc etc

[Patrick W]

Richthofen's title was Freiherr not Baron. The two aren't interchangeable. If the markings are supposed to represent initials then that is completely incorrect.

[Douglas Jr.]

Title

Richthofen's title was Freiherr not Baron. The two aren't interchangeable. If the markings are supposed to represent initials then that is completely incorrect.

That´s exactly what I´d thought.

Douglas.

[Mike Downey]

Thanks for your comments guys...they reinforce my own feelings about this weapon...what about tracking ownership by the serial number on the gun? is this company the same one that makes the Sig Sauer?
Mike downey

That´s exactly what I´d thought.

Douglas.

[Douglas Jr.]

Serial number

Hi Mike,

The company is the same that produces the SIG-SAUER pistols (in association with the Swiss company Sig Neuhauser).

As far as I know it is almost impossible to track the ownership of a gun through its serial number. You can, at best, got the year of manufacture, which is something.

On the other hand some of this pistols were stamped with the unit´s marks, so you could know which was the unit and where they fought. But, from 1916 on the German Army stopped this practice.

Concerning the Richthofen´s death, I watched (again) a documentary on Discovery Channel last Sunday about the controversy about who actually shot him down. They concluded that the bullet who killed him was fired by one of the Aussie machine-gunners. They even interviewed a 104-years-old veteran who was on the spot on that day and saw Richthofen dying in the cockpit.

Regards,

Douglas.