doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion German & Austrian Sporting Guns @ doublegunshop.com Russian?

I'm in a discussion about an unmarked sxs with little info on the barrels. I think it is Russian, possible a highly engraved IZH-54.

Single under lug, greener cross bolt, scalloped action, side cocking indicators, heavily engraved with game animals(very Germanic looking), a 6 digit serial number on the water table and when the safety is in the safe position it reveals 3 (eighth letter in the Cyrillic alphabet?).

The barrels are marked with a very faint S and 16/70. No other proof marks.

Any thoughts?

[img]https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?attachments/20250403_184905-jpg.1258574/[/img]

The image does not come through...

I will post a link to the whole thing Monday, I can't seem to be able the do it on my phone, need to access my computer

Here's the link.

https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/identify-this-shotgun.939188/

I would say that "luv2safari" has given the correct explanation. It is likely one of reparation guns that were assembled from existing parts under Russian directions, from summer 1945 onwards. I saw a comparable one two days ago. Yours was very early, before the Suhl proof office started to work again.

Carcano

I agree with 7,35 Carcano for the most part. The Suhl mechanics were instructed to apply З >>Закрыто-Close<< . This would have been right after the Americans moved out & left Suhl to the Russians, who wouldn't even let the Suhl Proof Facility have Black Powder @ 1st due to the element of Sabotage. When the Russians had control & their thumb on Suhl, then they allowed the Suhl Proof Facility to use Black Powder. The Russians held many of the owners / gunmakers in cellars and beat them weekly with a rubber hose to tamp down on the marks. But the Suhl Proof Facility was open and they are telling you exactly what they did: Measure..... and Measure only. Even under siege, they were very loyal to the previous Proof Law and still had honour. If they didn't proof it, they didn't stamp it. Typical German....

On something like this in chasing the origin, high quality in-focus fotos of all the marks, the buttplate, muzzle, steel type, all this must be included to paint the whole picture at the time


Hochachtungsvoll,

Raimey
rse

>>The other guns are not mysterious at all. All the markings are shown in Gargela & Faktor's book "Zeichen auf Handfeuerwaffen" and the history is published by Hans-J�rgen Fritze in his book "Suhl - Heimat der B�chsenmacher". When the US Army took Suhl on April 3, 1945, they immediately closed down all gunmaking and sealed all shops. In the western US, British and French zones no Gunmaking exceopt for allied forces was allowed until 1951. Other in the east: On July 3, 1945 the Soviets came to Suhl. They saw things differently. The soviets wanted to make use of all production capacities of their part of Germany. In Suhl then they found several factories and about 450 independent outworkers, all in all nearly 4000 persons, sitting idle and unemployed. So on August 3 the SMATh (Soviet military administration Thuringia) ordered all the Suhl guntrade, including the Suhl government proofhouse, back to work. All the Suhl gunmakers had to produce shotguns only, no rifles, as fast as they could. All guns were to be shipped to Moscow as war reparations. The Soviets later reexported most of these guns to other countries, $$$ you know. On August 9, 1945 Russian officers accepted the first shipment of shotguns at the Sauer & Sohn company, assembled from existing parts. The Simson/BSW company was completely taken into Soviet ownership as a SAG = soviet owned stock company, starting production of shotguns on August 13, 1945. From October 25,1945 these "factories" were producing shotguns again: Waffenwerk Heinrichs; Sauer & Sohn; C.G.Haenel, Heinrich Krieghoff, Gebr.Merkel, Gebr.Rempt, Greifelt&Co, Immanuel Meffert, Friedrich Wilhelm Heym, Gebr. Heym, Chr. Funk, E.Eckholdt, F.W.Ke�ler, Fritz Kie�&Co., August Sch�ler, Ernst Kerner, Bernhard Merkel, Oskar Merkel&Co., A.W.Wolf, Franz J�ger&Co. The outworkers, stockers, locksmithes, polishers, actioners, hardeners, bluers, gun part makers and so on, again worked for one or several of these factories.
Shotgun production soon ran at high gear. All these guns had to pass the Suhl proofhouse before being shipped to Russia. In the remaining weeks of 1945 1539 guns were proofed, 21739 in 1946, 39961 in 1948. For comparision: In 1913, a very productive year for the Suhl guntrade, only 15643 shotguns passed proof.
As can be seen from your photos, at first, up to the end of 46, the Suhl proofhouse continued to use the 1940 proof stamps. There simply wasn't enough time to design, make and have approved new proofmarks, especially for political considerations. For 1947 new proofmarks were finally introduced, consisting of the "pick and sole" of the Suhl city crest, topped by the letters M,N or SP. The 15/DR/1 in an oval was the then code for the Suhl proofhouse authority. As there was no shotgun ammo production in eastern Germany then, the proofhouse had to make do with Russian-made proof cartridges supplied by the Soviets. As these cartridges were of very variable quality they sometimes missed the German, later CIP standards for nitro proof pressure, so the SP = black powder proofmark only was applied, in spite of the proofloads being smokeless. The Soviets, the only customers, did not care about this nicety.
In 1951 the new-founded GDR gained control over the guntrade and introduced "new" proofmarks, a simplified form of the 1893 -1939 ones. From 1974 on they again used marks very similar to the 1947-1950 ones.<<


https://www.doublegunshop.com/forum...;Words=SMATh+&Search=true#Post288666

https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=602154





Hochachtungsvoll,

Raimey
rse

I have interviewed several German-Americans that were there @ the end of the 2nd Major Disagreement in Europe and the transition between occupying forces & things were chaotic to say the least. So traditional prooflaw, etc. was bent a bit but the Germans made an attempt to hold some semblance to it.


Serbus,

Raimey
rse

>>....Suhl must have been pretty lucky. One of my hunting friends talked often about fields piled with lathes,milling machines,all manner of other machinery as well as bathtubs,wash basins,pipes,light fixtures,etc,etc, taken from the East Zone.He was in the prison camps 4 1/2 years and the Russian Gvt.let this "stuff" stay out in the weather the whole time,rusting away.On the other hand,the Russian civilians saved him, even though they didn't have much them selves.<<

This is exactly what I was told and even the Railroad Track was pulled up as the Russian Train departed....


Hochachtungsvoll,

Raimey
rse

Here's the Russian side, especially that most of the R guns found a forever home in Russia:

>>and find it hard to believe. With up to 2 million hunters, many of whom had their guns confiscated and lost in 1941, no export since 1930s and domestic firearms industry working only for the military since 1939, 40 thousand of guns a year was a drop of water in the desert. In fact, the demand for sporting weapons was so great, that besides reparation guns and guns made by sporting arms devisions of arsenals, mass-scale conversion of leftover military rifles into 28-ga bolt-action shotguns had to be carried out. The sheer number of post-1945 Suhl shotguns still kicking around suggests that even if some reexport happened, 'most' "reparation guns" stayed in the USSR.<<

https://www.doublegunshop.com/forum...;Words=SMATh+&Search=true#Post288666

Hochachtungsvoll,

Raimey
rse