rcmodel
Member in memoriam
A Kenfolks *V-44 in near perfect condition. (*See footnote concerning the name)
9 3/8” blade, 14” OAL
Developed in 1934 by Legitimus Collens as the #18 Machete, it was adopted by the Army Air Force as its first Survival Knife that year.
It was packed in the parachute bail-out kit attached to the parachute harness.
They were made by Collins, W. R. Case & Sons, Kinfolks, and Western.
Total production is thought to be around 50,000 total.
Collins and Case are the most common, with Kenfolks harder to find, and Western the rarest of all.
Kenfolks is the only company to make the handle with square unrounded edges, so you can spot them a mile away if you run across a yard sale with a table full of V-44's!
These knives were later appropriated from survival kits by fighting men and used in combat.
Perhaps made most famous by the 2nd. Marine Raider Battalion of “Carlson’s Raiders” fame on Guadalcanal, who ordered 1,000 of them from Collins and issued them to the whole unit.
At any rate, the knife was declaired obsolete in survival kits by 1942, and the contracts canceled.
It was replaced by the Folding Machete in parachute pack survival kits the same year.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=683218
*Perhaps the V-44 name is a misnomer, and how the name came to be used by collectors after WWII is a mystery to me.
The “real” V-44 was a non-folding machete made by W. R. Case & Sons for the Navy in:
Wait for it! 1944!
So perhaps V-34 would have been a more appropriate name for collectors to call it, since that was the year it was adopted?
rc
9 3/8” blade, 14” OAL
Developed in 1934 by Legitimus Collens as the #18 Machete, it was adopted by the Army Air Force as its first Survival Knife that year.
It was packed in the parachute bail-out kit attached to the parachute harness.
They were made by Collins, W. R. Case & Sons, Kinfolks, and Western.
Total production is thought to be around 50,000 total.
Collins and Case are the most common, with Kenfolks harder to find, and Western the rarest of all.
Kenfolks is the only company to make the handle with square unrounded edges, so you can spot them a mile away if you run across a yard sale with a table full of V-44's!
These knives were later appropriated from survival kits by fighting men and used in combat.
Perhaps made most famous by the 2nd. Marine Raider Battalion of “Carlson’s Raiders” fame on Guadalcanal, who ordered 1,000 of them from Collins and issued them to the whole unit.
At any rate, the knife was declaired obsolete in survival kits by 1942, and the contracts canceled.
It was replaced by the Folding Machete in parachute pack survival kits the same year.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=683218
*Perhaps the V-44 name is a misnomer, and how the name came to be used by collectors after WWII is a mystery to me.
The “real” V-44 was a non-folding machete made by W. R. Case & Sons for the Navy in:
Wait for it! 1944!
So perhaps V-34 would have been a more appropriate name for collectors to call it, since that was the year it was adopted?
rc
