Bottom drawer oddities. Number 3. The LOC pistol – an example of Nazi subterfuge?

[ccdjg]

The following little pistol had been shelved away for a few years as it needed quite bit of tlc. As you can see, part of the grip has broken away and also someone has drilled a random hole in the grip, probably to test the sharpness of one of his drill bits, or maybe just because he felt like it.




The pistol will look familiar to some of you, as it is identical to the German Dolla Mark II pistol made by Anschutz between about 1929 and 1939.






However, if you look closely you will see that the grip medallion is impressed with the initials” LOC” instead of the usual “Dolla”, or “JGA” found with these pistols.
Comparing the medallion with a JGA example you can see the close similarity of the two styles of lettering.





Of course, the “LOC” trademark could just be another example of rebranding by a major distributor, so to test this I took the gun apart and compared it very closely with a disassembled JGA example. Every part, including screws, proved to be identical and interchangeable with the JGA, and the materials used and the various dimensions of the guns were identical. So the LOC appeared to be almost certainly an Anschutz product.

So why do I consider this pistol it to be an oddity and of peculiar interest? Well if you look at base of the grip the mystery begins:







Firstly it claims to have a registered US patent, and yet no such patent exists. In fact no patent has been granted anywhere for a push-barrel design pistol ever since Quackenbush took out his US patent for the design in 1876.

Secondly, it claims to have been made in Japan. Japanese spring air pistols are virtually unknown - in fact only one comes to mind, and that dates to about 1930. It seems incredibly unlikely that a Japanese manufacturer would go the extreme lengths of copying a well known German design down to the last detail in this way. What would be the point? This gun must surely have originated from Germany which means that the markings are purely fictitious.

This is further borne out by comparison of the boxes for the LOC pistol and for the German JGA pistol. The two are identical in graphics and differ only in the lettering. Interestingly the LOC box label repeats the myth that the gun originates from Japan.





I acquired my pistol about 10 years ago off American fleabay when the seller advertised it as a damaged toy pistol. Evidently fleabay agreed with him and never took the ad down, leaving me to snap it up at a very low price. In those wonderful days mailing air pistols from the States to the UK was no problem (and postal costs were a lot cheaper), and it arrived within a week. Since then I have seen three or four examples on the internet, all in the USA and never in the UK, so it seems to have been exclusively an American import.

So what are people’s theories for this deliberate deception? I have my own theory but would like to know what others think.

Or do you disagree with me altogether and think it could have been made in Japan?

[Garvin]

Could it be that there was a period of a couple of years when German exports were toxic in the US but Japanese ones weren't - until Pearl Harbour of course, so German exporters might have tried to pretend the LOC was made in Japan rather than in Germany?

It would have been around 1938-40, so at the end of the JGA's production period.

Just an idea.

[ptdunk]

I have a German made Millita rifle with ‘made abroad’ instead of ‘made in Germany’ because apparently immediately after WW1 they had to disguise the fact they were made in Germany when imported for sale in the U.K.

[Geezer]

Fascinating. And Garvin’s theory is persuasive.

In similar vein, many German products in the 1950s in the U.K. were simply marked “foreign”. Though that was legal and true, unlike pretending a German product was made in a different country.

[Lakey]

In the run up to the second world war, German industry was heavily subsidised by the state, and told to dominate foreign ( mostly British and American) markets with their goods. I think this was part of that initiative, and the Japanese made info was just a lie to get the product better accepted by the American buying public. The same thing happened with German companies trying to destroy the air rifle market for BSA and to a lesser extent Webley, with cheap look alike German Air Rifles.

Lakey

[ccdjg]

Yes. Danny and Lakey, my thinking was along the same lines as yours.

The motivation for faking the “Made in Japan” markings in the run up to WW2 would then have been either to help overcome customer prejudice in the USA against German products, or to get round trade tariffs or even a trade embargo. Either way, the ploy would have been driven by economic need as Germany was desperate to get dollar currency at the time, as they had a massive trade deficit due to putting most of their industrial effort into war peparations.

US adverts for the JGA pistol in the 1930-41 period are very rare and the only one I know of is this:





This Hudson catalogue ad, dated 1936, illustrates the pistol with its original German JGA trademark, but is coy about saying exactly where it was made, just saying “…. From Europe” . This suggests that the fake "Made in Japan" labelling happened nearer 1940.

I had a look on the internet and it seems that by 1935 the USA had put Germany on its black list of countries that received no trading concessions from the US, and after 1939 a further 25% tariff was slapped on all German goods.

Interestingly I also came across this news headline dated June 10th this year referring to US trade:

"Chinese Exporters Dodge Tariffs With Fake Made-in-Vietnam Labels"


There’s nothing new under the sun!


Two things that still puzzle me.(1) If you are going to fake the country of origin, why use Japan as the source and not a more amiable European country like Sweden or Spain? Japan wasn’t exactly on good terms with the USA at the time. And (2), why the fake reference to a US registered patent?

Any thoughts anyone?

[Garvin]

Two things that still puzzle me.(1) If you are going to fake the country of origin, why use Japan as the source and not a more amiable European country like Sweden or Spain? Japan wasn’t exactly on good terms with the USA at the time. And (2), why the fake reference to a US registered patent?

Any thoughts anyone?

I suppose the Germans didn't want to encourage the suspicion it had come from Europe (especially given the 1936 ad), so wanted to give the idea it had come from somewhere completely different?

Germany did have close relations with Japan at the time, so maybe they thought the Japanese were less likely to object than other nations?

The US registered stamp could have provided more reassurance to sceptical US buyers, perhaps? They were lying already - in for a penny, in for a pound...

I hope the Germans were roundly punished for this deception, among others.

Oh yes, they were.

[ccdjg]

A nice example of the LOC / Anschutz pistol has just turned up on the Bay America. The forum does not let me provide a direct link, so you can find the item by going to *Bay.com (not *Bay.co.uk) and searching for item 123848385900

Unfortunately the seller is aware of its rarity (still much overpriced IMO) so no potential bargain there.

This makes it the fifth I have now come across.

[RobinC]

Could it have been when closer to the earlier date 1929, when the WW1 restrictions on Germany still applied, remember Japan was an Ally in WW1.

[ccdjg]

Could it have been when closer to the earlier date 1929, when the WW1 restrictions on Germany still applied, remember Japan was an Ally in WW1.

It is possible I suppose, but from what I could glean from Wikipedia, trade relations with Germany were good up to Hitler's coming to power (about 1933).

[cringe]

It is possible I suppose, but from what I could glean from Wikipedia, trade relations with Germany were good up to Hitler's coming to power (about 1933).

I think this evasion of whereabouts of origin has a lot to do with the politics & prejudice against Germany after WW1. This was the era when the royal family changed there name from saxe-coburg-gotha, to Windsor & a german shepherd dog was re named an Alsatian?

[Garvin]

I've posted pics of the pistol John spotted in the US and of another boxed LOC supplied by Mick here:

https://forum.vintageairgunsgallery....ols/#post-4077

More proof the LOC was really a JGA, if any were needed!

[Abasmajor]

C


This Hudson catalogue ad, dated 1936, illustrates the pistol with its original German JGA trademark, but is coy about saying exactly where it was made, just saying “…. From Europe” . This suggests that the fake "Made in Japan" labelling happened nearer 1940.

Interesting that the pistol was called the 'Big Chief' in this particular catalogue which I believe was also the name chosen for the export version of the British 'Thunderbolt Junior' air pistol.

Brian

[cinedux]

Thunderbolt Jr and Big Chief pistols were both available in NZ shops. I think tariffs were the only reason the origin of products was ever tampered with. Out here,(and I was there) everything we had with "German' in it became.....'Belgian'! Loved my Belgian buns and got reprimanded when I fronted a shop counter asking for a,German bun! Right up into the 50s NZers regarded Japanese-made as 'junk".

[ggggr]

I cannot tell by the pictures, but have the grips been varnished after the stamping or before?
If the stamping came later, I was wondering if that was done by importers or retailers to shift old stock, sometime between the start of World War 2 and Japans attack on Pearl harbor? The same with the boxes.

Because the quality of the pistols is not great they would need a country that did not have a good reputation for quality and also a country that was not involved in the 2nd world war at that point?