Pre-war Junior musings
Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 7:13 pm
While doing some research on the pre-war Junior pistol I have been a little confused by some apparently conflicting data in Bruce’s book on Webley air pistols.
The text states that serial manufacture of this model commenced before the end of 1928 (page 43), and that manufacture was halted in 1939 due to the outbreak of war, with total production exceeding 30,500 (page 52). So far so good, however the data summary at the end of the chapter (page 53) shows production dates from 1929 to 1938 with a serial range up to about 34,000.
The production period anomaly could simply be a case of the transposition in the data summary of the final figures 8 and 9 of the year dates. However the total production number cannot be so easily explained but is possibly a simple misprint. My database of pre-war Juniors does not have a serial number exceeding 30,500 and I would be very interested to hear of any such pistols known to other members. Of course it might be that the production figure of 34,000 is in fact correct, but then why the fairly precise figure in the text?
My impression is that the text is probably correct and that the late short barrelled pre-war Junior is in reality quite a scarce item with possibly only about a thousand or less manufactured, and the very final variety, which provides a good link with post-war production, perhaps only about half as many as that or again even less. These very late pistols also seem to show some other rather interesting differences from the earlier production pieces, but more data is needed to be reasonably certain.
Another interesting (or perhaps not) fact is that total pre-war production of the Marks 1 & 2 pistols is approximately twice that of the Junior, and - yes, you've guessed it - my database of pre-war Marks 1 & 2 pistols contains about twice as many records as my pre-war Junior database. Hmmm ... ...
Any comments would be very much appreciated.
ATB Chris S.
The text states that serial manufacture of this model commenced before the end of 1928 (page 43), and that manufacture was halted in 1939 due to the outbreak of war, with total production exceeding 30,500 (page 52). So far so good, however the data summary at the end of the chapter (page 53) shows production dates from 1929 to 1938 with a serial range up to about 34,000.
The production period anomaly could simply be a case of the transposition in the data summary of the final figures 8 and 9 of the year dates. However the total production number cannot be so easily explained but is possibly a simple misprint. My database of pre-war Juniors does not have a serial number exceeding 30,500 and I would be very interested to hear of any such pistols known to other members. Of course it might be that the production figure of 34,000 is in fact correct, but then why the fairly precise figure in the text?
My impression is that the text is probably correct and that the late short barrelled pre-war Junior is in reality quite a scarce item with possibly only about a thousand or less manufactured, and the very final variety, which provides a good link with post-war production, perhaps only about half as many as that or again even less. These very late pistols also seem to show some other rather interesting differences from the earlier production pieces, but more data is needed to be reasonably certain.
Another interesting (or perhaps not) fact is that total pre-war production of the Marks 1 & 2 pistols is approximately twice that of the Junior, and - yes, you've guessed it - my database of pre-war Marks 1 & 2 pistols contains about twice as many records as my pre-war Junior database. Hmmm ... ...
Any comments would be very much appreciated.
ATB Chris S.