Fake Challenge #4

[Matt L]

Here you go guys- one more fake to have a look at; there are two things that are absolutely fatally-wrong, and at least two more that'd be of concern.

The text reads:

233 O

II/ Fsch. Jäg. Rgt. 5

[M422A1]

The letter "a" is a known fake and so is the number "3".

Regards,
Mike

[Matt L]

Correct! The font is a very well-known fake type (I wrote about it in my fake fonts thread ). What else? There's another significant problem that everyone who might consider buying a Fallschirmjäger identity disc absolutely must know...

[JPhilip]

Hello Matt,
At last, finally i find a "challenge" thread where the answer is not given yet.....
I'm not specialized in Luftwaffe Erkennungsmarken but i would feel more comfortable with this one if it didn't bear an unit designation, but rather an usual Luftwaffe number as Fallschirmjäger units were considered as flying personnel...sorry, i don't know how this kind of Luft numbers is called in english...
Thanks

[Matt L]

EXACTLY! The fact that the unit is marked in plain text is a dead-giveaway because the Fallschirmjäger were considered the same as flying units when it came to Erkennungsmarken, so their discs were marked with 5- or 6-digit codes referred as the MOB Nummer (mobilization number), NOT plain text.

Here's a beautiful example from my own collection- marked '210493', which was:

11./ Fallschirmjäger-Lehr-Regiment

This one's particularly nice as it still retains an original neck cord (not perhaps the issue one since it's doubled thin cord, but certainly still original to the disc at the end of its use), and the stamping/digits are quite good.

Often these coded discs are rather more difficult to authenticate since a marking of just a few numbers doesn't have most of the indicators we might look for, but fortunately, as is often the case with regular Erkennungsmarken, there are cases like this one where their authenticity is pretty obvious either in photos or from the disc in hand.

Jean Höidal's book I'm told has a 'complete' MOB Nr. list (as complete as extant records allow) and there's a little program someone wrote that you can download- I don't recall the site off hand, but a search for MOB Finder should come up with it.

The other small problems I mentioned about this disc are that it's not normal to have a disc issued from just a Bataillon, which is what the 'II./' indicates- since one does not belong to a Bataillon, but a Kompanie of a Bataillon; the Bataillon command being the exception but that'd properly be indicated by the text reading 'Stab. II./' (staff, 2nd battalion). And once more, field unit discs were generally only issued as replacements for lost discs, and although it's not impossible that 233 men from a Bataillon (which usually would have 4 Kompanien plus staff, or nominally as many as 850 men) needed replacement discs over the course of the war, it's highly unlikely. That'd mean 1/4 of the unit's strength lost their discs- rather a lot.