New, old PAL, the un-Ka Bar Ka Bar

[SA1911a1]

The US military started off WWII with a distinct shortage of everything. One of the thousands of items lacking was a good sheath knife. The base exchanges and PXs stocked commercial hunting knives that soldiers, sailors and Marines could buy cheaply. The Navy would reimburse the sailors for the purchases.

In Early 1941 the PAL Cutlery Company, which previously made razors and razor blades, purchased the knife making business from Remington, who wanted to make ammo and other products. PAL bought everything, factory, tools, parts and probably the staff, and began cranking out knives. Eventually the government got around to buying knives and writhing contracts to multiple companies to make service blades. PAL had already been making good duty knives and they ended up with several contracts over the war years.

PAL successfully marketed the RH 35, RH 36 and RH 37 knives to both military contract and private purchase knives. The coding if the types of knives is as follows? (RH) stands for Remington hunting (the next character is the type blade (3) and the last character is the blade length. So an RH 35 is a Remington Hunting knife with a number three style blade and the blade is 5" long.

A rather interesting thing about the RH 36, or Marine 1219C, or the Ka-Bar, (all the same knife) was made by at least four makers,( Camillus, Union Cutlery, Pal and Robeson) the style of knife ended up being universally called the Ka Bar, although Camillus developed military specs and built most of the knives. To take advantage of that, the Union Cutlery Company, who made the Ka Bar style, changed their name to Ka Bar after the war, and it is the only surviving maker left.

Below is my toy that just came in the mail, a very nice example of one of the wartime PAL knives. This is the exact same knife as the Navy Mk 2, and RH 37 knife, but marketed to the USMC as a model 1217C. The only differences in the two is the stampings and that the Navy knife was issued with a fiberglass sheath and the Marine knife with a leather sheath. This particular knife is in a condition that is about as high as I am willing to pay for. It has never been used and only shows some slight discoloration on the blade from 75 years or so of storage. It came from an ebay collection that had some really high-end knives listed from the same estate. It will be a jewel in my modest collection of blades.

[Junk Yard Dog]

[steelbuttplate]

You got more of them milsurp knives than a sow has tits.

[SA1911a1]

You got more of them milsurp knives than a sow has tits.

I like a good blade. ;)