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Originally Posted by johndallman
… and who put it on the file as an asset? Thinking of the SS as a gang of criminals with official sanction works much better than thinking of them as a law-abiding organisation.
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Under German law, the way I understand it in the interwar period, any gun you bought would be registered to you, by serial number, and paperwork on your continuing ownership delivered to a police station yearly. This would apply even before any restrictions on Jews or political undesirables owning weapons.
I'm not sure how it worked in Austria and how this was handled during
Anschluss, but I'd rate the odds of there being pre-existing paperwork on any firearm pretty good. With that in mind, they were probably among the
least safe things for a rank-and-file policeman to steal from the estate of a political undesirable, as they were almost certainly known to have existed by others under the regime, who might be annoyed not to profit themselves. Much safer to filch fungible items not formally registered anywhere as part of the estate.
None of this prevents a more senior figure from acquiring the rifle with the understanding, by his superiors, that this is merely his lawful perquisite. On the other hand, that would actually be something that suits our Antarctic Space Nazis well, as when they start to try to stockpile monster hunting weaponry, they not only know the people who ended up with them, but may have connived at their personal enrichment themselves.
Which probably made it easy for the SS leadership behind the Antarctic Space Nazis to offer SS men that ended up with African hunting rifles some concession or another in return for the rifles, in order to quietly acquire as many suitable monster hunting weapons as they could during 1944-1945.
Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman
Mauser 98 actions are not calibre-specific, to the best of my understanding. A given size of action has a maximum cartridge length it can accept, and a maximum calibre that's safe to use, given that the barrel (which includes the chamber) screws into a socket in the action. The bolt face and extractor can be changed by the gunsmith who assembles the rifle. They also provide the barrel and magazine, plus the stock.
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You're right, of course. The Mauser 98 action can be used unmodified for the 12.7x70mmRB Shüler. In fact, unmodified magazines can fit 2 such rounds, it seems. Though possibly that is only a lightly modified magazine, rather than completely unmodified.
In any case, if there should be any complicated gunsmithing involved, it would have to do with a magazine meant to hold more rounds than that and, if good accuracy is desired, the barrel and special attention to the fit of the weapon.