SG14 Bayonet

[Chris Boonzaier]

Aparrently the SG14 bayonets were probably meant for export, but were taken into the army in 1914 due to shortages...

[Hoss]

Nice where did you get the export thingy from?

Eric

[Chris Boonzaier]

Hi,

A German Bayonet site.

Have no idea if that is correct, but they do break the regular pattern....

[Hoss]

uumm find that hard to believe, you guys know though I thought they just dropped making them and concentrated on ersatz conversions nothing more,

Eric

[Chris Boonzaier]

Hi,

I am not so sure either way... but when you take into account that the Seitengewehr M84/98 already existed... why make another wooden handeled bayonet?

The Ersatz were cheap and chearful ersatz for a "real" bayonet... but the SG14 was as much work as a 84/98.... why bother to make them?

Best

Chris

[Brian Wolfe]

I would have to agree with Chris regarding the manufacturing process would indicate an earlier specimen.

Ersatz cheap then...not so much so now, collecting-wise.

Regards

Brian

[Hoss]

Gents

I don't have a reference book no more but believe these were frankly deemed a bad design, weren't they typical made by non regular bayonet makers? Chris one is made by Beka Rekord unpopular with the troops they stopped production sometime in '15 went the way of others like Gottscho bayos with break easy blades and most had to be refitted with flashguards...think they just gave up on em.

Nice bayonets btw Chris honest I've always wanted a nice sawback one of these.

Eric

[Chip]

John Walter's "The German Bayonet" says that the origins of the S14 are obscure, but that the evidence supports the widely held belief that they originally were seized export bayonets. Later, starting in about 1915, newly made examples were produced with a 300mm blade.

Chip

[Trajan]

The S.14 is, in many ways, the first of the 'Ersatz'! It and the 'Ersatz' were produced because quite simply, after calling up the reserves, etc., by the end of 1914 Germany found itself well short of almost a million rifles and their bayonets for these men...

The design for this bayonet was commissioned on 11^th November 1914, with the official name being the Interimsseitengewehr 14, or ‘Interim bayonet (19)14'... The formal blueprint allowed for two versions, one with a muzzle ring for fixing to a Gew.88 the other without for attaching to a Gew.98, which is what was eventually made. It was clearly intended that production of this bayonet be contracted out to small private enterprises instead of the usual large steel-making concerns that were presumably already having problems with making sufficient numbers of S.98/05. In the event, at least six small-scale concerns, none of them with any previous connection with bayonet making, became involved in the making of the S.14, the earliest order apparently being that given by the Bavarians to a Dr.L.Gottscho on the 15^th December 1914 for 15,000 S.14, although there is as yet no evidence for the production of any of these weapons by any of the firms involved until the early months of 1915.

The type was first extensively discussed by R.W.A.Franz in his Preußisch-reichsdeutsche Bajonette und aufpflanzbare Seitengewehre: von 1807 bis 1945, vol.1, 262-271; then by A.Carter in his German Bayonets, vol 2, 147-159: and morercently it has been exhaustively discussed by I.Jackson, Seitengewehr Models 1914, 5-79. 

Edited August 4, 2015 by Trajan

[Chip]

That's nice and newer information than I have. I have an S.14, but am not a bayonet collector per se.