ludwig26 wrote:Bought this in a junk store, no sheath.
I think handles are horn. On the road so no tape measure.
Ludwig, what you have there is a Collins #18 Pequeno Machete, or little machete.
The ones with green horn handles like yours are hard to come by. Either they have been busted up or the horn beetles have gotten to them.
They were first made by Collins in 1926 and Collins production continued up through about 1943 during WW2.
This is the knife that keeps getting called (INCORRECTLY) the V44 Marine Raider knife. Cole called them the V44 Types 1,2,3,4 (Collins, CaseXX, Western, Kinfolks) and the CaseXX Fixed blade V44, the type 5. I'm not certain if Cole decided to name them that or if he was just following along with the prevailing nomenclature.
Starting in 1934, they became THE survival knife used by the Army Air Corps as part of their M592 Seat Pad Survival Pack aka Jungle Bailout Pack since they were primarily used on AAC planes flying in Central and South America operations and training missions.
In 1938, the M592 became a Back Pad Kit - shown here with a REAL V44
At some point, Collins started using black bakelite for the handles. So your knife was made somewhere between 1926 and whenever the change was made. When Case and Western made clones, their's were made exclusively with black bakelite handles.
With all the Army and Navy planes heading to the Pacific, Collins could not keep up with the demand for the #18 (as they were also pouring out as many full-sized machetes and other clearing tools as they could.
The government then wrote out contracts for Case and Western to make copies of the #18. I'm not sure of the numbers but I've seen that around 50,000 of them. Kinfolks made them as well, but most likely for private purchase in PXs/Exchanges.
Case XX version
Western Version
The Kinfolks version is slightly larger than the #18/Case/Western versions and will NOT fit in the M592 kits. Also no contract with Kinfolks for the knives has surfaced over the years. The knives were very popular and frequently "liberated" from the Survival packs, so Kinfolks and the PXs were probably trying to capitalize on that.
The #18/clones were replaced in the M592 in late 1942 with the 10" folding machete, although the #18 versions were used until the contracts ran out.
ONLY the Case XX "type 5" fixed blade machete is the REAL V44. It replaced the #18/clones and the 10# folding machete in the M592 in 1944. V-44 comes from Case's in house designation of the small fixed blade machete.
Other than the obvious names stamped into the blades, A Western can be recognized at a distance from the Collins/Case /Kinfolks version by the guard. The other 3 used big brass guards as seen on yours. Western used a simple steel oval.
Edit - After reviewing what I wrote, I realized that I had a sentence in the wrong place. I moved the sentence to where it belongs.
