I am new here. Can anyone identify this pouch, please?

Got from a friend a strange magazine pouch. Has the German style, but perfectly accommodates the magazines of Thompson.
Has pieces of leather as reinforcement in the background of each cell.
No markings of any kind.
It is very well built and certainly is post war.
Can someone help me?

My guess is early post-war European PPSh 43 mag pouch. That would explain the relatively wide cells. There are an abundance of 3 and 4 cell pouches, though 3 cells seems to be more common.

I haven't seen one exactly like this before. It's very high quality. The common ones are pretty cheaply made and often have the simple Soviet/Chinese wood style closures.

Great piece, whatever it is.

Steve

Judging by the metal hardware, I would put this as non-ComBloc.

Would you also be so kind as to place a short intro of yourself and your collecting interests in our 'Introductions' section? Thanks.

I agree it certainly isn't common East Bloc construction. But damned if I can think of what other SMG mags that could be designed for. Most non-Communist countries used straight mags for their SMGs and I've never seen an MP-5 use something like this. PPSh 41 or 43 curved 35 round mags are the ones I keep coming back to. Widely exported after the war, but the countries taking them wouldn't have made such high quality pouches.

Definitely a mystery I'm interested in seeing an answer to!

Steve

The presentation is made. Sorry for the lack.

Gunner 1

I have done some research and found evidence that this piece could have been used by German forces in the post-war era when they were equipped with American material. The same style, but accommodating the Thompson´s magazines.
It is a hypothesis. At least I think it has its logic.

Given that the poster is in Brazil, it could be either an old Brazilian design or from any one of the South or Central American countries. With the lack of any systematic documentation on what these countries produced in terms of LBE over the years we may never know!

Boy, that sure is a close copy of the MP44 mag pouches, isn't it? The Argentine army was very strongly influenced by the Germans. My vote goes to an Argentinian origin for this pouch.

Unfortunately these two hypotheses can be discarded, because this pouch was given to me as a gift by a friend who made ​​a trip to Germany last July.

From what I've seen the South American countries tended to either purchase surplus kit from abroad or go as cheap as possible using local materials. As pointed out above, this is a high quality piece. Germans keep coming back to this discussion for some reason

I like the idea this was a 1940s or very early 1950s German made piece prior to standardization practices in the 1950s. During the 1940s the British and Americans armed para military units under the guise of police (they did perform police duties). They were organized along military lines and even had heavy infantry weapons like Bazookas and MGs. A little more than necessary for Biergarten brawls or pulling over speeding motorists Not much is known about these units or what they used for equipment.

I have a picture of a 1940s unit armed by British. They use a mix of all kinds of crazy stuff, including British weapons and German made magazine pouches for their Brens.

No doubt the Soviets did the same thing. If they were issued PPSh 43s, which the Soviets wanted to get rid of (there was a lot of politics around the PPSh 43!), maybe it could be for them. They for sure used StG 44s early on.

So yes, I think until we have better information I'd be comfortable labeling this "early post war West German" or perhaps even "early post war East German".

Steve

Well, whoever made it, made more than one, because i have the same pouch

Gunner 1 wrote:Unfortunately these two hypotheses can be discarded, because this pouch was given to me as a gift by a friend who made ​​a trip to Germany last July.

Pity this info wasn't included in the original post ...

Forgot to mention. Sorry

Damn, two! Unfortunately for the both of you they are the same side Slightly different manufacturing too. Note that the D-Ring for clipping to the opposite pouch is above the belt D-Ring in Parafal's example, but it is overlapped by the one in Gunner 1's example.

I'm going to post some of these pictures to the Wehrmacht Awards forum's BRD sub forum and see what they think.

Steve

Here's a link to the WH thread I started:

http://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5540743

The possibility of it being 1940s Czech makes sense. They continued using up Third Reich materials on Third Reich machinery for many years. It's possible they modified the pattern slightly to fit PPSh 43 clips, which they did use early on.

I don't like the idea of it being Yugoslav, despite them using a lot of captured MP-40s and what not after the war. The only examples I've seen were, like most other Yugo items, a lower quality direct copy of the German designs.

Steve