25 “Illegal” Weapons Every American GI Smuggled Home From WWII in His Footlocker

In March 1945, Staff Sergeant Raymond Doll of the 29th Infantry Division pulled a Luger from a dead German officer’s holster in a farmhouse outside Julich. He wiped the grip with his sleeve, checked the magazine, and slid it into his musette bag next [music] to two K-ration boxes. His platoon sergeant stood in the doorway and said nothing.

That pistol crossed the Atlantic four months later in the bottom of a footlocker, wrapped in a spare undershirt. On paper, it never existed. Number 14 on this list required a direct War Department order to keep out of American hands, and GIs smuggled them home by the thousands anyway. And number three was so small it fit inside a canteen pouch, and not a single one was found during any demobilization inspection from Marseille to Camp Kilmer.

Before we start, subscribe because this channel uncovers the weapons and the stories the official military record tried to erase. Let’s count them down. Number 25, the Japanese Type [music] 30 bayonet. 15 and 3 1/4 inches of forged carbon steel with a single fuller groove running 2/3 the blade length. It [music] weighed just under a pound and locked onto the Arisaka rifle with an audible click through a hooked quillon guard.

Marines in the 1st Marine Division pulled these off dead Japanese soldiers at Guadalcanal and Peleliu, and most never filed a capture form. Corporal Lyle Henning of the 5th Marines took one from a foxhole on Bloody Nose Ridge in September 1944. [music] The blade still had mud packed in the fuller when he mailed it home inside a hollowed-out coconut through the Fleet Post Office.

A 1945 Quartermaster directive ordered all captured edged weapons [music] surrendered at point of embarkation. By the time the order reached most Pacific units, [music] the bayonets were already stateside. The directive arrived. The bayonets did not come back. Number 24, the German Nahkampf Messer. It was not a fighting knife.

The manual classified it as a utility blade for cutting cordage, opening crates, field tasks. 5 and 1/2 inch carbon steel blade, checkered walnut grip, pressed steel crossguard, 6 oz. Soldiers in the 82nd Airborne found crates of them in a Wehrmacht supply depot near Ludwigsburg in May 1945. Sergeant Thomas Ferraro grabbed four, one for himself, three to trade.

A pack of Lucky Strikes bought one, a bottle of Calvados bought another. The third, he mailed home in a package marked souvenirs through the Army Postal Service. European Theater General Order Number 3, issued in late 1944, required captured documentation for all enemy equipment, including edged weapons. Ferraro never filed a form, neither did the postal clerk who weighed his package.

By VE Day, thousands of Nahkampf Messers sat in American duffel bags, undocumented and invisible. Ferraro kept his in a kitchen drawer for 40 years. He used it to cut rope. Number 23, [music] the improvised knuckle knife. Take a scrap of aluminum from a wrecked P-47 Thunderbolt wing panel, heat it over a fuel tab stove, and bend it into a four-finger grip.

Weld a 6-inch spike of sharpened rebar to the front. Total weight, 9 oz. [music] Privates in the 36th Infantry Division made these outside Anzio in the winter of 1944. Private First Class Dominic Ruggero built one in under 20 minutes and carried it inside his boot top through the push into Rome in June 1944. No regulation addressed improvised knuckle weapons until a September 1944 Fifth Army field order banned handmade edged weapons following disciplinary incidents in rear area billets.

Ruggero’s knife never appeared in a field inspection. He brought it home in his cargo pocket. It sat in his toolbox in Trenton, New Jersey for 47 years. Number 22, the German SA Dagger. A 9 and 1/2 inch blade stamped “Alles für Deutschland” on the ricasso, set in a wooden grip with a brown leather wrap and an eagle and swastika medallion.

14 oz in a painted metal scabbard with nickel fittings. It felt like a letter opener, decorative, almost delicate. GIs in the First Infantry Division found them by the hundreds in Nazi Party offices across Bavaria in April 1945. Technician fifth grade Harold Jessup took one from a desk drawer in a Kreisleitung office in Bamberg on April 14th, 1945.

It was ceremonial, issued to SA members beginning in 1933. Allied denazification orders called for the destruction of all items bearing Nazi insignia. The order was broad and largely ignored by soldiers who saw the daggers as trophies, not ideology. [music] Jessup wrapped his in a wool sock and packed it at the bottom of his barracks bag.

Today, a dagger with that stamp sells for $1,200 at auction. In 1945, it cost one wool sock. Number 21, the Italian Beretta Model 1934. A compact semi-automatic chambered in .380 ACP, 7 in long, 23 oz loaded. The blued finish gave it a look more refined than a standard military sidearm. Soldiers in the 34th Infantry Division picked them up after the Italian surrender in September 1943, trading cigarettes with Italians who had no reason to keep them.

Corporal Frank Santoro of the 168th Infantry Regiment got his from an Italian lieutenant near Salerno for two packs of Chesterfields and a chocolate bar. The War Department’s 1943 order on captured material required documentation for all firearms regardless of caliber. Santoro never filed a form.

He carried it in his map case through Cassino, Anzio, and into southern France. [music] It went home in a rolled field jacket inside his footlocker. The paperwork never caught up. It never does. Number 20, the Japanese Nambu Type 14. An 8 mm semi-automatic pistol, [music] 9 in overall, just over 2 lb loaded. The grip was too small for most American hands, and the trigger guard barely fit a gloved finger. It looked wrong.

It felt wrong. Marines took them anyway. Sergeant William Pruitt of the 2nd Marine Division pulled one from a dead Japanese officer’s holster on Tarawa in November 1943. Pruitt cleaned the sand from the action with a toothbrush and motor oil and mailed it to his wife in Beaumont, Texas, in a box marked personal effects.

A 1944 Marine Corps Pacific Fleet directive required all captured firearms be reported through S-2 channels. By the time most units received that directive, the Nambus were already in transit. Pruitt’s wife opened the box expecting photographs. She found a Japanese pistol wrapped in her husband’s socks. Number 19, the German M24 steel hand grenade.

The stick grenade, 14 in long with a sheet metal head screwed onto a hollow wooden handle. [music] Armed, it weighed 24 oz. The fuse activated by unscrewing the base cap and pulling a porcelain bead on a friction cord. GIS in the 4th Armored Division collected them across France and Germany, often without checking whether the detonator had been removed.

Private Kenneth Ott of the 51st Armored Infantry Battalion disarmed one with pliers and a screwdriver outside Bastogne in January 1945, [music] working by flashlight in a frozen foxhole. A SHAFFE memorandum dated March 1945 [music] prohibited the transport of any explosive device, armed or disarmed, through military postal channels.

Ott shipped his inside a German helmet packed with newspaper through the APO at Le Havre. It arrived [music] in Toledo 6 weeks later, still inert, still illegal. Number 18, the M1918 [music] Mark 1 trench knife, a triangular-bladed stabbing weapon with a cast bronze knuckle bow handle, designed for one purpose, killing at arms length.

The blade was 6 and 3/4 [music] inches of case hardened steel. Total weight 22 oz. It was not a captured enemy weapon. It was American, designed in the last year of the First World War and stored in ordnance depots for 23 years. When the country entered the Second World War, crates [music] of surplus Mark 1 knives were reissued to training units at Fort Benning and Camp Claiborne.

Privates in the 101st Airborne carried them into Normandy despite the M3 fighting knife [music] having replaced them in 1943. Here is what makes the Mark 1 different [music] from everything else on this list. It was never formally recalled. It fell off the inventory. Men kept what they were given. The army classified remaining stocks [music] as surplus without tracking the issued ones. Thousands came home.

None were accounted for. Number 17, the sawed-off Mauser K98k. Take a standard German 7.92 mm bolt-action rifle, [music] 44 inches long, and cut 12 inches off the barrel with a hacksaw. What remains is a 32-inch weapon that fits inside a duffel bag and fires with a muzzle flash visible from 200 yards. Infantrymen [music] in the 90th Infantry Division modified captured K98ks during the hedgerow fighting outside Saint-Lô in July 1944.

Sergeant Paul Vickers of the 357th Infantry Regiment sawed one down in a barn and used it for 3 weeks before his company commander ordered it destroyed. Vickers acknowledged the order. He did not obey it. The 1934 National Firearms Act applied to military personnel modifying rifle barrels below 16 inches, though enforcement in a combat zone was nonexistent.

Vickers carried it home inside a rolled tent half. He kept it under his bed in Akron for 42 years. [music] Number 16, the Japanese Shin Gunto. The Shin Gunto looked like standard military equipment. Some of them were 400 years old. A military pattern officer’s sword with a machine-forged blade averaging 26 in, 2 and 1/2 lb, housed in a metal scabbard with a leather combat wrap.

Some blades were wartime production, others were family heirlooms, antique swords remounted in military fittings carrying centuries of lineage inside a government-issue housing. Lieutenant James Corwin of the 77th Infantry Division accepted one during surrender proceedings on Cebu in April 1945. The blade bore a chrysanthemum stamp and a swordsmith’s mark from the Edo period.

MacArthur’s headquarters directive of October 1945 ordered all Japanese swords collected and destroyed. Over 3 million were confiscated and scrapped. Corwin’s went home inside a blanket roll. Some orders are followed, some swords are too old to melt. Number 15, the German Sauer 38H, a compact .

32 ACP semi-automatic, 6 and 1/2 in long, 25 oz loaded. The Sauer was not a front-line pistol. It was a bureaucrat’s sidearm, designed for officers who expected never to draw it. It had a concealed hammer and a decocking lever behind the slide. Issued to Luftwaffe officers, police units, and mid-rank Wehrmacht staff. [music] Soldiers in the 30th Infantry Division found them in holsters, desk drawers, and glove compartments across the Rhineland in early 1945.

Technician Fourth Grade [music] Robert Malick pulled one from a briefcase in a bombed-out Cologne office on March 7th, 1945, the same day the bridge at Remagen was captured. Captured small arms required War Department Form 33-5 for legal shipment. Malick wrapped the Sauer in a handkerchief and packed it inside [music] a boot. No form was filed.

It arrived in Chicago 3 months later between two wool blankets. The system had a gap, the soldiers found it. This is where the list changes. >> [music] >> Number 14, the German MP 40 submachine gun. 32 in with the stock [music] extended, 24 with it folded. 8 lb, 7 oz loaded with 32 rounds of 9 mm Parabellum.

500 rounds per minute on a straight blowback system. GIs in the 2nd Ranger Battalion captured them at Pointe du Hoc and used them through Normandy when their own ammunition ran short and German 9 mm was everywhere. Corporal Lester Hague fired one from a church steeple outside Brest in September 1944 to cover a squad withdrawal.

A direct War Department directive issued in January 1945 prohibited the shipment of any fully automatic weapon through military channels. It did not matter. How do you smuggle a submachine gun through military customs? Three boxes, three weeks. Soldiers broke the MP 40 into receiver, barrel, and stock and mailed each piece separately.

Hague’s arrived in three packages [music] at his parents’ home in Duluth over eight weeks. Nobody at the APO matched the shipments. Today, possession of an unregistered MP 40 carries a 10-year federal sentence. In [music] 1945, it traveled home in three parcels and a prayer. Number 13, the improvised lead sap. This [music] one had no blade.

Take a GI wool sock, the thick olive drab kind from the Quartermaster Depot. Fill the toe with a 12-oz lead weight. Knot the sock twice above the weight. 14 in long, just under a pound. Hold one in your fist and you understand immediately why the army wanted these destroyed. Military police in the 28th Infantry Division carried these through the Hurtgen Forest [music] in November 1944.

Not as weapons of war, but as tools for handling prisoners on nighttime [music] patrols when a rifle shot would betray a position. Sergeant First Class Earl Whitfield fashioned his from a sock and two lead sinkers found in a destroyed farmhouse near Schmidt. [music] The Geneva Convention of 1929 did not address improvised bludgeons, but a December 1944 First Army Inspector General report recommended confiscation of all unauthorized modifications.

Whitfield kept his in a cargo pocket for the rest of the war. [music] He brought it home in the same sock. Number 12, the German Hitler Youth knife, a 5 and 1/2 inch carbon [music] steel blade with a checkered black grip inlaid with a diamond shaped enamel HJ emblem. Blut und Ehre was etched [music] on the blade in a script most GIs could not read but understood well enough.

9 oz in a stamped steel scabbard with a leather frog. [music] Soldiers found them everywhere in school rooms, in youth hostels, in the pockets of teenage prisoners who should never have been in uniform. Men of the 84th Infantry Division collected them during the push through the Ruhr in April 1945. Private Eugene Chapel pulled one from a desk in a Hitler Youth and barracks in Hanover and mailed it home without a capture document.

Denazification orders called for the destruction of all Nazi insignia items. The blade was etched with blood and honor. It spent the next 30 years opening letters. Number 11, the Japanese Type 89 grenade discharger. American soldiers called it the knee mortar. It was not fired from the knee. A 10-in steel tube with a curved base plate weighing 10 lb, capable of launching a 50-mm grenade 700 yd.

Brace it against your thigh and the recoil shatters your femur, a lesson several Marines learned firsthand. Corporal James Tuttle of the First Marine Raider Battalion captured one on Guadalcanal in October 1942 [music] after overrunning a Japanese position on the Matanikau River. He kept the tube and discarded the base plate.

Marine Corps Bulletin 1340 of 1943 classified all captured crew-served weapons as government property to be turned in through ordnance channels. Tuttle shipped the tube from New Mea in a crate marked personal gear. It reached San Diego without inspection and sat in his garage in Bakersfield for 50 years. His son thought it was a piece of pipe.

From here forward, these are not the weapons the army overlooked. These are the ones it tried to destroy. Number 10, the cut-down German bayonet. A standard K98k bayonet was 10 in of carbon steel, too long for close quarters, too conspicuous [music] for concealment. So, GIs cut them.

Hacksaws, grinding wheels, the edge of a tank track. [music] 4 in off the blade, reshape the tip into a dagger point. The result was a 6-in fighting knife that balanced better than the issued M3 and strapped inside a boot or taped to a forearm. Soldiers in the 45th Infantry Division modified dozens during the Siegfried Line Campaign in late 1944.

[music] Private Stanley Novak of the 157th Infantry Regiment ground his on a wheel at a captured machine shop near Aschaffenburg in March 1945. [music] A 7th Army field order dated April 1945 banned modification of captured equipment and ordered altered items surrendered. Novak buried his at the bottom of his barracks bag under three [music] pairs of socks.

The inspection missed it. Most inspections did. Number nine, the German Leuchtpistole 42. It looked like a toy, a single-shot flare gun, 9 in long, stamped zinc alloy with a plastic grip, 22 oz. It broke open like a shotgun. Standard signal cartridges came in green, red, and white, but the Leuchtpistole was not a toy.

It could also fire a high-explosive anti-personnel round, the Wurfkorper 361 LP, a fact most GIs discovered only after finding the round stored alongside the flares. Soldiers in the 95th Infantry Division collected them across the Saar in November 1944. Corporal Peter Jankovich of the 377th Infantry stuffed one into his musette bag outside Saarlautern and forgot about it until he packed to ship home.

European Theater, standing order 48 required all pyrotechnic devices [music] turned into ordinance at war’s end. Jankovic sailed home inside a German bread bag at the bottom of his footlocker. The gun still sits in a closet in Pittsburgh. Number eight, the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, a double-edged dagger with a 7-in blade, a foil style grip, and a balance point at the crossguard, 7 oz, designed for silent killing.

The knife was British, created by William Fairbairn and Eric Sykes from their years with the Shanghai Municipal Police, issued to commandos, OSS operatives, and First Special Service Force personnel. American Rangers trained with them at Achnacarry Castle in Scotland. Staff Sergeant Martin Del Vecchio of the 2nd Ranger Battalion carried his from Scotland through D-Day and into Germany.

It was never an American-issued item. No Quartermaster form covered it. No capture document applied. Here’s what makes this one different from every weapon before it on this list. There was no form to skip, unlike the bayonets, pistols, and daggers before it. [music] It lived in a bureaucratic void, not captured, not issued, not purchased.

When Del Vecchio shipped home, the Fairbairn-Sykes went inside his bedroll without a single piece of paper. The British did not track what they gave. The Americans did not track what was never theirs. This one disappeared because no one owned it. What follows is not just something that was illegal to bring home.

It was illegal to possess on American soil. Number seven, the German Panzerfaust, a single-shot disposable anti-tank launcher, a pressed steel tube, 31 in long with a shaped charge warhead at the front. Loaded, it weighed 11 lb. It could penetrate 8 in of armor at 30 m. GIs watched them destroy Shermans and learned to respect the tube before they ever thought of keeping one.

But here is the thing about a disposable weapon. After one shot, the most feared launcher in the European Theater was 3 lb of empty steel. Pick up the tube and look through it. You would think it was plumbing. Men of the 3rd Armored Division collected empty tubes across Belgium and Germany as trophies. Technician 5th Grade Michael Strand of the 33rd Armored Regiment carried one rolled in a shelter half from Cologne to the Elbe.

A 1945 War Department circular prohibited the importation of any anti-tank weapon component, empty or otherwise. Strand shipped it in a crate of helmets labeled war trophies miscellaneous. It arrived in Racine, Wisconsin without a second look. His children used it as a toy telescope for years. The army called it a launcher. His kids called it a kaleidoscope.

Number six, the Walther P38. 9 mm, 8 and 1/2 in 2 lb loaded. The P38 was the standard German service pistol from 1938. A double-action semi-automatic that rode with a round chambered and the safety on. Something the Luger could not manage. GIs in the 9th Infantry Division captured them so often the P38 became the second most common German firearm in American duffel bags by war’s end.

First Lieutenant Daniel Hogan took one from a surrendering Wehrmacht major near Remagen in March 1945. The major handed it grip first without being asked. Hogan wrapped it in a Stars and Stripes newspaper and placed it in his B-4 bag. War Department Form 33-5 required documentation for every captured pistol.

Hogan never touched the form. Here is what passed for a customs inspection in 1945. At Camp Shanks, they asked if he had souvenirs. He said yes. [music] They asked if any were loaded. He said no. That was the inspection. Some systems enforce their rules, others print the forms. Number five, custom cast brass knuckles. No armory issued these.

Four finger holes, a palm brace, a striking surface with a half-inch rise. Weight varied between 8 and 14 oz depending on the alloy. GIs cast them from melted brass shell casings poured into sand molds. Men in the 29th Infantry Division were making them in France by August 1944 using fired 105 mm howitzer shell bases as raw material.

Hold 14 oz of cast brass [music] in your fist. You do not need to swing it to understand. Private First Class George Tanaka of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team cast a set from German 88-mm brass outside Bruyères in October 1944. Lighter than the knuckle knife at 23, [music] simpler than the lead sap at 13, and unlike both, cast from American ammunition.

Article 23 e >> [music] >> of the Hague Convention prohibited weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering. Brass [music] knuckles sat in a gray area no JAG officer had time to litigate. Tanaka brought his home to Honolulu in a shaving [music] kit. They were illegal in the Territory of Hawaii under a 1933 statute.

He kept them in a dresser drawer for 53 years. The law never knocked. [music] Number four, the piano wire garrote, 18 in of high-carbon steel wire, .045 gauge, with a 4-in wooden dowel wrapped in medical tape [music] at each end, 3 oz. It coiled flat inside a cigarette tin. OSS operatives trained with [music] them at Area B, the classified facility near the Congressional Country Club outside Washington, beginning in 1943.

[music] The technique required 5 minutes of instruction that most men remembered for the rest of their lives. [music] Sergeant Patrick Monahan of an OSS operational group attached to the Resistance carried one through southern France during Operation Dragoon in August 1944. [music] Whether he used it is absent from any surviving report, and OSS reports were sparse by design.

The Garand had no nomenclature, no stock number, no NSN. When Monahan mustered out in 1945, [music] it went home stitched inside the lining of his Eisenhower jacket. No regulation covered what was never on an inventory. Fourth and final pattern break. Here is the part the official [music] record left out. Number three, the German MG 42 bolt and firing pin assembly.

The MG 42 fired 1200 rounds per minute. American soldiers called it Hitler’s buzz saw. The full weapon weighed 25 [music] pounds and stretched 48 inches, far too large to hide, but the bolt assembly was another matter. 7 [music] inches long, 3 and 1/2 pounds of machined steel containing the firing pin, bolt head, and locking rollers. Without it, the MG 42 was an inert tube.

With it, the [music] weapon could be reassembled in 90 seconds. What fits inside a canteen pouch and turns an inert tube into a weapon that fires 1200 rounds per minute? This did. Corporal Richard Stokes of the 26th Infantry Regiment pulled the bolt from a captured MG 42 near Colmar-Lixhausen in July 1944. He kept the bolt.

He left the gun in a ditch. A War Department policy effective February 1945 classified all machine gun components as restricted material, prohibited from personal shipment. Stokes dropped it into a canteen pouch and carried it across France, Belgium, [music] and into Germany. He mailed it home inside a German mess kit marked kitchen items.

No inspector opened the mess kit. No customs agent recognized a 7-in cylinder of machined steel for what it was. It reached Springfield, Illinois in June 1945. 60 years later, a collector found it at an estate sale and knew immediately what he was holding. The postal service never did. Number two, the German Fallschirmjäger Messer, the paratrooper gravity knife.

A 4-in blade housed in an olive green Bakelite handle released by a lever that let the blade fall open under its own weight. Closed, it measured 6 in and weighed 5 and 1/2 oz. Smaller than the bayonet at 25, the Fairbairn-Sykes at 8, and harder to [music] detect than either. It was designed for one purpose, cutting tangled suspension lines after a rough landing.

German Fallschirmjäger carried them from Crete to Normandy to the Ardennes. American paratroopers found them on dead and captured German airborne troops and recognized them immediately, not as souvenirs, but as tools that solved a problem every jumper understood in his bones. Staff Sergeant Vernon Kirby of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment took one from a dead German paratrooper in the Hurtgen Forest in February 1945.

He carried it on his next combat jump, the Rhine Crossing in Operation Varsity that March. The knife had no American NSN, no issue record, no Quartermaster trail. When Kirby shipped home, the Fallschirmjäger Messer rode in his right boot top through customs at Camp Myles Standish. [music] In 1958, Congress classified gravity knives as switchblades under the Federal Switchblade Knife Act.

By then, thousands were already in dresser drawers across 48 states. >> [music] >> The law came 13 years late. The knives were already home. Number one, the German Luger P08 9 mm Parabellum toggle locked action 8 and 3/4 in, 1 lb 14 [music] oz. The most coveted trophy of the Second World War. Every GI wanted one. Most never found one.

The Luger was never about the pistol. It was proof you had been there. Private First Class Walter Devlin of the Fourth Infantry [music] Division found his on a dead German lieutenant near Mortain in August 1944. He wrapped it in a wool sock and carried it for 9 months through the Hurtgen Forest, the Ardennes, [music] and into Germany.

Outside Gotha on April 7th, 1945, mortar fragments caught him in both legs. As the litter bearers lifted him, he [music] pressed the Luger into Corporal Edward Sisk’s hand. Keep this for me. Sisk shipped it home in his footlocker. They never served [music] together again, but every Christmas for 51 years, Sisk mailed Devlin one photograph, the Luger on his mantle in Knoxville.

[music] No letter, just the picture. Devlin never asked for it back. In [music] 1996, Devlin died. Sisk drove 7 hours and placed the Luger in his son’s hands. >> [music] >> Your father earned this. Neither man ever filed War Department Form 33-5. The Luger is not number one for what it fired.

It is number one for what it carried, 51 years of silence between two men who never needed to say a word. These 25 weapons were never supposed to leave the battlefield. Directives [music] banned them. Treaties prohibited them. Regulations restricted them. The men who carried them did it anyway. Everyone remembers the M1 Garand, the Thompson, the Colt 1911.

[music] But the cutdown bayonets, the gravity knives, the brass knuckles cast from shell casings, those are the ones that disappeared because nobody filed the paperwork. Tell me in the comments which one you would have carried. And if your grandfather brought something home, tell me what it was.

Somewhere tonight there is a footlocker in an attic that has not been opened in decades. Inside, wrapped [music] in a sock, something still waits. The weight remains.