Question on SG serial number blocks

[ChipS]

Saginaw went to the second serial number block because Grand Rapids used up all the numbers assigned under the IP contracts.

Huh? Is there a "rest of the story"? 400,000 serial numbers assigneed to S.G. in their first block and that they only made 293,592 crbines. That would leave about 106,400 in the first S.G. block for S'G' if needed. Refs say S'G' was assigned about 150,000 serial numbers and made 223,620 carbines - requiring about 73,600 additional numbers. Saginaw could have made all of their carbines at both plants and never come close to the second S.G block but we know they got well into the second block. Why? How? I'm certainly not the expert here but this has bothered me for a long time and logically I don't believe the answer is simply that Grand Rapids used up all of their serial numbers. Did Somebody else get S.G. numbers? Did Saginaw simply skip over a bunch of numbers at some point in time to get into the second block? Did Saginaw just start assigning first S.G. block numbers to some production lines and second S.G. block numbers to other lines and they all just quit where they were in each block when the S.G. contract was ended? My guess it was the latter scenario, or something close to it, and IMHO that would make dating the latter part of Saginaw production very difficulty if not impossible to any degree of accuracy without additional information. I would certainly like to hear opinions presenting any other logical solutions to this problem that I have not considered. Semper Fi.

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[BrianQ]

Huh? Is there a "rest of the story"? 400,000 serial numbers assigneed to S.G. in their first block and that they only made 293,592 crbines. That would leave about 106,400 in the first S.G. block for S'G' if needed. Refs say S'G' was assigned about 150,000 serial numbers and made 223,620 carbines - requiring about 73,600 additional numbers. Saginaw could have made all of their carbines at both plants and never come close to the second S.G block but we know they got well into the second block. Why? How? I'm certainly not the expert here but this has bothered me for a long time and logically I don't believe the answer is simply that Grand Rapids used up all of their serial numbers. Did Somebody else get S.G. numbers? Did Saginaw simply skip over a bunch of numbers at some point in time to get into the second block? Did Saginaw just start assigning first S.G. block numbers to some production lines and second S.G. block numbers to other lines and they all just quit where they were in each block when the S.G. contract was ended? My guess it was the latter scenario, or something close to it, and IMHO that would make dating the latter part of Saginaw production very difficulty if not impossible to any degree of accuracy without additional information. I would certainly like to hear opinions presenting any other logical solutions to this problem that I have not considered. Semper Fi.

The answer really is as simple as Grand Rapids used up all the serial numbers formerly assigned to Irwin Pedersen. You’re not seeing it because you’re not looking at the entire picture just the end state. Saginaw Gear was assigned 638,070 total possible serial numbers. They had contracts awards totaling 582,200 carbines. When Saginaw Gear took over the Grand Rapids plant they picked up an additional 150,020 serial numbers and an order for an additional 146,735 carbines. Once Grand Rapids exhausted all the serial numbers from the IP contract what were they to do? To continue production they needed more serial numbers. By that time Saginaw had used up almost half of their first block and they were out producing Grand Rapids. Assigning the remainder of the first serial number block to Grand Rapids left more serial numbers for Saginaw in the second serial number block. Had all the contracts run their course until completion the production the numbers would have been mush different. As we know things started to change in November 1943, plans were changed and shut downs were scheduled.