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P-38 Can Openers


viking4zero
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TheCrustyBosun

Why not?! My father who served in the 101st airborne in Vietnam loves his and still uses it. I’ve got one too. Not ten consecutive years worth, but.....  Good on ya!

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BILL THE PATCH

Last week I bought a junk box at a garage sale and it had two of these can openers in it, I paid a buck for the box, then two days later my household can opener crapped out. I was making dinner I was in a rush I pulled out a P-38 and that little sucker worked better then the one that broke!, It's in my kitchen drawer right now and I'll use it all the time now.

Sent from my moto g(7) play using Tapatalk

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The American "big brother", the P-51, shown with a P-38 for comparison. We do use a P-51 in the kitchen, it's as good a can opener as you can buy! If you plan to use a P-51, be sure it's made by Clark mfg. They're genuine GI issue (the came with T rations in the 80s). The copies marked "Shelby" aren't up to snuff.

20201009_093913.jpg

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skypilot6670

  49 years later and still works fine. One of a very few mementos  of my time in Nam.  It’s worn flat on the hinge and the cutter has worn into handle. It’s like an old friend . Mike

 

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Dogsbody,

Your Washburn envelopes and Bloomfield envelopes are from WW2, the Washburn's will be marked "Androck" and the Bloomfield's are unmarked. Your Speaker envelope is 1949/50 and the opener should be marked "Speaker USA". From 1951 on, they are marked US Speaker, (much more common). Nice group!

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TheCrustyBosun

Well, now I feel like digging mine up and opening a can of soup. Seriously though, I’d have never thought anyone collected so many of these. Why not, right?! I learn something everyday on this forum and I wish I’d joined sooner. 

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10 hours ago, viking4zero said:

The American "big brother", the P-51, shown with a P-38 for comparison. We do use a P-51 in the kitchen, it's as good a can opener as you can buy! If you plan to use a P-51, be sure it's made by Clark mfg. They're genuine GI issue (the came with T rations in the 80s). The copies marked "Shelby" aren't up to snuff.

 

 

I didn't know that the Shelby ones were copies!

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Shelby did produce GI P38s, but I've never seen a Shelby p51 that was real, the only GI issue P51 I'm aware of is the Clark metals.

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General Apathy
On 10/9/2020 at 3:41 AM, viking4zero said:

Hopefully a better picture...

20201008_214058.jpg

.

Hi Viking,  nice collection, can't say I was aware that post WWII ones could be found consecutively dated.

 

Here are the two I found in my field in a fox-hole scrape, I have also found US parachute buckles while gardening. 

 

regards lewis.

 

.fullsizeoutput_6a4e.jpeg.b80328ac95a19e93d0cca7a8f7c2c7cc.jpeg 

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  • 1 month later...
On 10/10/2020 at 4:01 AM, General Apathy said:

.

Hi Viking,  nice collection, can't say I was aware that post WWII ones could be found consecutively dated.

 

Here are the two I found in my field in a fox-hole scrape, I have also found US parachute buckles while gardening. 

 

regards lewis.

 

.fullsizeoutput_6a4e.jpeg.b80328ac95a19e93d0cca7a8f7c2c7cc.jpeg 

 

Everything has a story but if those garden relics could speak... Interesting find Ken and thanks for posting.

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  • 7 months later...
On 10/9/2020 at 12:21 PM, Dogsbody said:

Nice collection! I really love these. Here are my examples. Some of them still in their wrapper.

 

post-169612-0-77374000-1550426396_thumb.jpg.178b96cce1f7ae1136ac0b3df40bc926.jpg

 

 

Have you figured out how to identify WWII vintage?

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Those are my Dog Tags with my P-38 Can Opener hanging in the background in my room I mentioned a few times that I still had, don't know for the life of me I did with them, probably gave them to a chick one night LOL. photo taken in July 1992

eshi0002.jpg.b5250b3e01d68a138629ad4a48820ddd.jpg

eshii.jpg.8debb2969b3fdd28a86644e53a653dde.jpg

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10 hours ago, billl said:

Have you figured out how to identify WWII vintage?

Well, as far as I know wrappers with 3 directives are wartime and 4 directives are post war. And for the openers themselves I believe wartime examples have the indentation all along its length while post war examples (if not already dated) have a noticable shorter indentation. 

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8 hours ago, Dogsbody said:

Well, as far as I know wrappers with 3 directives are wartime and 4 directives are post war. And for the openers themselves I believe wartime examples have the indentation all along its length while post war examples (if not already dated) have a noticable shorter indentation. 

My groove goes not quite full length, maybe short by 1/8 inch.  And the paper on the wrapped one shows about over 2 directives -

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On 11/29/2020 at 8:02 AM, mikie said:

This is a great topic. It's often little things like these that I find most interesting. 

Mikie

I agree. I'm not sure why, but I agree.

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