A Real KA-BAR or not?

N

norwviking

Joined
Mar 15, 2019
Messages
9
I bought this one back in the latter half of the 70's when I was a young and impressionable teenagers who bought everything with an edge on it. I remember I was told it was a Vietnam-issue knife. But since Camillus produced knives for both the civilian and the military marked, I'm not so sure. So I just have to ask the experts here whether or not this is a real military issue ka-bar from the Vietnam era or just something for the civilian marked.
Total length of the knife: 12 in. Blade length 7 in.





 
I see no pics and when I try to copy the link and go directly, well, nothing but error messages.

Pukebucket draws a heavy vacuum. I recommend google photos or imgur.
 
That knife is a post-1973 Camillus made MIL-K-20277 (the nomenclature that replaced 1219C2/USN_MK2). Camillus dropped the "NY" after "CAMILLUS" in the second line of the stamp starting in 1974. So, it is a contract knife made for the US government, but it is not a Viet Nam era knife.

The US pulled out of military operations in Viet Nam by March 1973. The war officially ended with the fall of Saigon in April 1975, but the US only had a few observers in country by that time.
 
Post Feb-1974 Camillus. From the time frame you mentioned Camillus was selling the same knife to both the commercial market as well as the ones for Government contract, so pretty much no good way to say for sure.
 
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