Mysterious WW2 Case made knife. Any info?

[Gyro]

Hi everyone. New guy here. I've never been into knives but I am into history and so over time family has passed on some artifacts from WW2 to me and among them two knives.

There's lots of info on the Ka-Bar so I was able to identify that as a 1944-1945 war era knife so that is very cool to me. But the Case knife, that one is mysterious. It's a lot smaller than a Ka-Bar with overall length of 10.5" and blade length of 6". There are no markings anywhere other than the CASE logo.

I would assume based on the lack of info that it was a civilian knife except it comes down from family and I know my mom's uncle had it in the Pacific in 1943. How do I know?

Maybe he bought it there or carried if over from the USA as his own knife but he definitely carried it in the Pacific in WW2 while he was in the US Army Air Corps.

Here's two more picks of the handle:

Two questions if I may. First, does anyone know what this is? And two, is there anything I should / can do to stabilize the handle so it doesn't crumble any further?

Thanks for any help you can provide! I really enjoy having two pieces of history like this and as their current custodian would like to know as much as I can and how to keep them in good (or at least as good as now) condition as I can.

 

[tltt]

Some of the guides identify the Case as variation of the model #325-6", calling it the 3325-6", others just call it a combat utility knife. It was basically a commercial hunter slightly modified to serve as a fighter -

.

Edit - Just leave the handle alone, and not use the knife, and it should be fine. Trying to fix it will make it worse usually.

 

[Gyro]

Some of the guides identify the Case as variation of the model #325-6", calling it the 3325-6", others just call it a combat utility knife. It was basically a commercial hunter slightly modified to serve as a fighter -

.

Edit - Just leave the handle alone, and not use the knife, and it should be fine. Trying to fix it will make it worse usually.

Awsesome, thanks for that info. Interesting how the handle has aged to take on such a different character from the on in the photo you posted above. The backstory makes a lot of sense to me, just holding it and the KA-BAR told me that they were both well made but just weren't for the same purpose at all and as you can see above I even speculated that it was perhaps just a hunting knife that my mom's uncle carried with him. But looks like it was provided by the Army. Since I can't find any examples of it that have ever sold anywhere (hoping to see what it said in descriptions) I guess the army didn't think much of it after a short time. But hey, it was there and in the war and while I can be sure the KA-BAR is WW2 era I can't be sure it was carried in theater so I value that a lot about the Case one. And especially with a family connection and the fact that I've owned it for about 35 years at this point but the KA-BAR is brand new to me. Appreciate your help, I'll do a little poking around on the model to see if I can turn up anything else about it.