WW2 Polish Army – GERMAN PATRONE 318 ANTI-TANK ARCHIVE – Colonel. Józef Sarnecki – VERY RARE!

You are bidding on an EXTREMELY RARE and historically important original WW2 Polish Army Technical and Personal Archive, belonging to Polish Army Colonel Engineer Józef Sarnecki! This grouping documents his wartime work in France and Great Britain involving anti-tank weapons, high-velocity ammunition, rifling manufacture, German ammunition intelligence, and Gerlich-type tapered-bore weapons development. The archive consists of a substantial group of original 1939–1940 French and Polish military documents, British Ministry of Supply and Royal Arsenal correspondence, highly detailed technical drawings, handwritten engineering notes and calculations, ammunition studies, mission orders, wartime correspondence, personal papers, photographs, telegrams, and later service material.  Rather than an assembled group of unrelated documents, these papers follow Sarnecki personally through the collapse of Poland, his technical work with the French armaments industry, evacuation to Great Britain, continued work with British ordnance authorities, and subsequent wartime service.

Colonel Engineer Józef Sarnecki belonged to the highly specialized group of Polish military engineers whose technical knowledge continued to be employed by the Allies after the invasion of Poland in September 1939. Poland had entered the war with considerable experience in anti-tank weapons, including the highly secret 7.92 mm wz.35 anti-tank rifle, and Polish ordnance specialists carried their knowledge westward after the defeat of Poland. Sarnecki reached France and became involved with the French Ministry of Armament and the network of French state arsenals and manufacturing establishments at a time when enormous effort was being devoted to improving small-caliber armor penetration and studying German weapons. Official French documents within the archive place him in this environment during late 1939 and the spring of 1940 and include correspondence and mission paperwork associated.This archive documents Sarnecki’s wartime technical work and movements through Poland, France, Great Britain and the Middle East, and includes the following major material:

– French Ministry of Armament documentation, 1939–1940, placing Lt. Col. Engineer Józef Sarnecki within the French armaments system following the fall of Poland, including official correspondence concerning his technical employment and attachment.– Mission and travel orders for Tulle and Châtellerault, two major French arms-production centers, documenting Sarnecki’s technical movements within the French military-industrial network. – A large French technical drawing dated June 1940 titled “Cartouche Allemande de 7,9 à Grande Vitesse”, providing a highly detailed technical examination of the German Patrone 318 S.m.K.H. Rs. L’spur high-velocity anti-tank cartridge used with the Panzerbüchse.– The Patrone 318 drawing includes detailed dimensions and construction of the cartridge case and projectile, including the tungsten-carbide core, jacket construction, lead cap, copper and celluloid components, projectile weight, core weight, case weight, powder charge and other technical specifications.

– An original 28 May 1940 Atelier de Fabrication du Mans drawing titled “7.9 calibre – Balle spéciale”, showing a special experimental projectile with complete sectional and dimensional details.

– An original 5 June 1940 Atelier de Fabrication du Mans drawing titled “Calibre 8 – Pièce étui pour cartouche spéciale”, showing a specially designed cartridge case with complete manufacturing dimensions.

These French drawings are particularly significant because they show that the work went beyond simple examination of captured German ammunition and included active special high-velocity ammunition development and experimentation during the final weeks before the fall of France.

– A Royal Arsenal Woolwich letter dated 1 May 1941 stating that manufacture of guns of the Gerlich type might shortly be undertaken at the Royal Ordnance Factories and discussing the technical problem of producing equipment for crimping a tapered bore.

– A June 1941 Royal Gun & Carriage Factory letter addressed directly to Lt. Col. J. Sarnecki at the Clifton Hotel in London, stating that the factory had copied his drawing of a Polish-type rifling bar, retained the original temporarily, and prepared explanatory material describing how the mechanism worked.

– A British Ministry of Supply letter dated 24 September 1941 referring back to an August 1940 meeting involving Sarnecki and Col. Zebrowski during which various forms of anti-tank rifle were discussed.

– A further Ministry of Supply letter dated 6 October 1941 arranging another technical meeting with a representative of the Ordnance Board.

– A large signed and inscribed portrait photograph of General Stanislaw Kopanski, commander of the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade and later the 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division, personally presented to Józef Sarnecki and dated 1942. Kopanski was one of the senior Polish commanders in the Middle East and North African theater, making this a particularly strong piece of personal provenance within the archive.

– Large original hand-drawn rifling and barrel-tooling diagrams, including longitudinal and sectional views, operating geometry, rifling-bar construction, reamers, oil grooves, dimensional calculations and mathematical formulae.

– One heavily used working drawing includes the handwritten description “Scheme of working” and shows the mechanical operation of a rifling/tooling arrangement in multiple sectional views.

– Additional Polish handwritten technical notes and calculations containing projectile sketches, measurements, dimensional data and engineering observations connected with ammunition and barrel manufacture.

– Extensive personal and military provenance material, including French and Polish mission papers, wartime passes, registered correspondence, postcards, family letters, British National Savings documents, H.M. Middle East Forces material, promotion telegrams, and hotel correspondence.

– The personal correspondence traces Sarnecki through Poland, France, Britain, Lithuania, Romania, Hungary and the Middle East, helping establish the continuity of the archive and confirming that the technical papers remained with the engineer himself rather than being assembled later from unrelated sources.