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Well written Jack.
I am not settled on the manufacture of Compton's knife being 1942 as I stated previously. It could be, but without the journal stating a 6" stag fighter between June and Dec 1942, we may never know for sure. Switching to leather almost exclusively in Nov 1942 could lend itself to the knife being made in that time frame, but again, it is difficult to say for sure as there are a few examples of two pin fighters we know of made later. The blade grind, a style that disappeared in the earlier part of 1943 definitely points to an earlier knife, but the blade length could be a sign of 1943 based on what we know was being made at the time which apparently were larger blades.
To me, one thing against 1942 is the shallow finger relief. Most if not all extant examples of the " Zach style" blades from that period I have seen all had a deep finger relief, some equal or close to the choil depth, but, it is the only one with a 6" blade I have seen that with the possibility of being 1942 made and perhaps the deep finger relief didn't work with that blade length. I don't know, so this is a tough one determine.
I have an approx. 8" Zacharias style (blade grind) fighter with leather and finger grips with what appears to be the identical spacer stack as Compton's knife. My guess is it was early 1943, primarily because of the thong link, which my other one, the 28th knife delivered jan 1943 does not have. I surmised the pre-thong link knife predated the thong link knife.
I have a 6" Commando with leather that came with one of those tags with a string attached to the brass thong link that states 1942, that I presume was put one there by the original owner. It is old. I don't know if it was made in 1942 unless in Nov/Dec of 1942, so I suppose it is possible, but I thought 1943 because of the thong link. In any case it would give some insight into the use of the thong link earlier than thought. It also has a shallow finger relief, like the Compton knife, but it isn't a Model 1 and really designed a slashing type of knife fighting, again no "a ha" moment.
So, I don't know exactly where the wrist thing link falls into the equation in dating one of these few knives from late 42 to earlier 43.
Anyway, the point of all this is I don't think we can say for sure the Compton knife was made in 1942 and that there is some grey area from this time period, prior to the beginning of the onslaught of orders.
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