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On Feb 5, 12:32 pm, Alexandre E Eremenko 
wrote:
> Dear Engineer,
>
> Thanks for your interesting reply. Let me add few comments
> and questions.
>
> 1. It is hard to understand how could SNO-M be produced
> on confiscated machinery. C. Plath was made in Hamburg.
> Hamburg never was in the Soviet occupation zone.
> It is true that they took some Freiberger machinery and
> developed SNO-T as a Friberger clone, but there is a lot
> of difference between Freiberger and SNO-T, even the
> telescope fork does not match.

The Plath and Weems website states :"At the end of WWII, the company
almost disappeared when the Allied Forces dismantled the factory due
to the prohibition of shipbuilding in Germany."

While Hamburg was not in the Soviet occupation zone it was only about
40 km away and it is a natural inference that dies and machinery found
their way into the Soviet sphere, but see your comment about
licensing.

The early Freibergers look just like SNO-Ts. Then the release catch
moved to the front and the bracket on the frame for the telescope
exchanged the female vee for a male vee. Finally, the bracket was
dispensed with and a flat and male vee was cast as one with the frame.
The initial brackets would fit a variety of sextants, including the
SNO-M and some Tamayas.

> If SNO-M is indeed a C. Plath clone,
> it was probably licensed
> from the Gremans in 1930-s when the Soviets imported a lot
> of technology from Germany.
> Do you know when production of SNO-T started?

No, but it would be interesting to find out. The cases have a placard
with the year, serial number and weight. May we perhaps hear from
readers about their SNO-Ms years of manufacture? Mine is s/n 51282 of
1966.

I wonder if Tamaya were also licensed, as some of the Tamayas look
like Plaths in detail.
>
> The machinery taken by reparations could
> arrive only in 1945.
>
> 2. I have pictures of several C. Plaths of this type from
> the same seller. All certificates look like computer-printed
> forms filled with nonsense, the certificates are definitely
> fake. But on the sextants themselves,
> I am still inclined to think that
> they are likely made by adding C. Plath arms to the SNO
> frames.

If you are sure the certificates are fake, then the instruments
themselves must come under suspicion. We need information from owners
of Kriegsmarine Plaths of impeccable provenance.

There is, by the way, absolutely nothing wrong with the quality and
workmanship of the SNO-M. It is not a "cheap knock off" except perhaps
in the sense that labout costs were low...

Bill Morris
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