Dating Second War Distinguished Service Medals
By John Hayward

The Second War Distinguished Service Medal awarded to British recipients provides the Maritime Medal Enthusiast with the following comparable numismatic and naming characteristics which may reduce substantially the time engaged on searching for a recipient's entry through 25 quarterly 'London Gazette' indexes from October 1939 - December 1946. Additionally late, duplicate issues or privately named and altered awards may not stand muster when applying the following notes, for example, a replacement D.S.M. together with most other officially named replacement awards and campaign medals will only generally exhibit the naming style current at the time of replacement.

1. The introduction of the fixed riband suspension bar in place of the swivel type did not make its debut on issued D.S.Ms until at least April 1942, although mention was made of it in the Royal Mint Report for 1941.

2. From 1939 to early in 1944, the recipient's Number, Name and abbreviated Rate or Rank was impressed in small sans-serif capital letters.

3. The recipient's Ship or Unit was generally included after the Rank/Rate only from 1939 to the end of 1941.

4. Impressed edge details were discontinued early in 1944 and were replaced by engraved lettering which now commenced with the recipient's Rate/Rank, Name and Number, the style and Size of which varies slightly.
'River Plate' D.S.Ms are an exception to the rule - given personally by the King on Horse Guards Parade, all Medals were inscribed with the year '1939' only. Some dated pieces were returned to be officially named - some others were named privately and some other dated pieces were not named at all! A small number of retrospective 'River Plate' D.S.Ms were named in the prescribed manner.

THIS MONTH'S HAYWARDISM

Keep the best, get rid of the rest!