A Hypothetical World War II Pipe

A hypothetical World War II pipe is the name given to a dating puzzle raised by John C. Loring, who compiled Dunhill stamps. The puzzle is set up like this: if a pipe carries on its shank only a die used exclusively during the war years, yet at the same time carries a year code that never appears with that die, what does the code date?

Loring does not say he has such an example in hand; after laying out the wartime conditions, he suggests that a piece like this could turn up, and that if it did, the code would document not the manufacture but a later repair.

The Uncoded War Stamp

At Dunhill, a stamp is struck not with individual letter punches but with dies cast together as whole words and numbers. This method turns each year's code into a separate job: the dies for the following year's code have to be ordered in advance. The war broke this ordering chain, and starting in 1941 a great many Shells were stamped with a single die carrying no year code at all: "DUNHILL SHELL MADE IN ENGLAND" above, "PATENT No 1341418/20" below. Sources give the year this die fell out of use as anywhere between 1943 and 1945.

Here the absence of a code is not a gap in knowledge but knowledge itself. Because the die belongs only to these few years, the stamp's mere presence places the pipe in the war years on its own; examples that have entered repair-shop records are also assessed within this range. Records suggest a similar reading may apply to certain smooth-finish pipes that carry neither a year code nor the word "INNERTUBE." On the other hand, not every war year passed without a code; Shells dated to 1944, carrying both a year code and a different patent number, are known. The whole family of stamps is the subject of the Dunhill dating guide.