I have a ratchet like that. I traded for it almost 60 years ago. One of my high school friends was a supply clerk for the Navy. He was the one who engraved the USN on the tools. But some of them failed to get marked. Years later a Snap-On salesman told me the V in the model number denoted government issue. I still have quite a few tools I traded for. My friend traded tools for things like a set of tires. The time would have been somewhere between 1962 when we got out of high school and October 1969 when his 1957 Nomad was washed off of a bridge.
