In no time at all, our relic was in hand and we were ready to sling lead downrange – 8 rounds at a time. Since the crown kindly consented to our ownership of this cool little almost-milsurp blaster, we snagged one pretty much just for funsies from who nicely double-checked it was PW Arms imported. Thankfully much less intrusive import stampings than some of their other firearms to boot. Arms is on California’s roster of state-approved handguns. Weirdly enough, the Walther P1 specifically imported by P.W. So where’s that leave us today? To The Range! The new production P.38s were dubbed the P1, and utilized an aluminum alloy frame over the P38s heavier steel, and saw an eventual switch to bakelite grips as well. The Walther brothers had managed to save both patent details and some surviving war-time P38s, and after a trial, the P38 was once again selected to outfit the German military. Shortly after, German authorities began soliciting designs for the Bundeswehr’s standard-issue sidearm. New Army, who dis? The Bundeswehr sometime in the late 50s. In 1956, the West German government announced the formation of the Bundeswehr, which is the modern German army as we know it. Oh woops, was that your arms plant? haha my bįast forward another 10 years to a Germany divided into East and West during the tensions of the Cold War.įritz Walther and his brothers had set up shop in a new factory in Ulm, Southwest Germany, and had been lying low producing various goods while anticipating that an eventual West German Defense Force might someday need the firearms-making prowess of Walther again someday, and is it turns out, they were spot on. While nearly 1.2 million P38s were produced during the war, they never quite replaced the Luger entirely. The allied aerial bombing campaign that ruthlessly targeted German industrial manufacturing centers took its toll on the P38s production and distribution schedule, however, and the primary Walther plant located in Zehla Mellis was eventually captured by American soldiers and later destroyed by the Soviets in 1946. Obviously, after the first round was fired and the spent casing was ejected, the gun remained in a single action state for the rest of the magazine. Meaning that users could safely carry the gun with a round chambered and the hammer down, needing only to draw and squeeze the relatively long double-action trigger pull to fire. The gun was one of the first semi-automatic double-action pistols ever fielded. The P38 was also an improvement over the Luger in a few areas as well. Multiply that by the ~million units produced between 19, and it’s easy to see how you’ve got a massive chunk of change saved by switching over to the P.38. Army paid roughly $560 per gun for the Beretta M9 (adjusted for inflation, we think). Using the same conversion, that works out to about $5 less than the Luger’s $19 USD cost per unit.Īdjusted for inflation that is about $240 for the P38 and $330 for the Luger. The P38 entered development in the mid-thirties, and by the time the design was finalized and operational, it could be produced for approximately 32 reichsmarks, and while conversion rate information for dead nazi money is sort of ambiguous, it appears as though that’d be about $14 USD. A cutaway schematic showing the operational guts of a P38. Previously, the German military’s sidearm needs had been filled by the Luger P.08 – and while the Luger was by no means a bad pistol by any means, in true German fashion it was a bit needlessly complicated – especially when you’re planning to outfit a military gearing up to start a second global bar fight.Ĭonsidering that sidearms were not a crucial part of the Third Reich’s military doctrine, it made sense to instead adopt a pistol that could be mass-produced at a cheaper per-unit cost than the Luger, as the P.08 required both significant labor hours and craftsmanship to create at the scale needed to sate the Wehrmacht’s demands. Good eye! The Walther P1 is a direct descendant of the iconic P38 issued to a good chunk of the various armed forces of Nazi Germany in the lead up to and during the second world war.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |