CZ38 - The Czech Ugly Ducking
Forgotten Weapons
•
11m
The CZ vz.38 pistol was developed by the CZ factory as a replacement for Czechoslovakia’s vz.24 pistols. It was formally accepted by the Czech Army in June of 1938, and 41,000 were ordered from the factory. Tooling and production setup took close to a year, and the German military occupied the country just 4 days after testing of the first pre-production batch of pistols. However, the German authorities decided that CZ should complete to pistol production anyway, and took possession of the guns themselves for use by the Wehrmacht, Reich Labor Service, Luftwaffe, and other services at the Pistole 39(t).
The initial order of 41,000 was completed by the end of 1939 with serial numbers from 250,000 through 291,000 and accepted by the Czech military on behalf of the Germans - so these pistols will not have waffenamt marks. Two additional batches were made - 3000 guns for the Luftwaffe (numbered 240,000-242,000) and 1000 for export, probably to Bulgarian (with B-prefix serial numbers 291,000-292,000).
Mechanically, the vz.38 is a simple blowback automatic pistol chambered for the .380 cartridge, aka 9mm Browning or 9x17mm. It is a rather awkward looking gun, and a double action only trigger. It does have a quite unique and very simple disassembly procedure though!
Up Next in Forgotten Weapons
-
Orden Y Patria: Carabineros de Chile ...
The Carabinieros de Chile were formed in 1927 by combining the Rural Police, Fiscal Police, and Corps of Carabinieros into a single national police organization. We do not have an organization like this in the United States, but they are fairly common elsewhere in the world, acting as sort of a c...
-
Armalite AR-17: A Shotgun from the Wo...
Armalite was a company founded as an offshoot of the Fairchild Aircraft company, and working with aluminum was their specialty. This was a fairly novel material to the arms industry, and they were able to exploit it fantastically in the AR-10 and AR-15 rifles. The AR15 rights were sold to Colt in...
-
The Albanian SKS: A Few Different Det...
The Albanian SKS is the rarest of the major adoptees of the SKS rifle (Russia, China, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania), and has a handful of interested details that differ from all other examples of the SKS rifle. The gun came about as the result of Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha’s pivot from Soviet ...
