Walther's .45ACP MP (P38 Precursor)
Germany
•
7m 18s
During the process of developing the pistol which would become the German army's P38, the Walther company was also interested in potential export contracts (like the one they actually did get from Sweden). One potential contract briefly explored was to the United States, and a few prototype MP pistols were made in .45 ACP caliber. These were larger in all dimensions than the standard MP, and shared the features of those other developmental guns (most distinctively the shrouded hammer and internal extractor). This pistol was almost certainly taken as a souvenir form the Walther plant in 1945 by an American GI. No records exist of any American trials of the guns, and it seems that the plan to offer them for sale was never followed through on, probably because of the (9mm) guns' success in German military trials.
Up Next in Germany
-
Walther Olympia: Germany's Interwar T...
The Colt Woodsman, introduced in 1915, was the premier - and really the only serious - option for the competitive target shooter into the 1920s when the Walther company decided to introduce a competitor. Walther needed a product to bring business, of course, and the Versailles treaty prohibited i...
-
Wehrmannsgewehr - German Shooting Com...
Introduced by a Dutchman in 1897, the Wehrmannsgewehr was a type of 3-position shooting competition using military pattern rifles in a sporting caliber (the 8x46R, firing roughly a 150 grain lead bullet at 1800 fps). It was pretty limited in popularity in Germany until the end of World War One, w...
-
Germany's WW1 Zeiss Bifocal Scope: th...
The Zeiss 2.5x Glasvizier 16 optic is one of the most unusual and interesting of the German sighting systems used on rifles during the First World War. It is a bifocal optic, working in the same way as today’s SeeAll optic. Basically, a section of magnifying lens sits in the bottom third of the f...
