Czechoslovakia's First Pistol: Praga Model 1919
Semiauto Pistols
•
8m 9s
Having gained independence after World War One, Czechoslovakia looked to standardize and improve its armaments. Václav Holek went to work for the Zbrojovka Praga factory in Prague in 1918, and they introduced the Model 1919 pistol the next year. It was purchased by both Czech military and police forces, as well as selling commercially. The Army bought 5,000 in 1919 and another 4,600 in 1921. Early models have a script slide legend, which changed to block letters later in production. Some also have large lanyard loops.
Mechanically, the gun is a simple blowback .32 ACP (7.65mm Browning). It uses a shrouded hammer to fire, and has a couple neat mechanical features. The recoil spring is nicely contained for disassembly, and the breechblock drops free for easy assembly or maintenance. However, the Praga factory was poorly managed, and went bankrupt in 1926. Holek would move to the Brno factory and perfect his machine gun design (the ZB-26), and the Czech army would make a more complete rearmament with the vz.22 pistol developed from Josef Nickl’s work at Mauser.
Up Next in Semiauto Pistols
-
Overview of Danish Schouboe .45 & .32...
In 1903, Danish engineer Jens Schouboe began developing an automatic pistol for the Dansk Rekylriffel Syndikat in Copenhagen (later to become the Madsen company). He made the guns in both .32ACP and also in a proprietary Danish .45 caliber based (I believe) on the centerfire conversion of Denmark...
-
SIG 44/16: The Best Service Pistol, B...
When SIG was developing the pistol that would ultimately be adopted as the m/49 by the Danish Army and the P49 by the Swiss Army (P210 commercially), they initially experimented with both single stack and double stack variations. Today, we will take a look at a SIG 44/16, the double stack version...
-
Star Pistol-Carbines: Model MMS and M...
Star produced 1911-style pistols in a wide variety of calibers and configurations for more than 50 years, including several models with shoulder stocks. Two of the later such models were the MMS and MB. These were standard 5 inch barreled pistols shipped with wooden combination holster stocks and...
