Mauser 1912/14: Flapper-Delayed Blowback
Semiauto Pistols
•
19m
Starting in 1909, Mauser had a plan to introduce a family of automatic pistols, with a picket gun in 6.35mm (.25 ACP) and a military/police service pistol in 9mm Parabellum that shared the same basic look. The initial 1909 prototype in 9mm was simple blowback, and proved to be a failure. The next attempt was a simple blowback 6.35mm, which was quite successful, and was marketed as the Mauser 1910, as well as the 1914 in .32 ACP (7.65mm). With that selling well, the company went back to its 9mm gun, and began experimenting with locking systems. After failing to get a vertically tipping locking block to work, they came to a flapper-delayed blowback system that was expensive, but worked well. That was the Model 1912, in 9x19mm.
Between 1912 and 1914 about 200 examples of this gun were made, with production standardizing by about serial number 50. Later examples were made for a military market, with 500-meter tangent sights and detachable holster stocks. Any hopes of challenging the Luger in Germany military service were dashed by the death of Paul Mauser in May 1914, coupled with the outbreak of war in August. The project fizzled to an end, and was never restarted after the war - although elements would go with Josef Nickl to Czechoslovakia and eventually show up in the CZ Model 27...
For more information on this and other Mauser handgun developments, I recommend "Mauser Pistolen" by Schmidt, Speed, and Weaver.
Up Next in Semiauto Pistols
-
The Luger in Finland
After the failure of the domestic production Ahlberg pistols and some disappointment with the performance of surplus French Ruby pistols, the Finnish military turned to DWM in Germany for a main service pistol in 1922. The core of the Finnish armed forces had been exposed to the Luger as Jaegers ...
-
Finland's First Domestic Handgun: the...
In the wake of Finland gaining its independence, small arms were much in demand for the armed forces. Many rifles had been taken from Russian stockpiles in Finland, but not many handguns. Hugo Ahlberg ran Ab H. Ahlberg & Co Oy, a machining company in Turku and he decided that making guns for the ...
-
Fritz Mann Model 1921: Chamber-Ring-D...
In 1920, Fritz Mann of Germany patented the idea of cutting a shallow ring in the chamber of a pistol as a delaying mechanism. When fired, a cartridge case would expand into this groove, thus requiring more time and energy to push the case out of the chamber and effectively delaying opening. This...
