Walther p1 production years serial number#
Someone did feel the need to electropencil the last three digits of the serial number on the slide, but I don't know whether that was the importer, the Bundeswehr, or someone else altogether. Over on the left side, things are a little saner. Clark chose to apply them over top of the acceptance/proof markings on the frame. Not only are they haphazardly applied and semi-legible (you tell me where this particular importer was headquartered, for example), Mr. (That long number next to it is the original Bundeswehr stock code, which probably means something about the pistol's original disposition within the organization, but I'm dipped if I know what.)Īlso visible in this shot are the federally mandated import marks, which are an excellent example of how not to do that kind of thing. Well, no, they wrote it right on the gun. How do I know that? Did I look up the serial number in a lengthy database online somewhere, or flip through a dusty reference tome moldering unnoticed in some academic library somewhere, or write a letter to the company inquiring as to its production history, as are the usual ways of finding out things of that sort? This particular one is from February 1958. This version of the P38 entered serial production in 1957. This they proceeded to do, and here is an early example of the fruits of their (repeated) labor. Either destroyed or carried away by the Russians and/or the French.¹Īs such, what Walther and his reconstituted company's designers had to do basically amounted to reverse-engineering their own product, from the patent drawings and the few intact samples of pre-war production that could be scrounged up in the country. All of the technical drawings, all of the tooling, and most of the expertise with which the original P38s were manufactured: gone. Since Fritz's escape to Ulm, in the west, at war's end, his company has consisted essentially of a stack of patents. Spreewerk's pistol plant, in Czechosolvakia, fared no better, and Mauser's factory was gutted by the French Army. It was handed over to the Red Army in '46, looted, and burned to the ground. Well, it's a problem because the factory where the originals were made was in Zella-Mehlis, Thuringia. For which he will get paid! A lot! And make no mistake, Fritz Walther likes to get paid. Which, on its face, sounds like Herr Walther has the opposite of a problem! He has it on good authority that his pistol is still the military brass's choice, and since all the old ones are gone, he'll have to make all new ones. Unfortunately for the Bundeswehr, virtually all those 1.2 million or so wartime P38s were gathered up by the Allies as part of Germany's disarmament, and either taken away as reparations or destroyed so here in 1956, the new Bundeswehr will have to find a source of completely new production if it intends to standardize on the same design.
Walther p1 production years license#
So many were required by the wartime Wehrmacht that the Walther company itself only made about half of the total production the others were made under license by Mauser and another company called Spreewerk. It was simple, it was robust, it required much less complex manufacturing, and it was so easy to disassemble for maintenance that it's possible to seem like you did it accidentally. Walther's design (said to be principally the work of Fritz Walther himself) was none of those things. The P38 had been developed in the mid-'30s to replace the Parabellum P08, popularly known as the Luger, which was a well-regarded pistol but very complicated and expensive, difficult to maintain, and known to be temperamental in poor conditions. The company that lands the contract to provide the new Bundeswehr's weapons stands to make very, very money, and the smart bet is on the pistol that was the old Wehrmacht's choice just before the war-Walther's P38. Having been forced to surrender all its arms at the end of the war, that army will have to be re-equipped from scratch. His problem is that, 11 years after the end of World War II, West Germany is just being allowed to have an army again. It's 1956, and Fritz Walther has a problem. To inaugurate the new GotW board and celebrate the end of a long-ass week at work, I decided to jump the gun* and post this entry a little early. Eyrie Productions, Unlimited - Walther P38 / P1Įyrie Productions, Unlimited Subject: "Walther P38 / P1"
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