Lugers Under Versailles: The 1926 Simson P08
Germany
•
14m
Simson & Co of Suhl was chosen as the sole contractor legally allowed to manufacture and rework military small arms for the German military under the Versailles treaty. They acquired the P08 Luger tooling from the Erfurt arsenal, and began small volume P08 production in 1925. They would product just under 12,000 pistols total between 1925 and 1934. The first 600 were made with 1925 chamber dates, and the first 100 or so in 1926 were also dated, but then the markings changed to a blank chamber for the rest of the production run. These were all Army and police pistols, with no commercial production.
This particular example is an interesting outlier, with a 1926 chamber date but a serial number (424) that should be in 1925. It is likely that this gun was set aside for quality control reasons (it also has an RC stamp on the frame) and not completed and marked until early 1926.
Up Next in Germany
-
MG-3: Germany Modernizes the Classic ...
When the Bundeswehr was formed, it chose to simply continue using the MG42 as its standard GPMG. This was initially done by converting older MG42s to 7.62x51mm NATO as the MG1 (adopted in 1958), but progressed to production of a brand new version of the gun by Rheinmetall (adopted in 1968). The M...
-
"Alk" - A Unique German Target Pistol
This is a unique and interesting German proofed .22 rimfire target pistol. It uses a simple blowback slide, which locks open after each shot. It is striker fired, with a 12-inch barrel and a quite nice trigger. The top of the receiver is marked “Alk” in a fancy script engraving, and also has a pa...
-
Adenauer's Zipper: the Bundeswehr MG-...
When the Bundeswehr chose its small arms after World War Two, it saw non reason to move away from the iconic MG-42...but the new weapons needed to be in NATO standard calibers. And so the MG-3 was born: an MG-42 improved in several small ways and rechambered for the 7.62x51mm NATO round. Today we...
