[ Walther P38 Development ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the Rock Island
Auction Company, I'm looking at some of the guns
that they're selling in the upcoming
April of 2016 Premier Auction.
And as you can probably see, we have
quite the selection of developmental
Walther P38 pistols here.
Actually, none of these is technically a P38,
these are all models that preceded it.
And these were all in a collection of one very enthusiastic Walther collector.
And I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to do a video
discussing the developmental history of the P38.
Where it came from, and the other ideas that Walter was tinkering with.
So, this whole series started in the early 1930s, probably about 1932,
and of course by 1938 the P38 was adopted by the German military.
So it's actually a fairly short developmental time frame,
we're only talking about six years, more or less.
So why don't we go ahead and bring the camera right in, and let's get a close-up look.
We're pretty much going to start from here, and work our way around
to the final, developed, adopted version.
So our story really begins when Walter releases the Walther Model of PP, the Police Pistol.
This ... became a very popular gun for Walter.
It was a simple straight-blowback double action,
in fact one of the very first really commercially successful double-action pistols.
It had a single-stack magazine,
and chambered for the .32 (or 7.65mm) Browning cartridge.
Very popular, and Walther decided that they wanted to see
what they could do about getting military contracts for these.
Now the German military was looking to replace the Luger with something a bit less expensive.
And they had been kind of for some time, ... everybody who used the Luger typically liked it,
but was concerned about how expensive it was to manufacture.
So Walter took this and scaled it up.
The result was the Model of MP/PP, the military version of the Police Pistol.
This is chambered for the 9mm Parabellum cartridge, but it is still a simple blowback pistol.
You'll see all the features are pretty much taken right from the earlier gun.
We have this exposed, hollowed-out, ring hammer.
It is a double-action pistol, you can cock and fire single action if you prefer.
The magazine release button is located on the side of the grip frame.
And this gave us a 9 round capacity 9mm Parabellum pistol.
Seems really great, except that it didn't really work well.
The problem was simple blowback is ... not really an ideal mechanism
for a pistol cartridge that is as hot as 9mm Parabellum.
So the next gun that Walter comes up with is another Model of MP,
both this and the previous one were technically referred to as the "MP", or Military Pistol Model.
However, this clearly is a totally different mechanism,
and this is the genesis really of the P38.
However, there are a lot of differences between this and the final P38,
despite the fact that they look externally quite similar.
So the biggest obvious visual difference
is that this has a shrouded hammer instead of an exposed hammer.
But then when you start looking closer, you'll see other differences.
For example, we've got these two reinforcing ribs on the side of the ... slide right here, on both sides.
So one other major difference that you will see here, is that there's no bridge over the slide.
When you pull this back, you can see the barrel sitting here by itself.
And the slide rails come forward,
and the thought was that they are captive enough that this should work fine.
Ultimately, what they found in testing was that the slide tended to
jump off of its rails when you were firing, and obviously that's not a good thing.
(I'll go ahead and lock this open there.)
You can see that we have our locking lug up in the front.
We actually have two of them separately, one on each side.
This system would change substantially by the end of P38 development.
But this was their very first version, so we've got the reinforced slide,
we've got no bridge up here.
You'll see that ... this is both a slide stop and a takedown lever, and it's one long lever here.
The safety stays the same, but other than that,
really the small details on this pistol are quite different from the final version.
Now if we take a close-up look at the side of the slide,
these can be identified as the Model MP right here, in 9mm.
You see this is serial number 1002.
This is the only known surviving example of this model of the pistol.
They probably made a handful of them and they started at serial number 1000.
One last detail to look at since we've got the slide open
is the extractor on the top of the slide.
This top cover is the extractor, so there isn't any separate piece.
That would also change substantially as development evolved.
Oh, and one last last thing: ... these were cut for a shoulder stock, there's this T slot in the back.
Although I don't believe any of the stocks survived.
But that was an idea at this point early in development.
So the problems with the MP were addressed in further development.
And the next pistol that Walter designed, or their next modification, was the Army Pistol.
Now ... whenever these are found, ... all of the examples are marked:
"Armee-Pistole", Calibre 9mm, and of course Walter's information.
However, you'll often see them referred to by collectors as the "Model of AP",
simply following the naming custom of the MP.
So the AP, we see a lot of changes already that will stay the same as the final development.
So the slide stop and the takedown lever have been split up into two separate pieces,
and these two will stay the same through the rest of production.
We now have a bridge over the slide.
So this holds the front of the slide rails together, which prevents it from jumping off its track.
That's a major development of this pistol.
Now we can also see that this locking block has been replaced with one piece
that pivots all the way through the slide.
You can really clearly see the difference here between the original MP locking block up here,
and the AP locking block on the bottom.
So the AP is in many ways mechanically the P38,
but there were still some little changes that had to be made.
One of those changes was the hammer.
So, so far these prototypes all have shrouded hammers.
And we don't know exactly why Walter was working with those,
it's possible that simply Walter thought that was the better option.
It may be that they thought the military would prefer a shrouded hammer,
given that the Luger did not have an exposed hammer.
Or there may be some other reason that I just haven't heard about or thought of.
But the shrouded hammer would eventually fall by the wayside.
Now there's one other model of the AP, the Army Pistol, that I do want to show you.
And remember, very few of these guns were made, this particular one is serial number 44.
... These aren't mass production guns, these are all basically extended prototypes.
So they'll all have some slight differences, whether it's the profile of the barrel,
the exact checkering on the stocks, little small details changed.
One of the big details that changed on one of these guns
was the addition of a shoulder stock and a much longer barrel.
So this is an example of an AP that was made obviously for longer-range shooting.
The barrel has been extended, which means that the sight radius is extended,
and it has been fitted with a shoulder stock slot.
This is actually a pretty clever shoulder-stock mechanism,
as shoulder-stock mechanisms for pistols go.
There are two small rails cut into the very back of the frame,
and then one round profile cut right here.
The stock now has two matching rails right up here,
and it's got this locking lever which is round.
So what you do is put it to the attachment side where it's cut out,
slide this onto the back of the pistol,
and when you rotate that lever it locks the stock in place.
And it's actually a pretty solid lock up.
There.
Slide that on, lock it in place.
You've got just a tiny bit of wobble.
Stocked pistols always seem to have a little bit of wobble to them.
There you have your long-range shoulder stock variant of the Walther Army Pistol.
And, as with many other of these such shoulder stocks for pistols,
the stock also acts as a holster for the gun.
It slides down in there, and ...
there we go, snaps into place.
So using this you can hang this on your belt, carry your pistol around,
draw the pistol if you just need a pistol.
Or if you want something to make a longer shot, well,
you can attach the stock and you have yourself sort of a mini carbine.
Now the stock here also contains a spare magazine,
and a disassembly tool.
Alright, so at this point we're talking mid-1930s roughly, probably 1935 for this.
And then we are going to see a return, in a somewhat confusing manner,
we're going to see a return to the "MP" designation.
So we had our very first MP pistols ... here,
no bridge, [reinforcing] rails on the side of the slide. ...
And then we have our second MP,
which is much more closely associated with the ... final P38.
Now there were versions of this second model of MP
both with a shrouded and with an external hammer.
And this is the first time where we see the external hammer showing up in this development process.
So now we're talking like 1936.
Walther experiments with a number of these,
they actually offer them in a couple of different calibres, this is in 9mm Parabellum.
They did also make a few in .45 ACP for example.
And the big difference here is ... they're continuing to simplify and improve the design.
And they no longer have a reinforcing rib on the side of the slide.
So the previous Army Pistol still has one rib on it here, and on this side.
With the second pattern of MP those are gone,
and we now have the distinctive flat-sided slide of the P38.
If we look at the locking mechanisms you can see that they are pretty much the same,
this part of the design has been pretty well finalised now.
What they're doing is strengthening it to simplify it, make production a little more economical.
So from the second model of MP, it's a very short hop to the HP, or Heeres Pistole,
which is the first commercially and militarily available, and adopted version of this pistol.
So these were adopted by Sweden, for example.
And it's this version of the pistol that was tested by the German military,
and formally adopted by it.
There are only a few differences left at this point that have to be changed.
We have gone from a round hammer to a spur hammer.
The MP had its extractor kind of hidden under the slide where you can't really see it.
On the HP, now it's visible on the outside.
This is almost certainly there to make it a little more accessible,
and easier to swap out and assemble.
And then some little things like the profile of the takedown lever changes.
But mechanically, once we get to the HP
we have the final military and mass-produced version of the P38.
It's of course adopted by the German military ... in 1938,
and that is pretty much the end of the story.
Until after World War Two, when they go on to make some more changes
with the P1, and then other developments after the war.
Alright, before we finish, there's one more pistol that we need to talk about.
And that is this very unusual, literally one-of-a-kind, sheet-metal Walther prototype.
Now ... over time there have been a lot of different theories about this gun,
but I think by taking a close look at it we can pretty well determine what it is.
And it would appear to be a very, very early Walther prototype
where they used the sheet metal as a simpler method of manufacture
to kind of prove out some concepts at the very beginning of this development process.
So the reason that I say this,
instead of it being for example a last-ditch late-war experiment,
is just based on the features.
For example, if we look up at the top here, you'll see that the top cover is the extractor.
So the very first of this series, the very first model of MP,
had the slide top cover acting as the extractor.
So why would they go to that later, ... and in fact it's the very next step,
by the time we get to the AP (it still has a reinforcing rib here),
but we now have a separate extractor down here on the slide.
So this seems to be a feature from the very early stages of production.
And then if we look at the lockup,
this has two locking lugs that are actually pivoting horizontally instead of vertically.
This is totally different from the locking mechanism on any of the other P38 models.
And to me that suggests that this was done right at the very beginning.
They discovered that this method wasn't all that effective,
or reliable, or economical, or something.
And so they abandoned this, and they went to the lock-up system on the very first MPs.
And then they continued to tweak that system to the final variation used in the P38.
You'll notice that there is no disassembly lever on this pistol,
we have a slide stop as a one-piece thing here, but we don't have a disassembly lever to work with.
So this pistol has no serial number,
which would suggest that it was never really meant to leave the factory.
It wasn't part of production, it was literally a one-off handmade experiment,
just ... as a proof of concept really.
This is the only one of this type of pistol known to exist.
And I think we can pretty reasonably say
that this would have been at the very beginning of production.
It even has its own magazine, which is rather a bit different from the standard P38.
Thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
Like I said, I thought this was way too good of an opportunity
to pass up to take a look through the whole development of the P38.
So if you're interested in the P38, hopefully you learned something about where they came from.
And of course, all of these pistols are coming up for sale.
So if you have a substantial P38 collection, or you'd like to start one,
this would be a great time to add to it.
If you take a look at the description text below, you will find links to
all of these individual guns through their Rock Island catalogue pages.
You can take a look at the descriptions and the provenance for each one.
And if you're interested in a bunch of these, I'd say you ought to just
come up here to the auction house in person and participate.
But you can also always place bids through their website.
Thanks for watching.