[ Dutch East Indies Luger ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
with a fantastic example of a Dutch East Indies
DWM production Luger pistol, along with its
perhaps even scarcer holster and magazine pouch.
So, we previously took a look at
one of the Dutch Army trials pistols.
And we talked about the history of ...
the abortive Dutch trials of the Luger.
Well, the Dutch East Indies Army was really an almost completely independent
organisation from the main Dutch Army.
And the Dutch ... colonial forces were also in a position
to want to replace their revolvers with self-loading pistols.
Starting in 1905 the East Indies Army got its hands on a couple of Lugers to test.
They spent a couple of years testing them, decided they really were quite good guns
and they would like to adopt them.
In 1910 they ... finished their testing, decided to adopt the guns,
it takes another year to get the budget processed through.
The gun is adopted as the Model ... 1911, the M11 pistol.
And the Dutch East Indies Army doesn't have the same political ... handicaps
that the ... home Dutch Army does, and they are able to actually purchase these pistols.
Now they also have some budgetary limitations, and so they are basically
ordering 1,000 guns a year, starting in 1910 / 1911.
By the time World War One breaks out they have actually purchased and received
4,181 M11 Luger pistols from DWM.
Now of course once the war breaks out DWM has more pressing concerns than
shipping pistols to the Dutch East Indies, and so the supply kind of dries up.
But the Colonial Army isn't fully equipped, they wanted a bunch more.
And so almost immediately after World War One,
they buy another batch of guns from the Vickers Company, Vickers Armstrong.
Now the Vickers guns were not actually manufactured by Vickers.
I actually have a separate video on the Vickers Lugers.
The ... East Indies Army bought 6,000 Vickers Lugers, but that also wasn't going to be enough
to complete the armament for the Army, they needed yet more of them.
So the reason that the Dutch had to buy Lugers from the Vickers Company was
because DWM was prohibited from manufacturing military arms
under the Treaty of Versailles, as enforced by the Allied Control Commission.
Which was a bunch of officers who went around checking up on German industry
to make sure they weren't doing naughty things.
Well, the Allied Control Commission packed up and completed its mission in 1927, and went home.
And by complete total coincidence in 1927 DWM started making Lugers again, weird.
The Dutch weren't apparently all that concerned with what Versailles might have said.
The East Indies Army orders another 3,828 Lugers from DWM directly now,
... sometime between late '27 and early 1928.
The guns are delivered in August and September of 1928.
And that is what we have here, one of the 1928 DWM deliveries.
So let's take a closer look at it, and I'll show you
what distinguishing features the Dutch East Indies Lugers specifically have.
The Dutch East Indies Army from the very outset chose to go with a 9mm Luger.
Of course when this contract began, 1911,
there were still ... plenty of people purchasing 7.65mm Lugers.
But the Colonial Army goes with 9mm, 4 inch barrel.
These guns have grip safeties on them, they do not have shoulder stock lugs.
And the ... M11 pattern would remain almost completely unchanged
between the first purchases in 1911 and the last ones in 1928.
The one difference is actually in the sear bar here.
So prior to 1915 the way the Luger worked was that if you wanted to open the action,
you had to deactivate the safety to do so.
As long as that safety's in place, and you can see what's happening here,
the ... sear bar hits the safety, and can't open.
Well in 1915 DWM updates the design a bit, and changes it such that
now you can open the toggle with the safety engaged.
And so really the only difference between the 1928 Dutch pistols
and the pre-World War One Dutch pistols, is that
the later ones have been updated with that improvement.
Other than that, we still have a DWM toggle, nothing over the chamber.
We'll touch on this in just a moment.
The serial numbers continued in the same range that the Dutch had started.
So in fact, all of the Dutch M11 pistols are in the same serial number range.
When they bought the ones from Vickers,
they had them start at the end of the original DWM contract,
and this second DWM contract picked up where the Vickers guns left off.
So you'll find Dutch M11 colonial pistols numbered from 1 through 14,020.
All of the Dutch guns also have a Dutch safety marking, so "Rust" there.
The loaded chamber indicators are marked in [Dutch/German], "Geladen".
... It's kind of pointless to even mark that, it's so tiny that you ... really can't hardly read it.
But that's how the Dutch guns were made.
Normally on Dutch M11s you would expect to see a date on the barrel,
and that is the date that the gun was actually issued out and put into service.
And the reason for this was in the East Indies, well, this was a harsh environment for firearms.
And barrels would only tend to last 6 or 7 years
before they were corroded and shot out, and needed to be replaced.
And so dating the barrel was a convenient way for the Army
to keep track of essentially preventative maintenance.
Now it's ... uncommon, but not unheard of, to have guns that don't have that barrel date.
And the best explanation I have seen is that the undated ones
are guns that went to a unit but stayed in essentially a materiel reserve,
and were not actually issued out to a specific trooper.
When they were issued, that's when wear and tear would start on the gun,
and so that's when the dates were applied to the barrel.
That would fit with the overall fantastic condition of this example,
suggesting that it went to this unit, right here,
but was never actually issued and didn't see field service,
hence didn't get ruined like most of the Dutch East Indies guns.
One of the other characteristics of Dutch guns, perhaps the most visible one really,
are these unit-marking plaques, these brass plaques.
The Dutch Colonial Army ... unit marked all of its guns.
And on the Lugers, originally up until 1919 they were marked back here,
just stamped into the metal of the frame.
In 1919 they changed that ... plan,
and they went to a brass plaque affixed to the front of the trigger guard.
So some of the early guns would get that plaque,
and when they were applied they would polish off the markings back here.
So from 1919 until 1938 unit marks were up here, and they were a short style of unit marking.
1938 they decide to change it a little bit,
they want to make ... the unit marks a little more descriptive, and make them longer.
And they are too big for this little plaque,
so they go to a slightly larger plaque down here on the trigger guard.
Which lasts all of like a year before they change their minds again,
and switch to a large plaque here on the left side of the gun. And this would be the final pattern.
And these plaques will identify the unit and the gun number.
Now this is the gun number of all of the guns in the unit, not specifically just the Lugers.
So you might run into one that has ... gun number 150.
That doesn't mean that that unit had 150 Lugers,
it might mean that they had 140 rifles that were the first ones that were numbered,
and then guns 140 through 150 are the Lugers.
Anyway, in this case (I'm not sure about the VL), the "K" indicates that this particular gun
went to the garrison company in Riau.
And I'm probably mispronouncing that name, that's r-i-a-u.
A couple of other little minute notes for the Luger fans out there.
These have a crown N proof mark on them,
which is the proof mark that was used for commercial sales pistols.
However, it was also the nitro proof mark that was chosen for the Dutch Army.
These guns didn't come out of commercial production, they were a specific
standalone contract for the Dutch, they just happened to use the same proof mark stamp.
And for this specific batch of 3,800 and change in 1928,
the guns are all marked with this ... KOL, the "O" being the circle on the outside.
The exact meaning of this mark is not clearly known, it's not documented anywhere.
There are a number of theories, the best theory appears to be that it is KOL for colonies,
or Department of the Colonies,
... specifying that these are Colonial Army guns, and not standard Army guns.
There are some holes in that theory, like why was it really necessary to do that?
This marking was not on either of the previous orders of Dutch East Indies Lugers.
But like I said, it's not well documented, but it does appear on all of these guns.
Now while we're looking at this, I definitely want to show you the holster and the mag pouch,
because these examples are such excellent condition examples.
The East Indies Lugers have slightly different web gear with them than a lot of other places.
So you'll see ... brass fittings on them.
... These were all made in the East Indies by a specific workshop
set up to make Colonial Army web gear leather products.
The holster itself does not have a magazine pouch. It's a nice, solid, flap holster.
It has a pocket here on the side for the cleaning rod tool.
It's a brass cleaning rod that also has a little oiler bottle in it.
This one appears to be full of grease that's probably like 80 years old and from Sumatra.
We're going to put that back in and not touch it.
Even scarcer than the holster is the magazine pouch.
This is somewhat unique to Lugers, the Dutch Colonial Army had three magazines issued per gun.
So they had a two ... magazine pouch that they issued with each of the guns.
These are extremely rare to find today.
Also worth pointing out, one of the specific requests that the Colonial Army had
was they wanted to make the magazines easy to disassemble
because, well, it's the Dutch East Indies, it's a harsh environment for firearms and such,
and they wanted to be able to clean out the magazines easily.
And so they actually have,
specifically requested from DWM, a quick-removable floor plate.
So this is just a little flat spring.
You would normally use your cleaning tool to depress this.
(Yeah, can't really get in there with a finger, there you go.)
You would pull that back, and then you could just pull the floor plate off and clean the magazine.
Well, they found fairly early in actual use that occasionally under recoil
this spring would lose its tension, and then the floor plate would fall out when you fired the gun.
And then all your ammo falls out, and your magazine spring, and that's like really bad.
So they ... kept the quick-detach magazine floor plates,
but they also pinned them in the front, so it's a little more of a process.
Now you have to punch out the pin, then you can use the floor plate removal thing.
But the Dutch Colonial Army Lugers are, I believe, the only ones that have that style of magazine.
On the pouch, in addition to your two magazines, you also have the magazine loading tool.
Which is also a combination tool for the gun, so you've got a screwdriver on there as well.
And you actually got a pin punch.
Useful for, for example, punching out the floor plate pin on the magazines.
So this is ... an original issue magazine pouch, which is super cool.
Both the pouch and the holster have the markings we would expect.
"CW" ... are the initials of the workshop that made these.
"N" indicates that this is a new production item.
If it was a repaired item it would have a different letter there,
I don't remember the exact letter for repaired, but.
And then the date of production, so this one is April of 1938.
And then there is an acceptance stamp, which is really pretty faint here, it is "AL".
If we look at the holster this is a lot clearer,
you'll see the same markings, this holster was made by the same shop.
The holster is a July of 1936, and "AL" is the acceptance committee.
Those letters change, they started with I believe "AA".
And every time they put together a new committee over a period of many years,
the new committee would just iterate that letter one.
So AL is a little ways along, but AL was there accepting stuff in '36 and '38 both.
There were actually a couple of different patterns of holster,
this is one that was introduced in 1933.
It has a relatively small belt loop on it here, held on by a bunch of brass rivets.
The earlier patterns actually were sort of a drop holster, where there's a long strap,
and the belt attachment is up here.
And in '33 they shorten that up to bring the holster right up onto the belt.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
... Dutch East Indies Lugers are rare,
finding them in this kind of condition is extremely unusual.
That is really a magnificent specimen of the type.
And the holster is rare, the magazine pouch is virtually unheard of.
So ... the magazine pouch in particular is really quite unique to the Dutch East Indies Army.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed getting a chance to take a look at these examples.
It's fun being able to bring this sort of thing to you.
Thanks for watching.