Last time we covered the story of the Becker & Hollander Beholla, a compact
military pistol born from a sporting concern during the First World War.
Now let's explore another solution to the exact same problem. This time coming from
a family of arms makers.
[music]
Hi, I'm Othais, and this is the F.L. Selbstlader,
Selbs - I'm bad at German - stepladder pistol. Alright let's take it over to the lightbox.
At 6.6 inches, and 1.4 lbs, this pistol is larger but still
the same weight as that previous Beholla. Should tell you how compact that thing was.
It has a magazine capacity of 8 rounds and chambers .32 ACP cartridge.
If you don't have a passing familiarity with this cartridge yet I can't help you. We'll get into
detail when we get to the FN 1900 though. The Langenhan's were a family concern
in Zella-Mehlis back until at least 1842, probably before. We've heard of that
region before and we know a lot of talented people have come out of it.
Well, in the era of Friedrich Langenhan, the company solidified as "FL Gewehr und Fahrradfabrik,
and I'm sorry again about my German pronunciation. Now, Friedrich had
designed a revolver which was honestly a Smith & Wesson clone, and sold it
to the Saxon army is the Model 1873. This is sort of the first foray into military
design, and the second-to-last for this family. With Friedrich's death in 1885,
the company turned over to his son of Hermann. Now, Hermann expand the Langenhan
business pretty significantly, into more sporting & target arms and also he started
producing bicycles.
It seems like everybody there was manufacturing guns also manufactured bicycles. Anyway,
Hermann's son Fritz would actually design a handy little pistol. Now, the history is that
this was supposed to be a commercial design prewar, but it's kind of interesting that this
has the sort of larger frame and larger barrel that we'd expect from a military
and police design. Now, it could just be that Fritz had designed a smaller
pistol to begin with and it's sort of been lost, or it could be that he was actually
looking for military and police market.
We're really unsure at the moment. There's not a whole lot written about
these guys. Anyway, if we take a closer look at it, we're going to see what is
sort of the worst feature of this gun that people tend to think of first.
Alright, as we're looking, by the way, this is, you know, a lot like an FN 1900.
It's obviously been copied from one. Here, let's just get a comparison.
There's a lot in common, especially in the way that the slide is set up to the
frame and things like that.
Alright, also similar to the 1900, this has a separate breech block that's
been attached to the sort of slide assembly with the screw. On the 1900, if
we look at it again, we'll see that it's set with two screws and most people don't
tend to worry about it. You don't hear a lot about people being afraid of the breech
block in the 1900, probably because it's got a little redundancy right there. What you do hear
all the time is that people are actually terrified of this gun because
it's one large screw in the back. Now, I've pre-loosened this. I don't want you to think that
it's this loose when you take it out to shoot, but if we unscrew it and, and look how many
turns it takes... and some more...
There we go. We're finally out. I mean that's fairly deeply threaded.
Alright, get that out of our way. Now, the only thing holding our breech block in is this
sort of yoke. If I release it we're gonna see the slide come forward, but equally
if we were firing there would be a chance of seeing that breach come
straight back out the back of the action. So that's the big fear, is that your
screw will come loose, you won't notice and you'll pull the trigger and when you
pull the trigger this guy's gonna go right into your eye. A valid concern.
However, as terrifying as that is to hear, I just don't think it's all that likely.
The screw is very large and deep set. It is set up in a way that it is not
necessarily in line with the action, so it's gonna snag or rotate, and if we bring
up a photo of the POV, you can see that it's very easy to sort of read the screw.
You would notice if it started to loosen if you were even vaguely aware of the problem.
However, we can't say that it's the height of arms design. The frame and
slide are not what retains the breech block; a screw and a hinged yoke are.
Other than that little problem, the gun handles a lot like the original 1900. I found it very pleasant to shoot.
I obviously trusted it enough to shoot, although I did watch the back of that screw.
Alright, so now that we've gone over sort of the worst feature, let's just see how the
rest of the gun works in general.
We're looking at a single action, internal hammer fired blowback system.
A pull of the trigger sends the trigger bar back, tipping the sear and freeing
the hammer to fall. The safety simply turns into the hammer's path locking it rearward.
The rearward travel of the breech block resets the hammer.
On most models, the trigger bar stop remains exposed. Kinda neat to see in person.
Alright, we'll load up our 8 round magazine.
Aim, and fire.
The safety is a bit awkward but manageable one-handed.
Let's see how I did.
Sweet!
You know this gun is in tattered shape as you can tell.
It still performed excellently while we were at the range. I think the moment we
tried to use it there was one little feed problem that we face by reworking the
lips and then after that she ran like a tank. Great, great handgun and honestly I
was drilling a hole the size of a quarter with it just shooting two-handed,
although we don't tend to film me shooting. Getting into the history of it though,
for service life, much like the Beholla, it really only served through WW1
and it would be mostly abandoned after the war for other designs. However, with
70,000 produced, there are a number of variants that we could cover just for
you to be familiar with. We're gonna see four variations of this military pistol.
The first has an exposed injection port, it's open whenever the breach is closed so that
you can see the breach block through it. It's on the right side. It has a long safety,
an external disconnect, see, you can see it poking up above the grip there. Those grips
are hard rubber, and roughly 8000 of these were made.
The second variation sealed up that ejection port when the gun is in battery. So that breech block
can no longer be seen on the right side. We still have the long safety, the external
disconnector and hard rubber grips, although later some wood grips would
start to show up. Roughly 45,000 of these were produced. So that makes the second
variation the most common. The third variation introduces a new safety.
It works the same as the old safety, it's just a shorter throw and slightly different arc.
It's a little easier to handle.
Again, the enclosed breech block and ejection port, external disconnect. This one is
almost always found with wood grips. Roughly 13,000 made. Now, variation 4 has
an internal disconnector. We can no longer see it sticking up above the grip.
Still has the enclosed breech block. It has the improved short safety
and it has wood grips, or it seems to me more commonly found with the redesigned
hard rubber grips. Roughly 19,000 were produced. Post-war there will be two
commercial models. the first, the Model 2, will chamber the .25 ACP catridge
and fit seven rounds in its magazine.
This was meant to get into that sort of pocket / vest market. Its overall length is 5.7 inches.
The Model 3 is even smaller and can only chamber five rounds of .25 ACP.
It has an overall length of 4.75 inches. This is really getting down to a vest pistol.
Both sold well enough. However we obviously know that they aren't the most
remembered pistols ever made.
They are interesting and that they dispensed with the Langenhan yoke,
and instead used a cross screw like we're used to seeing on the 1900. Otherwise,
fairly similar operation. They're sort of beyond the scope of this video anyway though.
Now, like we said even with its improvements the Langenhan is still
sort of a poor man's 1900. It's not particularly revolutionary and it
doesn't have any advantages over any other design and there's quite a few
disadvantages. So after the war the pistol sort of evaporated. It went on to
the commercial market obviously for a while and we still see them today in the
collectors market, but that's really about it. Not a remarkable history-changing handgun.
But, it was worth talking about just because of that sort of rumor of it
being a suicide pistol and just to look at something truly unique from the battlefield.
Alright let's go ahead and get May's opinion on shooting this thing
because I personally think it's a bit of a sleeper.
Alright, we let Mae back indoors, so let's go ahead and get her opinion on the Langenhan.
There you go. Would start us just with some handling?
Sure. So right off the bat I noticed:
very thin, flat gun. Doesn't weigh a lot. Four finger grip. I got all my
hand on there so in terms of comfort right off the bat I thought it was great.
However, I did notice along the way a couple of features in terms of functioning weren't my favorite.
It's got this heel drop mag, so as everyone knows it's not my favorite.
This one was easier to actually pull the mag out, but I could notice over time
how this little push-button... it wouldn't really be my favorite. It'd probably wear
on my thumb a little bit. The safety, it's very difficult to one hand. You could
even see on camera, I'm having a hard time so I would prefer to two hand that one.
Overall I thought it was a very comfortable gun. Those one or two little features
aren't really gonna kill a gun for me, you know?
Yeah, I wanna say, when you
pick this gun up, probably the first thing you're gonna notice is that it is *narrow*.
Very flat. At the time, it's supposed to be sort of a police pistol carried on your hip kind of thing.
But in terms of concealment it would be great too. I mean it really is flat.
Now, there were some commercial versions of this gun that came later. We're not gonna talk
about 'em here, but they probably took advantage of this feature pretty well.
In terms of that safety, don't forget, they actually switched over to a shorter and
shorter stroke safety because it was such a problem. Now why you talk
a little bit about just shooting it. The feel for the recoil, the sights, that sort of thing.
Okay. Like I mentioned before, in terms of the action, it was pretty smooth.
The recoil, there really wasn't much to it. It's .32.
It was actually very manageable. For the trigger, I noticed it was a little
bit squishy in there, but I think that might just be because of the trigger bar setup.
Correct me if I'm wrong on that one, but over all, I actually drilled a hole
with this one. My accuracy on this one was very high.
Out of the .32s we've shot so far, this is the one I have been the most accurate with.
Not my favorite over all, but most accurate definitely.
Okay, but what about the sights?
As for the sights, they're very narrow, so for modern I can see how this is not
anyone's favorite shooter, but historically they're very tall and they're
actually pretty good for that time.
Alright, so I guess we gotta ask sort of an obvious question here though. Were you
afraid for your life?
I was not afraid for my life, but I did I eyeball this screw the entire time.
There's nothing like knowing that you know you're one screw away from having that thing catch you in the eye
To make you watch that screw like a hawk.
Okay, I guess final question that we have always been asking, as tacky as it might be.
Would you be comfortable on the battlefield with the Langenhan?
Yes, I would be comfortable taking this into battle. Over all, like I said, there were
tiny things about this gun that I did not care for. The magazine and the safety,
but those won't damage the gun for me, and to be fair, like I said before, I drilled
a hole with this gun. So I would take it in battle any day of the week.
I think it's kind of telling for this pistol that, like I said earlier, this is not the cleanest copy we've seen.
I mean it's not terribly rough, but it's not perfect either and it did great and
it performed well. Both of us thought that it was very accurate shooter.
For all of the, sort of, bad-mouthing that goes on about this pistol. I think after
toying with it. It's earned itself a little more respect. Again, not revolutionary, not
a world changer, but certainly better than its given history as it stands.
Alright, well I hope you enjoyed this pistol and thank you every time for
all the support you guys have given us.
Yeah thank you so much everyone!
[music]
Hey everybody! I'm going to be wrapping up this episode this time around.
Couple quick things. Thank you to our executive producer, who has lent
us the Langenhan for that episode. We could not have produced it without him.
A big thank you to Taofledermaus. He sent us many new viewers so, hey, welcome everybody!
Our Patreon levels are up to $828 so, woohoo, thank you everyone for your
continued support and as for a new project we've got going.
Check out in the links the link to the IndieGoGo site. We are trying to fund a
trip to go shoot some machine guns so please everyone try to help support us
with that! Alright, thanks everybody!