Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I'm here today at the James D Julia Auction
House up in Maine checking out some of the guns
that they're putting on sale in March of 2015.
And I will never pass up the chance to take a
close look at a Volkspistole. This is a Walther version of,
well, one of many experimental pistol versions that Walther
came up with towards the end of World War Two in an
attempt to develop a cheaper and faster to produce automatic pistol to replace the P38.
Now, there were a couple of different reasons for this, this was kind of an on-going effort,
especially at the end of the war, to make some of the guns more efficient to manufacture.
There was also a need for handguns for the Volkssturm in specific.
Now what's interesting is Walther actually in late 1943 it was actually tinkering with a revolver design.
Stamped sheet metal revolvers for the Volkssturm,
and that development line kind of went a little ways and then died out.
The various Army folks involved were much more interested in having an automatic pistol rather than a revolver.
So, Walther did a bunch of experimenting with stamped frames and stamped slides and generally more efficient
and cheaper manufacturing techniques. This is one of the examples, one of the results.
So Walther made a number of different experimental types of pistols. They tried some stamped metal slides,
they tried stamped frames, they tried combinations of both, a bunch of different things.
This particular one has a frame made out of largely stamped components
and it has a much more typical milled slide to it.
Now, there's a heel release, we actually have a standard P38 magazine.
This is one of the major points of the Volkssturm program
is that the Volkssturm pistols would all use standard magazines.
So, what makes this one pretty cool is, in an effort to make a cheaper locking system,
Walther actually kind of ripped off the locking mechanism developed by a fellow named Nickl,
who was actually working for Mauser during the war. He had developed a rotating barrel system
that would go on to see actual large-scale production as the CZ-24, but before the war and during the war
he was working for Mauser. Mauser never showed much interest in this rotating barrel patent.
But Walther used the idea in this Volkspistole. You can see that the barrel rotates there.
So let's go ahead and take the slide off and get a closer look on the inside.
This is a very simple gun to field-strip.
I'm going to lock the slide back, and then I have this disassembly lever.
You'll notice there's a little plunger down inside the trigger guard.
When I rotate that lever you can now see the plunger comes out.
There's now nothing that will hold the slide on when I release the slide lock.
So the slide ... comes right off the front of the pistol.
Alright, so let's start by taking a look at the frame.
You'll see of course the biggest chunk here is this block
which forces the barrel to rotate when it fires. It's a short recoil system.
This sort of feature is very indicative of rotating barrel pistols.
And of course we also have a ... takedown lever.
When I push that back into its normal position you can see this plunger comes up
and completes part of the cam track for the barrel to rotate on. When I rotate it down,
now it's out of the way, and that's why the slide can come off.
We have mostly stamped internal parts.
You can see that the sides of the frame have clearly been stamped and there are some joints
that we can see here where different pieces have been attached together.
There as well.
Should point out, we do have a de-cocker. So "F" is for "Feuer", or fire in English and in German.
And if you push that up, it'll de-cock the pistol. I can probably do that
... right now, just like that.
As long as it's up ...
it can't stay there, so we put it back in fire mode, then we can cock the hammer.
Now, the slide has a number of components to it. We have a recoil spring and guide, which is fairly typical.
And then ... So, if you've seen other rotating barrel pistols you'll recognize a lot of the elements right here.
This is basically copied from the 1912 Steyr-Hahn design.
So there are three locking lugs around the circumference of the barrel. Then we have this ...
angled lug that acts as a cam to force the barrel to rotate as it starts to move backwards.
This big bell at the front ... takes the place of a barrel bushing, it holds it centred in the slide.
The rifling on this guy is actually quite nice, I'm sure this didn't see a whole lot of use.
And lastly we have a little extractor cut-out on the back of the barrel here.
The slide itself frankly looks kind of crude, which is sort of what you'd expect for a gun
that was put together under the circumstances of this one. This is a milled slide, this isn't stamped.
Rear sights. We have a fairly typical spring-loaded firing pin.
So the slide design on this really didn't change a whole lot. The biggest change is that there are
some grooves and lugs cut specifically to work with the rotating barrel mechanism up front.
Reassembly is just as easy as disassembly, and will be very standard
to folks who have taken apart normal modern automatic pistols.
The recoil spring sits down in here.
Drop that in just like that. One thing actually I do want to point out first, the ejector on this
is interesting in that it it looks like it's been kind of hand fitted,
like they were experimenting with exactly what shape and size would work most reliably,
and did some tweaking to this individual gun.
At any rate, ... drop the recoil spring in, and then we just ...
engage the rails. Make sure our recoil spring sits under the barrel where it's supposed to be.
Slide comes all the way back.
Put the takedown lever back up in place and ...
there we go, ready to use.
Now, of course the war ended before any of these could be put into full-scale production by any company.
So they are very rare pistols, extremely rare pistols, frankly.
But it's neat to look at them, each one is a little bit different than all the others.
I hope you guys enjoyed the video. Some of these late production
Volkspistole type weapons were made by Walther and Mauser and Gustloff.
If you would like to add this particular Walther one to your own collection,
you certainly have the opportunity to do so. It will be for sale here at the Julia Auction House
coming up in March of 2015. If you click on the link below, that will take you over to the Julia catalogue,
where you can take a look at their high res pictures, their description and
get all the information you need to place a bid on it.
Or come out here in person to take a look for yourself. It is lot number 2236,
so go ahead and check it out. Look it up and see what you think.
Thanks for watching.