you probably clicked on that thumbnail
seeing the british flag and the l66 and
you thought well i've never heard that
what is an l66 and now you're looking at
this
and thinking that looks like a walther
model pp
what's what's the deal did the british
copy the pp and the answer is no they
didn't
uh thanks for tuning in to another video
on forgottenweapons.com
i'm ian mccollum and this is in fact a
british l66a1 pistol which is in fact
a walther pp in-caliber 22 long rifle
purchased directly from walther in 1974
the british government purchased about 3
000 maybe 3 200 of these pistols
specifically to issue them out as
personal defense weapons to the ulster
defense regiment
these guys were of course stationed up
in northern ireland it was a
dangerous place to be for obvious
reasons and while they had
rifles and regular small arms available
on duty
some of these guys a lot of these guys
did not have arms available
off duty and that is the purpose of the
l66 it was actually issued out as a
personal protective weapon
something that you could in fact conceal
carry guys who did this would get a
military
permit card saying that they were
authorized to carry it
and i've seen accounts from a number of
veterans of the period who said that
yeah absolutely they were issued these
out and they appreciated having them
from time to time so
let's take a closer look because there
are a few distinct things that
differentiate this from
any other commercial walther these guns
do not appear to have been in a
single sequential serial number range
but their serial numbers will all be
in the like the low 40 thousands so 41
to 45 000
uh roughly in that range and they're of
course serialized
and then they don't actually have the
regular commercial ohm
proof marks that's the the german
commercial proof mark you'd recognize it
for having
like an elk antler is the the symbol
uh from the ulm proof house instead uh
probably because these were going to the
british military
these were actually proofed by the
german military at the koblenz
facility and so they have a military
pair of military eagle proof marks
right there this particular one was
imported into the u.s we'll talk about
that in a minute
but that's what this mark is that's uh
inter arms corporation of alexandria
virginia
and that's their import mark the serial
number is repeated there on the frame
and it does end with an lr which is long
rifle for the 22 caliber version
you of course have a 22 caliber muzzle
and a 22 caliber magazine
on the left side of the slide we have
all the standard walther
proof marks plus two more of those
koplans german
military proof marks now these look
really hard to read it looks like
they're almost buried under say a black
lacquer refinish
and that's exactly the case around 1980
a lot of the guns were refurbished
they were parkerized and then covered in
black lacquer a lacquer called
sunchorite which apparently is
best known for being like insanely toxic
and no longer in use but
that's what the british military was
using at the time so that's
that's what these have at the same time
they also retrofitted them with
newer stronger firing pins and they
marked
the guns with a p on the back of the
slide when they did that so that
indicates the firing pin retrofit and
some but not all of them were
retrofitted to add
a lanyard a lanyard ring or loop to the
back of the grip
this particular one does not have that
lanyard loop
and that's pretty much it nothing else
mechanically distinctive about the guns
they're 22 caliber walters they just
happen to have been
formally adopted given a type
designation and
issued out by the british military
by the late 1980s these guys were on
their way out
in 1989 they were formally replaced as
personal defense weapons uh with walther
p5 compact pistols which
were designated the l102a1
and also sig p230 pistols which are
designated the l109
a1 uh the l of course is for land
service and then they just sequentially
number everything
so that's why you get some weird numbers
at any rate
uh the remarkably like even more
remarkably than the british government
purchasing personal protective pistols
for its soldiers
uh would be the fact that when they
pulled them out of service they actually
sold them off commercially which is
really unusual for the british but
a bunch of them ended up on the surplus
market in europe in
some time in the mid 1990s early 1990s
uh inter arms brought something like
1500 of them into the united states and
so
they are actually floating around here
in the u.s although i think a lot of
people don't recognize exactly what they
are because
as you saw the markings on them don't
necessarily shout
british service issue sidearm but they
are in fact this is
one of the very few if perhaps maybe
even the only
historical instance of a military
actually issuing
a 22-caliber rimfire firearm
uh as something other than some sort of
sneaky assassins pistol
so um i'd like to give a big thanks to
ozark bear arms for loaning us
this one to show to you guys if you're
ever down in missouri don't miss a
chance to check out his really cool
machine gun rental range he's got a wide
variety of in particular
historical cool machine guns that you
can rent and try out
thanks for watching