[ Steyr-Hahn Pistol Variants ]
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 going to be selling
in their upcoming June of 2016 Regional Auction.
One of the cool things that I can do when I visit a place like this
is take a look at a wide variety of different versions of a gun.
And that's what we're doing today, we are taking a look at four of the
ultimately six different very slight ... variances of the Steyr Model of 1912,
also known as the Steyr-Hahn.
Now this was a pistol that was developed, obviously, at Steyr.
The exact designer is a bit unsure, the patents for this pistol
were actually taken out in the name of the Steyr factory.
It's thought that Karel Krnka was probably involved in the design.
It certainly bears the hallmarks of some of his other guns.
... If you want to think about it this way, it's a combination of the 1907 Roth-Steyr
with its rotating locking mechanism,
and the ... early Colt 1900 pistols, with the slide attachment and the recoil spring system.
So this ... was actually a remarkably durable, good,
despite its somewhat ungainly appearance, combat pistol.
It was adopted in 1914 as the Model of 1912 by the Austro-Hungarian military.
And it was their standard self-loading sidearm through World War One.
They did in fact actually make a full-auto version of it with an extended magazine in 1916.
Those are very, very scarce, I obviously don't have one here today.
The vast majority of these were simply made in this configuration
as standard self-loading pistols.
They were made in 9mm Steyr calibre, which is 9x23.
Ammunition for them is available today, it's also not that difficult to hand load.
One of the interesting features of this gun is that it does not use a detachable magazine.
Instead it actually feeds from the top using stripper clips, it has an 8 round capacity.
And the reason for these stripper clips was basically that most of
the malfunctions in a semi-automatic pistol are the fault of a bad magazine.
And so a simple way to prevent that from ever happening
is to just build the magazine into the gun and reload it from the top.
And that's what the Austrian military wanted to go for, so that's what Steyr did for them.
Now this pistol, there were somewhere between 250,000
and maybe 313,000 of these made in total.
Production ended at the end of World War One, that was it.
And ... production started in 1911.
In fact you'll notice that one of these is actually marked the Model of 1911,
despite the fact that it is the Model of 1912 for the Austro-Hungarian military.
So in addition to the Austro-Hungarian military which ordered the vast majority of these pistols,
they were also purchased by the military of Chile, and also by the military of Romania.
Now it's interesting that Romania was a customer of the Steyr factory,
because when Romania entered World War One it was not on the side of the Central Powers.
So we'll get to that in just a moment.
These were also ordered in a couple of small batches by the Bavarian military.
Obviously ... a subcategory of the German military.
But contrary to what some people might expect, ... other than that Bavarian order
they were not used by the German military in World War One, just the Austro-Hungarians.
Now in World War Two the Germans did convert a lot of these guns to 9mm Parabellum.
This was done from 1941 through 1944.
And it was actually done for the Austrian police.
Alright, we'll start with a standard Austrian pistol, these are by far the most common type.
And so that'll let us get a feel for what the markings are supposed to look like.
You'll find the serial number in two locations on the outside of the gun,
here on the frame and up here on the slide.
And of course they ought to be the same. If they're not, someone's messed with the gun.
You'll find a four digit number with a single letter suffix.
That's a pretty common method of serialising ... any military pistol.
They would go from 1 to 9999 of each letter, then increment to the next: a-b-c, etc.
So "p" indicates, what, like the 15th or 16th sequence of 10,000 guns.
Now it's a little bit faint on this particular example,
but up here you'll see them marked "Steyr" for the manufacturing location.
And Steyr is the only manufacturing location for these.
And then the date of manufacture, so this is a somewhat late gun
because a lot of these were being made very early in the war. It's a 1916 manufacture.
On the other side of the frame, right here above the trigger,
you'll find the Austrian military proof mark.
That's a WN, and then an eagle crest, and the year of proofing.
Which typically is going to be the same as the year of manufacture.
And it is here, this is a 1916 gun.
Now in contrast to the standard Austrian guns,
the closest thing we have are going to be the Bavarian contract guns.
And I don't have an example of that here to show you,
however, it's almost identical to the Austrian guns.
The Bavarian purchases all have Austrian military proof marks.
The only way you'll be able to tell the difference
is that the serial number is four numerals without a letter suffix, so.
In addition the Bavarian guns were ordered in 1916 and 1918, so if in doubt check the date.
If it's not one of those two, it's something other than a Bavarian pistol. That's what you'll find there.
Now, contrasting with the next type I do have to show you, that would be a Chilean pistol.
This was adopted as the Model of 1911.
And these were manufactured in 1912 and 1913.
You'll find right there on the side of the slide those markings.
You'll find the serial number in the same place of course, and it's the same type of serial number.
You will also find a Chilean crest on the side of the gun, right there on the slide.
This is a particularly nice example of that crest.
On the right you will find the slide mark "Ejército De Chile", which is Chilean army.
Notice that there is no Austrian proof mark because these
obviously didn't go through the Austrian military.
In total the Chileans ordered about 5,000 of these pistols, so they're pretty rare actually.
You'll find them in this country because a lot of them were imported into the US, but
in the grand scheme of things, they're actually pretty scarce guns.
So next up we have the Romanian contract.
These were adopted as the Model of 1912, as you can see right there.
And instead of that Chilean crest, these have a ... Romanian crown on them.
Romania ordered about 12,000 of these guns.
They again have the same style of serialising.
And you can see that these are marked "Steyr" and the date of manufacture.
So production of these started in 1913, they were also obviously produced in 1914.
On the other side where we normally would expect to find the Austrian proof mark,
we will instead find a Romanian military proof mark right there, above the trigger.
Nothing printed back here on the slide.
Now Romania did in fact enter the war on the side of the Allies, not the Central Powers.
And when they did so, obviously the Steyr Company stopped shipping them pistols.
Not a good move at that point.
The pistols that were left over, that had been earmarked for the Romanian contract
were in fact turned over and used ... by the Austrian military.
Now when it comes to original production Steyr-Hahns,
there is one other batch that I don't have an example of, and that is a commercial gun.
Not a whole lot were made, but there were some that were made and sold on the commercial market.
The way you can distinguish those is instead of just saying "Steyr" up here,
they are going to have the full name of the company, which is going to sound something like
"Österreichische Waffenfabrik Steyr, M1911, 9mm".
So a full extended ... legend up on the slide.
Like I said, those are quite scarce and I don't have one here to show you.
I do, however, have one of
what's probably considered the most desirable of the Steyr-Hahn variants,
and that is one of the pistols converted for Austrian police use during World War Two.
Now, contrary to common belief, these were not done for the German military.
They weren't done for the SS, they were just done for Austrian police.
And there are a number of markings on here that we can take a look at.
So these were not newly manufactured guns, these conversions were done on
existing Austrian military pistols that were still in military inventory.
Interestingly, there have at least been a couple that have been found
that were done on Bavarian contract pistols.
How they got into this batch isn't really all that well known,
but some of them snuck in one way or another.
Anyway, because these were originally Austrian military,
they will all still have Austrian military proofs.
This one was originally proofed in 1914.
And you will see back here this little eagle and swastika with an "L".
That's a police ... acceptance mark.
Now on the other side of the pistol we have a bunch of other stuff.
We have our "Steyr 1914" marking, that would denote that
like we saw from the military proof, it was originally made in 1914.
We then have an eagle "N" here, and that's a German proof mark
because when these were re-barrelled they then had to be re-proofed
to ensure that the new barrels were of good quality.
So you'll find the eagle N as well as that eagle swastika L on the other side.
Here's our original serial number, this has not been changed as part of the conversion process.
This would be the original Austrian serial number.
And then probably the easiest single distinctive bit is this "08" marking on the slide.
This was done to indicate the 9mm Parabellum calibre change.
The reason they used 08 is because
the German military adopted the Pistol 08, the Luger, in 9mm Parabellum.
So that 08 references the adoption date of the cartridge.
It's important to note that there are no markings on the top of the barrel
that designated it as a 9mm Parabellum barrel, as opposed to a 9mm Steyr barrel.
Here's one of our other guns, you'll see in both cases
the top of the barrel is completely unmarked.
However, on the Parabellum conversions there are markings on the inside.
So it's important, if you're looking to get one of these, that you pull the barrel
and take a look to make sure that it's actually the correct barrel.
So I guess I'm going to show you disassembly of these, because it's pretty darn easy.
We're going to start with this latch up at the front, it's got a little spring-loaded tab.
You will find these put in right side up and upside down, they kind of work either way.
What you want to do either way is push the tab to the centre,
and then you can push ... the whole wedge through.
Pull it out the other side, this one is quite stiff.
You'll notice it does have a little arrow on it, helpfully, to guide you in reassembly.
And then we pull this little locking wedge completely out.
This is the part that's similar to the early Colt automatic pistols.
... What that actually does is it crosses between the two sides of the slide,
and it holds the recoil spring here.
So now that that's out, there's nothing forcing the recoil string to act on the slide.
And I can pull the slide right off the top.
You'll see that the recoil spring is now sitting here uncompressed and not being used.
At this point the barrel literally just lifts off the frame.
It's just sitting in a pair of lugs like that.
And when the pistol operates it goes forward and backward and rotates.
Obviously as it comes back and rotates and these two lugs rotate out of alignment with the slide,
the barrel then stops, the slide continues going, and that's how it cycles.
Anyway, this is a pretty small marking, but it's on the rearmost lug of the barrel
you will have the serial number of the pistol and that Eagle N German proof mark.
So in this case (get it right side up) 1117 right there, and our Eagle N.
So this is in fact the correct converted 9mm Parabellum barrel.
Thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
It's always cool to get a chance to look at ... side by side
a bunch of different varieties like we have here today.
So hopefully you learned something about the Steyr-Hahns.
And if you would like to add one, or all of these, to your own collection
take a look at the description text below.
You'll find links there to each one of the catalogue pages for these pistols.
A bunch of them are in fact batched with other guns.
And if you're looking for a Steyr-Hahn, make sure to search the catalogue on your own as well
because there are a bunch more examples.
I only needed one of each for this video, so check it out.
Thanks for watching.