[ Finnish Lugers ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
taking a look at a pair of Finnish Luger pistols.
And I think these two do a pretty good job of
typifying the Luger in Finnish service. Which
is a bit different than I think a lot of Luger collectors
are used to sort of thinking about Lugers.
The typical thing with Lugers is there's basically an
infinite variety of different types and patterns
and variations and sub-variations.
And it's all a matter of get the exact set of features
that are specific to this contract, or this group of them.
Where with Finland we have a ... totally different system, a totally different situation
leading up to the use and the modification of Luger pistols.
So let's start at the beginning. In 1918 Finland gets its independence from Russia,
1917, 1918, they go through a civil war.
And the arms that are there to equip the ... beginnings of Finland's own native armed forces
are basically what they capture from the Russians.
So it's a lot of Mosin-Nagants, interestingly also a lot of Arisakas,
that's a subject for a later video.
But there weren't that many pistols in Russian stockpiles in Finland.
And so the ... nascent Finnish military needs a handgun.
They've got some Nagant revolvers but not many, and come on, that's a terrible gun.
And so their initial solution is actually domestic production.
There's a guy by the name of Ahlberg a little ... up north in Finland who says,
"Hey, I can make you this copy of the FN 1910."
And I actually have a video coming on the Ahlberg, short version: didn't work out.
The Finnish government ends up having an opportunity to buy
a whole bunch of Ruby pistols super-cheap from the French after World War One.
Great, that takes care of the problem.
And hey, I love French pistols as much as anyone, probably more so,
but let's be realistic - the Ruby is not a fantastic pistol.
It's a perfectly suitable pistol for a bad situation.
But, if it's now peacetime you have the opportunity to get some better quality guns,
and you want to use them for things like target competition
as well as just emergency service pistols.
The Ruby is not really that good of a solution, so they start looking for something better.
Well, the whole core of the early Finnish military were German trained.
This was a group called the "Jägers",
who had basically gone to Germany and volunteered and fought in World War One
as part of the German military as a way to get training.
And they came back and formed the officer corps of the new Finnish military.
Well, World War One of course, they'd had a lot of exposure
to the Luger in German military service and they liked it.
So the ... Finnish military decides to buy Luger pistols.
Now this is at this point 1922, and so the Versailles Treaty is in effect,
and Germany is not allowed to make or sell military small arms.
Which when it comes to pistols means you can't have anything over a 4 inch barrel,
and it can't be in 9mm because that's a military calibre.
So the Finns look at this, and they're buying these guns from DWM.
They had an opportunity to get 9mm Parabellums through Belgium,
but it would have cost more and taken longer.
So instead they buy 7.65mm Luger calibre (or 7.65x21) pistols with like 95 or 98mm barrels,
just under the 4 inch, 100mm legal restriction on DWM.
They decide to buy these from the Germans, and in 1922 they get the first 2,000 of them.
And in 1923 they get another 2,000 of them, and by 1929 they stop ordering guns.
Because by 1929 they've decided that they're going to start domestic production
of a pistol which will become the L-35 Lahti.
But by that point they've got 8,000
of what they designate as the Model 1923 (or m/23) pistol, which is the Luger in 7.65.
Now that is a description that kind of fits the Luger collecting mindset.
OK, 8,000 gun contract, let's find out what the serial numbers are,
let's find out what the standard configuration is.
But this is where the thing gets a little more complicated,
because it wasn't just the Army buying pistols.
They actually also got some Lugers for the Navy,
Finland bought a couple of submarines that all came equipped with Lugers for ... parts of the crew.
But then there were a lot of private purchases of Luger pistols by Finnish civilians
who would take them into war when we get to the Winter War and the Continuation War.
And there was also purchase of Luger pistols by the Finnish Civil Guard.
And these are disparate organisations that don't always have to order the same thing.
There were enough 9mm Lugers that ended up in Finnish service
that they actually got their own formal designation, that was the Pistol 08.
Just copying the German P08 designation.
And that existed side by side with the Pistol 23 in 7.65 Luger.
So, there's a lot of variations.
Some of these guns will have Finnish Army marks, some won't.
And then we get into modifications that were made to them, starting in the Winter War or so.
And that involves conversion to 9mm.
So when these were first purchased,
the Finnish military was using 7.65 Luger (or 7.65 Parabellum) as they had submachine guns.
They had a copy of the Bergmann 1920 submachine gun in that calibre,
the early patterns of the Suomi submachine gun were in 7.65 Luger.
And it wasn't until the adoption of the m/31 Suomi, the
standard pattern that we're familiar with, that they formally went to 9mm.
So, once we get to the Winter War, as guns wear out they're re-barrelled in 9mm
because that's a ... much more common cartridge by that point.
And both Sako and Tikkakoski manufactured new barrels in 9mm.
And they are longer barrels. They ... had some that were four inch,
and they also had a 120mm barrel, which is about 4.75 inch.
So, we actually have one of those replacement barrels here.
We have one with its original barrel that was also used by the Finnish prison system,
because these pistols dispersed out through
all of the various military and government organisations.
So, ... keeping in mind that when it comes to Finland we don't have a lot of
standard rules to work with like you would normally expect with Lugers,
let's take a closer look at these two.
We're going to go ahead and start with this one because it's in
more of its original configuration as it would have been purchased from Germany.
So what we have here is a gun that is still in 7.65.
It's interesting that these would be re-barrelled into 9mm.
But first off, that did cause some problems because the Finnish 9mm ammo
was being made for their Suomi submachine guns.
And it was pretty darn hot ammo, and it actually tended to kind of ruin Luger pistols.
It was a little more powerful than they were built for, and so they did have problems
with Lugers getting beaten up and broken through excessive shooting.
In fact by 1951, of the original 8,000 that had been purchased,
fewer than half, about 3,400 and change, were still left in inventory.
... Like they lost about 1,000 of them in the Winter War,
and they lost about another ... 2,000 of them in the Continuation War.
And so then they actually lost a substantial number of them
after the Continuation War just due to practice with hot ammo.
Anyway, in addition ... at times they actually kind of had to try to
convince people not to re-barrel their guns.
Because a lot of these were private purchase or privately owned Lugers,
and people were hot to re-barrel their 7.65s into 9mm.
And this was taking enough of the barrel maker's production time that the military kind of said,
"Hey look, if your gun's not worn out just put off, keep it in 7.65, don't re-barrel it yet.
Because we have more important stuff to do than make barrels
for a bunch of you guys who just want the fancy new calibre."
Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself here.
This is a 95mm barrel in 7.65, which is how it would have been
originally purchased from DWM, visible on the toggle there.
We have all of our sort of typical German markings, as you would expect on a production Luger.
We have a crown N proof mark.
There is a dearth of serial numbers here,
and it looks to me like a lot of them have been scrubbed off the gun at some point.
This clearly had a long service history.
The most interesting thing marking wise on the gun is this on the top.
This is in Finnish of course, and ... effectively it translates into "prison",
like Prisoner Administration System, something to that effect.
So this these were guns that were transferred to the police, and they were used in that capacity.
So sometimes guns that have this crest
(and this crest, by the way, was added after the fact by the prison system,
it was not originally on the pistol, like the prison system did not order guns from DWM,
they got guns that had been in service in the country in other places)
so sometimes the prison guns will have an "SA" in a box
somewhere on the gun indicating Finnish Army use.
But some, like this one, simply don't.
Which indicates that they may have been in the Civil Guard,
they may have been privately owned guns.
... Like I said at the beginning, there's a lot ... less strict rule following
when it comes to Finnish Lugers than a lot of other types of Luger.
I think someone has also modified this front sight a bit
to perhaps shave it down a bit to get a proper zero on the gun
for whatever ammunition or hold they preferred. ...
That's another one of the consequences of having
guns that are not strictly under the control of a single organisation.
Oh, and I do want to point out that despite being a contract for Finland,
these guns still have German marked safeties.
Because the Finns ... either didn't have the clout or didn't want to pay the extra money
to have Finnish safety markings on the guns.
There's also no standard Finnish chamber marking.
So typically, aside from something like this that was added later in its use in Finland,
there is no Finnish crest on a Luger.
Here's our other example, this would have started life pretty much the same way.
However, it has had the barrel replaced at some point.
And this could have been done in the late '30s,
it could have been done between the Winter War and the Continuation War,
during the Continuation War, or even after. There's no way to know exactly.
Both Sako and Tikkakoski made replacement barrels.
And this is a 120mm replacement, and it is in 9mm.
You can clearly see the difference there, this is our replacement 9mm, that's our 7.65.
It can be a little tricky to tell the difference if you're not used to them
just looking at one, but side by side it's an obvious thing.
And we know this is a Tikkakoski barrel because they have the Tikkakoski mark on there.
Also notice that the shoulder of the barrel here
is a slightly different profile from the original German.
As you can see there.
As for the rest of the gun, this thing is rough.
It's had some parts that have clearly been refinished.
The toggle has been polished and refinished there.
The toggle number actually doesn't match.
The serial number on the frame has been re-stamped.
This one also does not have any Finnish Army marks on it,
or really any other distinguishing marks.
And in that way ... still, like, this doesn't break any of the rules of a legitimate Finnish Luger.
Now the grips are replacement, and I'm pretty sure they are post-war replacement,
probably in the United States.
Note that when these guns were finally surplused,
(sorry, let's get that right side up),
... many of them were brought into the United States, this one came in from Century.
And this was like the 1980s when these were finally surplus.
These served in Finnish military service for a very long time before they were
finally, ultimately, replaced by double-action High Power pistols in the 1980s.
So these are two examples of the type, there are a number of things that we don't see on either of them.
We don't see an SA Finnish Army stamp, which you will see on some.
When these were in service early on, they had brass discs on the grips that were unit marked.
They would identify what unit the gun was issued to,
and which gun it was for that unit, numbering them all.
Those were actually deliberately removed and replaced with standard grips.
... Most countries got rid of that sort of information on the guns.
... There's no need to give your enemy ... easy information about
... the forces at your disposal by marking all the guns like that.
So you see that change happen all over the place, but every once in a while
Finnish Lugers show up that do still have those original grips with the unit discs on them.
That's another thing that we don't have here.
But as I said, lots of rule bending and rule breaking when it comes to Finland's use of the Luger.
Everyone has a different reason, or different preferences, for firearms collecting
and what makes a gun interesting to them.
Some people really value condition, some people really value markings,
some people really value history.
And I think the Finnish Lugers just drip history,
because of all these changes and modifications,
and the unique stories behind virtually all of them.
You take a look at this guy, this gun is really kind of a beater.
It's obviously had a bunch of parts replaced, it's heavily worn.
To me that's really interesting. This isn't a gun that was produced
and sat in its factory box for 100 years so that it could be put on the wall.
This is a gun that was almost certainly in combat service
in at least the Winter War, or the Continuation War, if not both.
It got re-barrelled, it got worn out, it ... continued to be used.
And to me, that's a really cool piece of firearms history.
And I shouldn't overlook the prison system one here either.
Also a gun that probably went through Civil Guard or military use
before it was transferred over to the somewhat more mundane Prison Administration System.
But man, that's a cool marking, like I am a sucker for cool markings.
And that is a cool and unusual, interesting marking on that chamber.
Anyway, there was no way I could resist taking a closer look at these two
Finnish Lugers when I found them. So hopefully you guys enjoyed that as much as I did.
Thank you for watching.