Walther P38

Last Updated on Tuesday, 21 July 2009 14:08 Written by Administrator Thursday, 02 July 2009 12:47

The Walther P38 is a semi-automatic pistol designed in Nazi Germany at the beginning of the Second World War. It was designed to replace the Luger P08 which was proving too costly to manufacture. The pistol was designed by Walther and later manufactured by other companies such as Mauser Werke and Spreewerke.

The design of the P38 was completed in 1938 and the German Army accepted it the same year and scheduled field tests to evaluate the effectiveness of the weapon. However, production of the prototypes didn’t commence until 1939. Production for the army began in mid-1940 after a few glitches found during the tests were rectified. Initially, it was produced only by Walther. However in the later years, Mauser and Spreewerke also manufactured the pistol.

More than 1.2 million P38s were manufactured by Germany during the war years. After the war, France also manufactured many more copied using captured parts at the Mauser factory. Production of the pistol continued until 1990s under the name Pistole 1. This pistol was employed mainly by Police and Armed forces of West Germany.

The P38 used a double-action trigger and was the first locked-breech pistol to do so. The initial design of the pistol had a hidden hammer. However, the German Army requested an external hammer and so it had to be redesigned. The initial model also has a walnut grip which was later replaced by bakelite.

The P38 was used to design several variants in the years following the Second World War. The P1 variant was designed in 1957 and remained in service with the Police forces and Army of West Germany until 1990. The P1 was made using an Aluminium alloy instead of steel and also had minor changes. In the 1970s, another variant was designed. Designated as “P5”, this pistol was designed for use by the Police forces.

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