Luger pistol
The Pistole Parabellum or Parabellum-Pistole, commonly known as just the Luger or Luger P08, is a toggle-locked recoil-operated semi-automatic pistol. The Luger was produced in several models and by several nations from 1898 to 1949.
The design was patented by Georg Luger. It was meant to be an improvement of the Borchardt C-93 pistol, and was initially produced as the Parabellum Automatic Pistol, Borchardt-Luger System by the German arms manufacturer Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken. The first production model was known as the Modell 1900 Parabellum. It was followed by the "Marinepistole 1904" for the Imperial German Navy.
The Luger was officially adopted by the Swiss military in 1900, the Imperial German Navy in 1906 and the German Army in 1908. The Luger was the standard service pistol of Switzerland, Portugal, the Netherlands, Brazil, Bolivia, and Bulgaria. It was widely used in other countries as a military service pistol and by police forces. In the German Army service, it was adopted in a slightly modified form as the Pistole Modell 1908 in caliber 9×19mm Parabellum. The Model 08 was eventually succeeded by the Walther P38.
The Luger is well known for its wide use by Germany during World War I and World War II, along with the interwar Weimar Republic and the postwar East German Volkspolizei.
The name Parabellum, which also featured in DWM's telegraphic address, comes from the Latin phrase Si vis pacem, para bellum; "If you wish for peace, prepare for war."
History
In 1897, after the success of the Borchardt C-93, as the first mass-produced semi-automatic pistol, the Swiss military began to look for a semi-automatic pistol to replace their issued pistol, the Ordonnanzrevolver 1872. Georg Luger, working for the German company Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken, provided the Borchardt-Luger design, which during Swiss military trials, was found to be more accurate and reliable than competing designs such as the Mannlicher M1901 and Mauser C96. 20 examples of the Borchardt-Luger were sent to Switzerland in 1899, and after a revision to reduce its weight, was adopted the following year as the Ordonnanzpistole 1900. The Luger remained in Swiss service until 1949, when it was replaced by the SIG P210.German adoption trials
In 1898, Germany adopted a total of 145 C93 pistols, but found that it jammed too often to be effective. In 1901, testing of the Luger commenced, alongside an improved version of the C93, in which the Luger was found to be both lighter and more reliable. Following a change in caliber from 7.65×21mm Parabellum to 9×19mm Parabellum, the Luger was adopted by the Imperial German Navy as the Selbstlade-Pistole Modell 1904, and later simply the Pistole 1904. The Army delayed their adoption, as Mauser requested time to develop a new pistol of their own, which was finished in 1907. However, the new pistol was still found to be less desirable than the Luger, and on 22 August 1908, Kaiser Wilhelm II signed an order for 50,000 Lugers for the German Army, with orders to produce a total of 170,000.U.S. trials
In 1901, DWM sent two Lugers to the United States, who were also interested in a semi-automatic pistol. After doing well in testing, a total of 1,000 pistols and 200,000 rounds were purchased for use by the Military Academy at West Point, and several other forts. The Luger was unpopular, with most troops preferring their.38 Long Colt revolvers, resulting in the Luger being recalled in 1905.In 1906, the United States evaluated several domestic and foreign-made semi-automatic pistols, including the Colt M1900, Steyr Mannlicher M1894, and an entry from Mauser. This was in response to combat reports which stated that the.38 caliber revolvers used in the 1899–1902 Philippine Insurrection lacked stopping power. Due to the findings in the Thompson–LaGarde Tests, the military required a handgun in.45 caliber.
In 1906 and 1907, the U.S. Army held trials for a large-caliber semi-automatic pistol. At least two, and possibly three, Parabellum Model 1902/1906 pattern pistols were brought to the U.S. by Georg Luger for the 1907 trials, each chambered in.45 ACP caliber. Prior to his arrival, the U.S. Frankford Arsenal had provided Luger with 5,000 rounds of.45 ammunition for experimentation and to serve as a guide for chambering measurements. Finding numerous defects in this prototype ammunition, Luger had DWM pull the bullets of these cartridges and had them re-loaded with a special faster-burning powder in new brass cases. Luger brought 746 rounds of this new ammunition to the March 1907 trials with his.45 Luger pistol. Two test.45 Luger pistols, bearing serial numbers 1 and 2, are known to have been used in the 1907 tests. Although the.45 Luger passed the firing tests, it was ranked below the Colt/Browning and Savage pistols in number of malfunctions and misfires, though Army officials conceded that the.45 Luger performed satisfactorily with the DWM-loaded ammunition: "The Luger automatic pistol, although it possesses manifest advantages in many particulars, is not recommended for service tests because its certainty of action, even with Luger ammunition, it is not considered satisfactory, because of the final seating of the cartridge is not by positive spring action, and because the powder stated by Mr. Luger to be necessary, for its satisfactory use is not now obtainable in this country." DWM and Luger later rejected an invitation by Army officials to produce 200 pistols in.45 caliber for further competition against the Colt and Savage submissions, at which point DWM effectively withdrew from the U.S. trials.
The fate of the.45 Luger, serial number 1 is unknown, as it was not returned and is believed to have been destroyed during testing. The.45 Luger prototype serial number 2, believed to have been a back-up to Serial Number 1, survived the 1907 trials and is in private ownership. Its rarity gives its value of around US$1 million at the time the "Million Dollar Guns" episode of the History Channel's Tales of the Gun was filmed, recheck by Guns & Ammo as of 1994. At least two.45 caliber Luger pistols were manufactured later for possible commercial or military sales; one is exhibited at the R. W. Norton Art Gallery, in Shreveport, Louisiana. The other was sold in 2010 and remains in a private collection.
German combat use
The first known instance of the Luger being used in combat was during the Maji Maji Rebellion in 1905-1907. Therein, it was somewhat poorly received, as it was thought to be too heavy to be used quickly, in particular because the grip safety had to be held tightly, reducing accuracy, leading to the removal of the safety in the P08 model.At the beginning of World War I, not all units of the German Army had been equipped with the Luger, leading to an acceleration in production. Alongside the P08, Germany also developed the LP08, a version with a stock and longer barrel that could also accept drum magazines. The LP08 was used by the Luftstreitkräfte during the early days of the war, before planes were equipped with machine guns, although due to a lack of pre-war production, the LP08 was much less commonly used than the P08. The main user of the LP08 was the Army, who used its drum magazine to deliver a high rate of fire at a close range, a concept which would lead to the development of the Stormtroopers and the MP 18. After the end of the war, Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles, which restricted the size of their army – the treaty specified that the German Army could only have 50,000 pistols, and prohibited submachine guns and pistols with stocks altogether.
As the Luger was expensive to produce, Germany started to look for a replacement as early as 1927, settling on the Walther P38 in 1938, which offered similar performance to the Luger, but took almost half the time to produce. Moving the production lines to the P38 once World War II started took longer than expected, leading to the P08 remaining in production until September 1942, and pre-existing copies remained in service until the end of the war. In East Germany, the P08 was used by the Volkspolizei, mostly from ex-Nazi stocks, but they produced a small number up until 1953.
Design details
The Luger has a toggle-lock action that uses a jointed arm to lock, as opposed to the slide actions of many other semi-automatic pistols, such as the M1911. After a round is fired, the barrel and toggle assembly travel roughly rearward due to recoil, both locked together at this point. The toggle strikes a cam built into the frame, causing the knee joint to hinge and the toggle and breech assembly to unlock. The barrel strikes the frame and stops its rearward movement, but the toggle assembly continues moving, bending the knee joint upwards, extracting the spent casing from the chamber, and ejecting it. The toggle and breech assembly then travel forward under spring tension and the next round is loaded from the magazine into the chamber. The entire sequence occurs in a fraction of a second and contributes to the above average mud resistance of the pistol.This mechanism works well for higher-pressure cartridges, but cartridges loaded to a lower pressure can cause the pistol to malfunction because they do not generate enough recoil to work the action fully. This results in the breech block either not clearing the top cartridge of the magazine or becoming jammed open on the cartridge's base. This malfunction with under-powered cartridges does occur with Browning-type and other pistol designs as well, but the Luger is sensitive to cartridges other than the brass-cased ammunition that it was designed to use.
Submachine guns were found to be effective in trench warfare during World War I, and experiments were conducted to convert various types of pistols to fully automatic machine pistols, including the P08. The Luger proved to have an excessive rate of fire in full-automatic mode, however, as did the Mauser C96. The 'snail drum' magazine for the MP 18, which was used by German Stormtroopers towards the end of the war, was originally designed for the Artillery Luger.