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By John MarshallIt has been known by many names. In Europe,
it’s usually the Parabellum pistol. In its most com-monly found variation, it’s often called the P.08(pronounced “Pay-oct” in German). But to most ofus on this side of the pond, it’s been foreverknown as the Luger after its designer, Georg Luger.It’s arguably the most recognizable profile in thefirearms world; its sleek and flowing lines reek ofsophisticated design and Old World craftsmanship.
A little of the pistol’s history is in order. It hadits beginnings in one of the first semiautomaticpistols, and the first to make use of a toggle, orknee-action, locking mechanism. This was theBorchardt (pronounced Bor-kart) pistol, the inven-tion of one Hugo Borchardt, an American. In1893, the Ludwig Loewe company ofBerlin, Germany, hired Borchardt,and then manufactured his pis-tol. Although the Borchardtwas ungainly in appearance,the hallmarks of the laterLuger are very evident in itsdesign. Also employed by theLoewe firm at that time wasGeorg Luger. He studied, refinedand re-designed the Borchardt pistol into a morecompact mechanism, patenting the firstParabellum, the Model 1900. Interestingly,although the new pistol obviously incorporatedmany of Borchardt’s ideas, no mention ofBorchardt was made in Luger’s patents. The pistolwas chambered for the 7.65mm Parabellum, abottlenecked cartridge of about .30 caliber. It’snow often known as the .30 caliber Luger.
The 1900 Luger was then manufactured by thenew firm of Deutsche Waffen undMunitionsfabriken (DWM), itself a merger ofLudwig Lowe and Deutsche MetallpratronenFabrik, a prominent munitions firm in Germany.DWM sent its representative, Hans Tauscher, to theUnited States to market the new pistol here. Hesold Luger pistols until the termination of U.S.-German relations just prior to World War I. It wasTauscher who apparently originated the term“Luger Pistol” in this country. One of his first saleswas to the U.S. Government, which ordered 1000Model 1900s for testing, each marked with anAmerican Eagle design over the chamber.Unfortunately for DWM, the Army’s OrdnanceDepartment found them unsatisfactory after fieldtrials. Most of the original 1,000 pistols were auc-tioned off by the U.S. Army in 1906, and areextremely valuable collector pieces today.
Following World War One, the A.F. Stoegercompany of New York became the sole importer ofLuger pistols and in fact copyrighted the “Luger”name. Meanwhile, the pistol had been refinedeven further by DWM. A new, coiled action spring
had been substituted for the breakage-prone S-shaped spring previously used. No grip safety wasemployed, and the 7.65 Parabellum cartridge wasexpanded to make the now-famous 9mmParabellum cartridge that is in near universal usetoday. The improved pistol was known as the P.08(Model of 1908) and served the German armedforces throughout The Great War. The P.08 is themost common variation of many hundreds of mod-els made in the first half of the 20 th Century. Thevariations on the Luger are way too numerous tocover completely here, and many books havebeen written to cover the subject. In addition tothe P.08, there was the Model 1914 “artillery”model made with a long barrel and a long-rangerear sight mounted to the rear of the barrel. Therewere also 1904, 1906 and 1908 “Navy” ormarine, model versions with a
six-inch barrel and an adjustable rear sight mount-ed on the rear toggle link. A special “snail” drummagazine of 32-round capacity was made for theartillery version, which was also equipped with ashoulder-stock holster. Most Lugers were able toaccommodate a shoulder stock, which could beattached to a projection on the butt of the pistol.There were even a few prototype .45 ACP ver-sions, made for U.S. military trials in 1907, whichare priceless when found today.
In 1931, the manufacture of the Luger pistolwas transferred from DWM to the Mauser compa-ny in Oberndorf, Germany. The fit and finish ofthese Mauser-produced examples was fully theequal of their DWM predecessors. The P.08 Lugerillustrated here is a Mauser-made example pro-duced in 1936. Today it is still as issued, completewith a 1936-marked military holster, takedowntool, and spare magazine. I’m quite positive it sol-diered on the German side during World War Two.
The Luger was expensive to produce andrequired careful machining and fitting for all
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