Luger P08 Question

[PzGren]

My experiences with lugers and P38 are minimal, but I am not aware that a luger with proper magazine and properly tension springs is unreliable. Perhaps they will not tolerate a lot of dirt, but they normally were carried by officers in a very protective holster. As already mentioned the luger was not as easy to manufacture as was the P38.
today neither is an attractive first choice for self defense since we have better guns. Most lugers are 75 years or older in age for sure are for the target range and not for combat after so many years.

The Lugers that have Waffenamtabnahme stamps were issued to enlisted men. Commissioned officers had to buy their own sidearm and uniform, as well.

The original DWM manual " Die Selbstlade-Pistole "Parabellum" " is giving the ammo specs of the 9mm Parabellum load as 8.0 gr bullet, a velocity of 310 m/s and 39.18 mkg. It is important to have ammo in the same power range for proper functioning.

I even shoot one of my P.08s with 125 gr truncated lead bullets with excellent accuracy and reliability.

 

[film495]

those just look like cute little character marks. if I had one, I'd rather shoot one that was already a little blemished and I would feel more comfortable using and shooting it. if you want a perfect one, go for that - a lot more $, but why not get a shooter with a few seasoning marks from age? to me there's something cool about old guns that show some age - that are brought back to perfect working condition.

 

[MikeInOr]

So the C96 is not so reliable. I know that one version of it became real popular with the early bolsheviks and chinese that used it under what were likely very harsh conditions. But again the T33 that the USSR replaced it with was the better pistol and fired a slightly more powerful loading.

The Broomhandle that was popular with the Bolsheviks I believe is often referred to as a Bolo and is a bit smaller than the "full sized" broom handles... this is the C96 that I own (At least this is what I was told by a broom handle guy at a gun show). When it debuted I am sure it was the top in technology and loved by many. I have never worked up a load for my C96 to optimize reliability... it just isn't that much fun to shoot... for me. The ergonomics for me are pretty much awful. I still enjoy the gun though.

I think it is just a matter of the natural evolution of gun design. When I was a kid nobody carried any semi-auto's... it was well know that they weren't reliable. Today the reliability of semi-auto pistols is pretty well accepted and they are now the standard instead of the outlier. As time passes designers learn from past problems and designs get better (usually).

I have also never worked up a reliability load for my P38... I have never had to, it shoots pretty much everything. The load I use in my P38 is the same one that functions very well in my P08... no need to have a different 2 different loads when one works for both. I do not use any of these guns for competition so I have never worried about wringing the last bit of accuracy out of them with a finely tweaked load.

 

[Mosin77]

It just goes to show everyone is different... I love the ergos of the C96. (I do have small hands for a man, however.) It looks incredibly ungainly, but, for me, the handle and trigger are perfectly placed and the balance is very pleasing, especially when shooting. I can’t afford a nice C96, but it’s definitely on my list of guns I’d love to own one day.

 

[barnetmill]

Churchill carried a C96


Wiki quotes
The Mauser C96 pistol was extremely popular with British officers at the time, and many purchased it privately. Mauser supplied the C96 to Westley Richards in the UK for resale. By the onset of World War I, the C96's popularity with the British military had waned.[12]
As a military sidearm, the pistols saw service in various colonial wars, as well as World War I, the Easter Rising, the Estonian War of Independence, the Spanish Civil War, the Chinese Civil War, and World War II. The C96 also became a staple of Bolshevik commissars from one side and various warlords and gang leaders from another in the Russian Civil War, known simply as "the Mauser". Communist revolutionaries Yakov Yurovsky and Peter Ermakov used Mausers to execute the former Russian imperial family in July 1918.[13]

Winston Churchill was fond of the Mauser C96 and used one at the 1898 Battle of Omdurman and during the Second Boer War; Lawrence of Arabia carried a Mauser C96 for a period, during his time in the Middle East.[6][14] Indian Revolutionary Ram Prasad Bismil and his partymen used these Mauser pistols in the historic Kakori train robbery in August 1925. Chinese Communist General Zhu De carried a Mauser C96 during his Nanchang Uprising and later conflicts; his gun (with his name printed on it) can be viewed in the Beijing war museum.

Three Mauser C96s were used in the killing of Spanish prime minister Eduardo Dato in 1921.