A Bundeswehr soldier, laying in the prone firing position on the pistol range, takes aim with a Walther P1 pistol. The P1 was, until 1975, the exact same as the World War Two constructed Pistole '38, or P38 which was accepted into Wehrmacht service in 1939.
The P38 replaced the much older and more expensive Luger P08 and featured a locked-breech, short recoil action. The P38 was both a double-action and a single-action pistol. This meant that the user could chamber a round and using the pistol's safety lever, the user could lower the hammer without discharging the weapon. The benefit was that a ready round was loaded and upon pulling the trigger to fire, the hammer was brought back then released to fire the round (double-action). After firing the first round, the pistol reverted to single-action as each subsequent firing ejected the round, cocked the hammer, and chambered a new round. The P38 was chambered for the 9x19mm Parabellum round with the magazine holding eight bullets. The barrel was 5 inches long with six right-handed grooves. The overall length of the P38 was 8.4 inches long with a unloaded weight of 2.1 pounds. The P38 had a muzzle velocity of 1,150 feet per second and with the rear notch/front blade post sights, the effective range was 50 meters. The P38 was in production from 1939 to 1945 with over one million examples constructed between three manufacturers: Walther, Mauser, and Spreewerk.
Following World War Two, the German Bundeswehr (formed in 1955) desired to have the P38 as its main pistol sidearm. Walther, eager to provide the German military with the weapon, spent almost two years retooling their production line to build it (and other firearms). Walther basically had to start from scratch, using wartime built P38 pistols as examples, reconstructing the design plans for the pistol, and also recreating the needed machine tools. Deliveries commenced to the Bundeswehr starting in June 1957. At this time, the weapon was still designated as the P38 but only differed from the wartime production models by using aluminum frames and plastic grips. In 1963, the designation was changed to Pistole 1, or P1. The only real change came in 1975 when the frame was reinforced with a hex bolt and the slide was enlarged to improve strength. This bigger slide has been nicknamed the “dicker rutsche”, or “fat slide”.
The P1 remained in service with the Bundeswehr until 2004 when the last of the P1 pistols was replaced with the Universelle Selbstladepistole 8 (Universal Self-Loading Pistol 8; USP8). Although phased out, both P38 and P1 pistols continue to see service around the world with military, police, or private contractors, the last major combat seeing P1 pistols in use during the Iraqi Civil War from 2014 to 2017.
Primary Source:
Hogg, Ian V., Weeks, John Military Small Arms of the 20th. Century (Northbrook: DBI Books, 1991)
