Artillery Luger with "9" grips

[Wolfgang Pfeifer]

Hello John,

I had asked the same question about my red 9 in March of this year. Tom Heller answered my post on 3/22/01. He wrote:


Wolf, my information on the so called "Red Nine" LP08s is that when the first 60K 9mm brooms (C96s in Europe) were built by Mauser in 1916 for the Imperial army, they were not marked "9" on the grips. Much confusion resulted in the trenches as the army had just received 50K c96s in 1915 in 7.63mm. Therefore, an instruction went out to the field armour's to mark the grips of these early 9mm with the big red 9. Obviously some confusuion reulted, as quite a few LP08s were also marked, and perhaps anything else in 9mm. That is why the size of the 9s on these brooms under S/N 61K will vary greatly, and I have also owned some that were not marked at all. These were NOT FACTORY APPLIED.


I hope this will help you, and again my thanks to Tom Heller.