During my time, we captured a ton of chinanese and some soviet weapons never anything german. the nva was pretty well quiped and supplied , but some of the more gorrila groups could have used anything. but more common to find them with old jap surplus.

I know a Vietnam Vet who brought back a K98k.

BTW, the guy inspecting the firearm from the muzzle is on the Darwin List. He just hasn't found out yet.

Like i said the vietnam war lasted over ten years and faught by over a million men and women during that time. Anthing could have or maybe been used over those years. South viet nam covered alot of area of operations, so who knows what may have came from where. being the french were all over the place , they could have brought the german weapons , but who knows.

the french foreign legion was there till 1959

There were plenty of french there, just the military with drew. We often patoled the rubber tree plantations in the north. I recieved a 9mm hi power copy, that was nickled and had dragon ivory grips, from one of plantation owners, still have the grips, the first 9mm i ever owned. Actualy untill that time i did not know about the caliber. The dunce looking down the barrel in the picture, which he asked me take , while he checked the bore, has gone on to another line of work. We actualy never let him around the firearms, i do not have to tell you why.

I believe what you say about this person. The slide is in battery. Kind-of hard to inspect the bore that way.

I live in South Louisiana and visit local pawn shops on a regular basis. My success rate here has been ZERO. However, I have a son who lives in northeast Atlanta. My wife and I visit him every three months of so. My pawn shop success rate in Atlanta is entirely different. So far, I have purchased four Lugers from various pawn shops in the Atlanta area. I have passed on probably that many, incuding a Portuguese Navy that was priced too high. I have a '37 S/42 in transit now from an Atlanta pawn shop.

Mike

Mike, I'm not sure where in south Louisiana you are, but I live in Covington and the pawn shop there has four or five lugers in the case. I saw them the other day but didnt ask to see them so I dont know what they were. or price.

The French forces used a lot of German made equipment during the Indochina wars. So you can expect to find P08's, P38's, K98's and HSc pistols in that area.

An interesting question is what happened to the tonnes of equipment that the US left in Vietnam. It was one of the ongoing frustrations of Sam Cummings (Interarms), he knew there was plenty of stuff for him over there, and it never surfaced :)

Update i sold some ar items and should be picking it up next week. i need replacemnet grips and a magazine to use it any good leeds ? thanks ken

well the Luger is home the magazine is aluminum bottom which has the serial number 6350 and the number 2 stamped the blue is so dark its almost black.all major numbers stamped with last 2 numbers. also the Vopo grips. i willtry to get good pics soon

has the right proofmarks for a erfurt 1918, barrel has no serial number but a N with a crown over it.

well i got my mecgar magazine and now the toggle locks back like it should. my aluminum base mag has some kind of proof marks and the number 2 also th last 2 of the frame numbers match. im going to have a friend with a good micro camera setup to take some pics for me. any help you can give would be great. thanks ken

Hi Ken,

Sounds like you have a nice VoPo Luger rework with an East German Haenel Schmeisser extruded magazine.

Does it have import marks?

VoPo Lugers are becoming collectable - don't toss the grips or the magazine.

Congratulations!!! Love to see pictures.

Marc

no import marks just the 1918 markings on the right side of receivers

There was a lot of European equipmwnt in the early days of VN.
French left overs or what ever.

Whole companies of CIDG were armed with MP 40s and MAT 49s.

SF remote A Camps had a sort of hap-hazard supply source. We even were expected to get chow from the local economy.

We had field expedience honed to an art.

Friend of mne from the early days said two crates of Lugers showed up once and they were distributed to the troops as intended. He lost his in a river crossing.

Lots of the older exotic stuff had been used up by my time, 68-70.
Even the remaining VC had pretty much standardised weapons by then, but there was the occaisional exception.
I saw a chromed MP 40 and had a scrounged silenced Sten.
I was forced to carry a M2 carbine my 1st few months.
Not an inspirational weapon.

Vlim,

A British arms dealer bought a lot of guns from the Vietnamese government back in the 1990's; my 1945 M1911A1 Colt was one of them.

Balder

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...1/m1911a1L.jpg

Although thousands of WW2 era weapons were stacked and torched, (I posted photos some weeks ago), the modern stuff did not go to waste. The Pinochet goverment in Chile confiscated thousands of M16s in the late 1980s, which had been smuggled in by leftist groups in sugar sacks from Cuba. They all serialed out to have come from US and South Vietnamese stocks left in VN after 1975.

Our weaponry has been arming "movements of national liberation" across the globe ever since.

Update my barrel have no serial number but has a CROWN over N proof. is this a replacement?

East-German replacement, most likely.