Is this possible?
 

Hi all, just joined to get some technical info from you guys.

I'm helping someone do some research for a book that involves the use of a Luger pistol in the plot.
We want to be sure of 100% accuracy as regards the technical aspects of this gun. It'll be a WW2 surplus gun, brought back from the European Theatre. Any help with markings etc would also be helpful.

I have a few questions if anyone would be so kind as to answer:

1. How difficult is it to **** the gun? (could the cocking mechanism be opened by a child? Age 8?)

2. Can the gun be fired with one in the chamber but no magazine present?

3. What would be the effective shelf life of the ammo if properly stored? Would original ammo be usable? There's a possibility that the ammo could be UK purchased in the 1950s. Any realistic scenarios welcome!

Thanks in advance

Till

Ah, a rude word filter. Ok ARM the gun? How difficult to pull up the slide with the buttons?

1. easy
2.oh yes
3. for the fun of it I have shot 1917 .45 acp round recent, and worked well, but not recommended.

Hi, Welcome to the forum. I'm trying to figure out what the rude word could be, but none of the ones I know fit. Must be my sheltered upbringing. The answers to your questions are yes, yes, and yes. Regards, Norm

how to "Rooster" the gun.

If you want to do a mystery type accidental shooting you should know that the gun can be fired with the top have only.


jerry

Thanks everyone.

I was aware that the top bit 'detached' could fire a chambered round on it's own, been doing a bit of looking at youtube etc, found the vids from this forum.

The book is 95% written, just some rewriting that has required a bit of tinkering.

The loose end is:

The luger has been fired twice, therefore it is in a state of having one in the breech and 5 in the magazine.
A child, totally unfamiliar with guns tries to make it safe, removes the magazine but totally overlooks the one still in the breech. The gun remains for 40+ years in this state.

So the 'double action' still allows the gun to be fired.

I'm only aware of the way the Luger loads and reloads because I built a 1:1 plastic model of one as a teenager, the average British person will know almost nothing of how an automatic pistol works. The Luger will be even less familiar.

Am I on the right track here?

cheers

Till

Hi, The Luger is not a "double action", but the act of chambering a round does **** the firing pin. A Luger with a chambered round will fire if the safety is off and the trigger is pulled. Regards, Norm
P.S. I hope that you will acknowledge the "invaluable technical assistance provided by members of The Luger Forum, without whose help this book would not have been possible".

Till, The Luger is actually a striker fired weapon. The fireing pin is moved to it's backward position, compressing the fireing pin spring and latching on the sear. This could remain for many years but would leave the spring compressed. The spring MIGHT develop a slight weakness from compression for 40 years.
In your scenario, the child would only need to slip the safety lever to the proper position or if it was already on fire, to pull the trigger.
Most, not all WW2 German Lugers had no magazine safe. Police Lugers MIGHT have had a magazine safe installed although it was far from the norm by the end of WW2.
I would say an 8 year old boy, not girl..could pull back the toggle on a Luger but here's a potential problem. If the toggle is not let go of but held and slid into position it is possible for the bolt to decide not to fully seat. This will leave the bolt out of battery and the pistol might not fire unless the shooter recognizes the toggle bent up and slaps it down and into position.
Antique ammunition can present some problems. The primer might fail altogether. Often he mercury and other primer componants will degrade and you get a failure to ignite the powder, this might push the bullet midway down the barrel simply by the power of the primer alone. Sometimes the powder has degraded and it will have less power than originally.The round will fire but it is a squib load..Pushing the bullet out but with much less velocity. The scenarios can continue..The powder can degrade into smaller pieces than original manufacture causing it to burn faster than intended and a much more powerfull detonation occours.
Brass degrades over time..a crack could develop in a brass cartridge case and apon fireing it could cause gas seepage into the bolt face and regions behind and blow magazine out and the pistol up.
I guess I could think of another scenario or two but this might do it...

Jerry Burney

As to the ammo. I regularly fire surplus rifle ammo made in the 30s and 40s through my Browning 1919 BMG with a 99%+ ignition rate.
Properly stored ammo has a potential 100 year plus shelf life.

Properly stored ammo has a potential 100 year plus shelf life. I agree with this very broad statement if the ammunition is relatively recent. There is ammunition that was made with unstable chemicals that deteriorated over time. It can be unreliable.

Jerry Burney